Case Study · Hope Biosciences · Clinical Research

Hope Biosciences runs clinical trials on one login instead of five.
A clinical research organization was running trials across Salesforce, a partner community, Zoom, Tableau, Google Workspace, and a research database - each with its own login, none of them talking to each other. Over 818 hours we turned that into a single-sign-on research portal that generates consent documents, texts and emails participants with a full audit trail, syncs study visits to calendars, and shows live dashboards inside the community.
Industry
Clinical research / biotech
Platform
Salesforce + Skuid + Experience Cloud
Timeline
Just over twelve months
Outcome
One portal, single sign-on, full audit trails
The challenge
Hope Biosciences: a research operation stitched together from six systems
Hope Biosciences runs clinical trials and expanded-access programs, with everything a regulated study demands: a participant registry, visit schedules, consent and authorization documents, and audit-ready trial files. The work lived across Salesforce, a Skuid-built partner community, Zoom, Tableau, Google Workspace, and a research database - six systems, six logins, and no connective tissue. Staff assembled documents by hand, dashboards were invisible inside the portal, and patient communications were logged nowhere.
Six systems, six logins
JumpCloud, the Salesforce community, Zoom, Tableau, Gmail, and the research database each demanded separate authentication - and mismatched session timeouts left a "logged in" screen that had silently stopped loading data.
Consent documents assembled by hand
Release forms, consent forms, and the Texas HB300 authorization were built manually. Staff needed templates that prefilled from Salesforce records without leaving the portal.
Patient communications vanished
SMS, email, and Zoom invitations to participants were not recorded anywhere. There was no engagement history and no audit trail - a problem in a regulated setting.
Dashboards nobody could see
Tableau analytics existed but would not render inside the Salesforce community, so the people who needed them could not reach them.
A 1,600-object org with no map
The Salesforce org had grown to roughly 1,600 objects with undocumented triggers and flows, and several inherited features - copy-to-file, study search - were quietly broken.
The architecture
One portal over the systems a trial actually runs on
We kept the tools the research team relies on and connected them, rather than replacing anything. Salesforce and Skuid became the front door; identity, documents, communications, scheduling, and analytics all flow through it, each with the audit trail a regulated study requires.
Sources
Unified by Cloudsheer
Analytics
Live study dashboards rendered inside the community through a JWT-authenticated connected app - visible where the team already works.
Outcomes
What we built
Single sign-on across five systems
JumpCloud as the central identity provider - the community, Zoom, and Tableau all authenticate through it - plus a session-expiry detector and aligned two-hour timeouts, so the "logged in but loading nothing" failure is gone.
Document generation inside the portal
A Google Picker integration on the Skuid pages lets staff choose a template, fill it from Salesforce data - including nested fields and picklist labels - and save it back to Drive, entirely in the browser with no code step. The Texas HB300 authorization became an auto-filled template, cut from four pages to two.
Participant SMS with a full audit trail
A Twilio integration sends texts from a button or a flow and captures inbound replies through a webhook, auto-creating a task linked to the contact and the registry record - so every message shows up in an engagement history tab. Shipped at 92% test coverage.
Study visits synced to calendars
A one-way sync pushes participant visits to the right study calendar and generates a Google Meet link on the record. Deliberately one-way, so calendar-created events can never introduce scheduling conflicts.
Tableau dashboards in the community
A JWT-authenticated connected app renders Tableau dashboards inside Skuid and the Experience site, putting analytics where the research team already works.
Audit trails on regulated files
Field-change tracking on trial and site files, driven by configurable metadata, records what changed in human-readable language - the paper trail a regulated study is examined on.
A map of the whole org
Data dictionaries for the roughly 1,600 objects, triggers documented with their handler summaries, and flows documented element by element - plus repairs to the broken copy-to-file and study-search features.
How we did it
Connecting six systems without replacing any of them
Hope Biosciences did not have a technology problem so much as a connective-tissue problem. Salesforce, a Skuid-built partner community, Zoom, Tableau, Google Workspace, and a research database each did its job well and none of them spoke to the others. The most telling symptom was a login screen that said "logged in" while quietly loading nothing - the byproduct of six systems with six different session timeouts. Our brief was not to rip and replace, which no regulated research operation can afford, but to make the tools they already trust behave as one.
Document generation was the first proof it could work. Consent forms and the Texas HB300 authorization were being assembled by hand, so we built a Google Picker integration directly onto the Skuid pages: a staff member picks a template from Drive, the system replaces placeholders - including nested fields like a contact's account name and picklist labels - with live Salesforce data, and saves it back to Drive, entirely in the browser with no Apex in the path. Along the way the HB300 template was rebuilt from four pages to two without losing a required field.
Identity was the structural fix. We made JumpCloud the central identity provider so the community, Zoom, and Tableau all authenticate through one sign-on, then added a session-expiry detector and aligned every timeout to two hours - which is what finally killed the "logged in but blank" failure. On top of that single front door we layered the pieces a trial actually needs: a Twilio integration that texts participants and captures their replies through a webhook into an auditable engagement history, a deliberately one-way calendar sync that pushes study visits out with a Meet link but never lets a calendar event create a scheduling conflict, and Tableau dashboards rendered inside the community through a JWT-authenticated connected app.
Underneath all of it was an org that had grown to roughly 1,600 objects with undocumented triggers and flows and several inherited features quietly broken. We wrote data dictionaries for the objects, documented triggers with their handler summaries and flows element by element, and repaired the broken copy-to-file and study-search features - the unglamorous work that makes a life-sciences Salesforce org safe to keep building on. Integration code shipped at 92% test coverage.
How we delivered
Just over twelve months, start to finish
Discovery
Late 2024 to early 2025: requirements, and research into the document, identity, and portal problems.
Documents & identity
Spring 2025: browser-based document generation and JumpCloud single sign-on across the community, Zoom, and Google Workspace.
Analytics & messaging
Summer 2025: Tableau embedded in the community, Twilio SMS with audit trails, and field-history tracking.
Scheduling & records
Autumn 2025: calendar sync with Meet links, the HB300 template, engagement history, and Shared Drive support.
Search & closeout
Winter 2025-26: a rebuilt study search, the copy-to-file repair, per-registry folders, and the session-timeout fixes.
The results
What changed for the business
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Logins | Five separate systems | One single sign-on |
| Consent documents | Assembled by hand | Generated from records in the portal |
| Patient messaging | Logged nowhere | SMS + email with full audit trail |
| Study analytics | Invisible in the community | Live Tableau dashboards embedded |
| Visit scheduling | Salesforce only | Synced to calendars with Meet links |
| The legacy org | ~1,600 objects, undocumented | Data-dictionaried, broken features fixed |
Running your operation across five systems that do not talk?
Book a free 30-minute scoping call. We will map how single sign-on, document generation, and audit-ready integrations could connect the tools you already use - and hand you a plan, at no cost.
Client identifying details have been anonymized at the client's request. Metrics reflect the outcomes of a real engagement.
