Clear Specs Go a Long Way: Inside Our Three-Year Orchard Core Collaboration with Fieldman

What happens when your application needs both stability improvements and new features at the same time?

That was the situation when Lombiq joined the Fieldman project. Their Orchard Core-based web application already had established business logic, but it required bug fixes, upgrades, and further development.

Fieldman is an American software company that helps local governments and utility vendors manage all types of assets, jobs, and field projects.

Challenges and how we addressed them

During this journey we faced some challenges and blockers, mainly in communication. The biggest issue was not always being aligned on the exact goal of a task. To address this, we took steps to ensure we could collaborate as effectively as possible. We introduced weekly meetings whenever there was ongoing work, and we made sure that during planning and before giving estimates, everyone agreed on and understood the written, detailed specifications. This required extra attention from both sides during planning and when preparing and finalizing written details.

This way, everyone had a clear picture of the goal, which led to more accurate development and review. When development was finished, the code and the application went through our strict review process as usual. After that, we handed the finished product over to the client for further QA.

Our contribution over 3 years

Since our almost 3 years of work together, we have helped them to reach their goals in multiple ways. 

  • Upgraded the application to a safe and better Orchard Core version
  • Added checks to ensure no regression
  • Added better documentation
  • Added charts with high data flexibility
  • New dynamic data display pages using the already existing infrastructure to define the parameters
  • Instead of reinventing the wheel, we always used the already existing logic to build something better
  • Added multiple improvements to the already existing features that resulted in better UI/UX

Tools we used

In this project, we also used our open-source libraries to speed up the development process. Currently, we rely on the following libraries:

Outcome

After almost three years of working together, we can say that our collaboration is now more well-defined and effective than ever. We hope to continue working together for a long time.

Our shared work is best reflected in Fieldman’s own words:

Our platform is a core part of how we serve local governments and utility providers, so keeping it up to date and continuing to add new features is essential for our business. We needed a partner who could help us maintain the application and support the ongoing development of the product.
We were looking for a team with strong experience in the technologies our application is built on, especially Orchard Core. Lombiq stood out because of their deep expertise, structured development approach, and proven ability to understand and extend our existing application.
Working with Lombiq has been a very positive experience. Over time, we established a highly effective collaboration process with clear specifications, regular meetings, and accurate estimates. Their team is thorough, responsive, and consistently delivers high-quality work.

If you’re looking for custom solutions, we can help you choose the right direction, support you in planning, and then develop the software to reach your goals. If you’re interested, contact us here.

krisztian.nemeth Case study Orchard Core Fieldman Communication Specifications

Other recent posts

Your analytics isn’t broken. It’s incomplete.

Web analytics is the foundation of modern marketing decisions. But today, a growing portion of user behavior simply doesn’t show up in your reports.

Ad blockers, browser extensions, and privacy tools can strip tracking parameters or block analytics scripts entirely. The result is incomplete campaign data, misleading attribution, and decisions based on partial visibility.

For marketing and product teams, this is not just a technical inconvenience. It is a business risk. Campaign performance becomes harder to evaluate, budgets are harder to justify, and growth decisions rely on guesswork instead of evidence.

Bringing Orchard Core into the classroom at Óbuda University
Since 2013, we’ve been working with Óbuda University on a hands-on way to teach web development. What began as a course built around Orchard CMS later evolved into an Orchard Core-based subject, giving students a chance to learn by building something that could actually work in the real world, not just completing classroom exercises.We asked our colleague Gábor Domonkos, who has led the collaboration for years, to walk us through how the course started, how it works today, and what students usually take away from it.– How did this collaboration start?At first, the university had a Hungarian, non-developer course focused on Orchard CMS and DotNest, Lombiq’s hosted Orchard platform. Students built sites through the admin UI, which was a good introduction to content management. But once Orchard Core arrived, we saw a chance to create something more ambitious: a developer-focused subject where students could also write code and go beyond the basics.– What changed with Orchard Core?Orchard Core made the course much more flexible. Students can now learn not just how to use a CMS, but how to extend it, customize it, and build on top of it. That meant more room for customization and coding. It also gives them a much more realistic picture of what it means to develop with a modern CMS on ASP.NET Core.– How is the course structured?The semester is built around a few milestones. Early on, students choose their project topic and define the basic idea. Midway through the semester, they should already have a working site with real content. By the end, the project should be close to final, both in structure and content.The later stages are mostly about making sure students stay on track. If they need help, they can share a short update so we can spot problems early and steer them in the right direction. Some students also choose to demo their project before the official deadline.– What do students usually build? Any favorites?That depends on which version of the course they take. In the non-developer version, students often build sites with forms, search, taxonomies, and content workflows. In the developer-focused version, they go further and build custom modules, themes, and more advanced functionality.One project that stands out was a volunteer platform. Organizations could publish volunteer opportunities, and users could browse, apply, and track their enrollments. It was a nice example of how Orchard Core can support a real, practical use case without adding unnecessary complexity.– Has this led to anything beyond the course?Yes, some students later became our colleagues at Lombiq. By the time they finish the course, they already know the basics of Orchard Core and have built something real with it. More importantly, they have seen what it’s like to work with a real open-source ecosystem, not just with a classroom demo.– Where should someone start if they want to learn Orchard Core today?If someone wants to learn Orchard Core today, Lombiq has a few good starting points. Dojo Course 3 is a full video course on YouTube that walks through Orchard Core for both users and developers. We also maintain the Lombiq Training Demo for Orchard Core on GitHub, which is a functional module with heavily commented code to help developers understand how Orchard Core works in practice. And beyond that, Orchard Dojo regularly publishes tutorials, tips, and other learning resources for the Orchard community. For us, that is the best proof that the collaboration works. Students gain practical experience, the university gets a more hands-on subject, and the industry gets people who are better prepared for real projects. We believe more universities could benefit from this kind of collaboration, whether with Orchard Core or other open-source technologies. And if you are exploring something similar, we are always happy to share what has worked for us so far.

Event management backend for one of the largest retailers
Avastec, a UK company, approached us to continue the development of their existing Orchard Core-based headless backend utilized by the event management site of one of the world's largest retailers. It was already in use with a publicly accessible Node.js-based frontend. The end client urgently wanted some new features, with follow-up tasks to optimize the system's performance, and keep the app up-to-date while maintaining the integrity of the user interface. Our initial task involved the transformation of data migrations from the simpler recipe-based paradigm to a more structured code-based approach. This transition aimed to enhance the traceability of modifications the development team applied. Simultaneously, a suite of UI tests was integrated into the workflow to uphold continuous code quality assurance. Leveraging the flexibility of Orchard Core's migration API, we executed this pivotal migration process without it negatively affecting users. Since then, we've delivered a lot to meet various user requirements, including event ticketing, integrating with a GDPR compliance API, and launching the site for another brand of the end client. One particularly interesting task was the implementation of QR code-based entry management, which we also supplemented with UI tests using the Lombiq UI Testing Toolbox. We've also implemented a feature to let the app use a fake video feed during tests, what we also demoed during the weekly Orchard Core podcast. From our other open-source projects, we also utilized Lombiq Helpful Extensions, as well as Lombiq Hosting - Azure Application Insights, since the app is hosted in Azure. This is what Steve Taylor, CTO and Founder of Avastec says about our joint work: Working with this team has been a genuinely positive experience from day one. They quickly understood the complexities of our existing Orchard Core setup and delivered improvements without disrupting a live, high-traffic platform. Their ability to balance rapid feature delivery with long-term maintainability and performance has been particularly valuable. The introduction of structured migrations, robust UI testing, and innovative solutions like QR-based entry management significantly elevated the quality of the system. They’ve consistently demonstrated technical expertise, reliability, and a proactive mindset, making them a trusted partner in the ongoing evolution of our platform. Thanks to Orchard Core, UI testing, and innovative feature implementations, we effectively addressed Avastec’s challenges and delivered a significantly improved event management backend. It continues to serve the end client, with us working on improvements to this day. Do you want to launch and event management platform on Orchard Core? We have actually built several more too, get in touch with us!

Helping out the builders of Ontario - RESCON case study
The Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) represents professionals in Ontario’s residential building industry and leads initiatives to foster innovation across the sector. Their public website runs on Orchard Core: it's a headless Orchard Core backend powering a separate Vue-based frontend application. But an issue had started to undermine one of the site’s most important functions: publishing up-to-date content. The problem: Homepage widgets showing outdated content The news, press releases, and blog post widgets on the homepage weren’t consistently showing the latest items. Immediately after publishing, everything looked fine. But over time, older items would start appearing again. For an organization communicating important industry updates, this was more than a minor inconvenience. It affected publishing reliability and trust. Understanding the architecture Since a different developer built the system originally, our first task was to understand and reproduce the environment. The application consists of: Orchard Core running as a headless backend. A separate Vue-based frontend. Lucene search indexing powering the homepage content widgets. Getting the frontend running locally required recreating an older Node.js environment. Node Version Manager for Windows made this possible by allowing us to install and switch between Node versions easily. The root cause The homepage widgets relied on data fetched from a Lucene index. Over time, the index became inconsistent with the database, resulting in outdated content appearing on the homepage. While fixing the indexing would have been possible, we stepped back and asked a simpler question: does this feature even require Lucene? It turned out it didn’t. The fix: Simplify, don’t patch Instead of investing in a lengthy Lucene investigation, we removed the unnecessary dependency and modified the widgets to fetch content directly via SQL queries. This: Eliminated a moving part, Reduced architectural complexity, and Resolved the inconsistency issue at its root. Sometimes the best fix is not making a system more robust, but making it simpler. Leaving the system healthier While working on the issue, we also enabled Orchard Core’s Audit Trail feature, allowing precise tracking of content changes. This improves governance and operational safety, particularly important for organizations publishing public information. We also performed smaller cleanups to ensure the application was in a better state than when we first examined it. That’s a principle we follow in every project. Collaboration We worked closely with Chris Ohan, IT Lead, and Grant Cameron, Senior Director of Public Affairs at RESCON. Since Grant manages much of the website’s content, his rapid feedback helped validate improvements quickly and ensure the publishing experience was restored. This is what Grant told about working with us: Lombiq stepped in to fix a problem with several widgets on our homepage. We met virtually, explained the problem and their experts went to work quickly and identified the issue. They explained the problem to us and corrected the issue. The team at Lombiq was efficient and professional. They got our site up and running and tweaked the Orchard Core setup to improve functionality. We were more than pleased with the result. Need help with an Orchard Core issue? If your Orchard Core application behaves unpredictably, whether it’s publishing inconsistencies, performance issues, or architectural drift over time, we can help diagnose and stabilize it. Get in touch and let’s take a look.