GPFN is embarking on a comprehensive modernization strategy. As part of this strategy, GPFN is offering a number of new services and adopting a more member-centric philosophy. One problem with the existing system is that very few volunteers understand or can manage Csuite. Therefore member inquiries, problems or complaints often took a number of days to resolve. This delay resulted in member and volunteer frustration. At the same time, the Csuite package was hard-coded in terms of services and member categories, resulting in a collection of ad-hoc systems, databases and other methods to manage services and membership classes specific to GPFN.
While GPFN wants to maintain the Cshell for use by members and users who have older equipment, a growing number of members do not use Cshell. These members often use GPFN’s PPP connection for graphical web browsing, some POP client to connect to GPFN’s mail servers, or a third party high-speed internet connection to view GPFN’s web resources. For these users, a web-enabled system to allow them to review their account settings and change account parameters (such as passwords) is important.