Slides

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Task Track System
Muhammad Ali Khan
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Background of the Problem

• Employees provide daily status report by an
  email.
• The daily inputs from employees allow mangers to
  know how each employee is doing and what is the
  status of each project.
• It becomes impossible to keep track of all the
  status reports of all the employees/projects at
  the end of the year, which leads to incorrect
  decisions.

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Statement of the Problem

• Managers face great difficulty to prepare
  specific employee/project report to share with
  upper management/executives of the firm.
• Manual system no longer meets the needs of the
  company and firm loses a lot of money every year.
  
• As Software business is competitive and its
  difficult to gain competitive advantage over
  rivals without controlling the costs, theres a
  need of custom software that can allow mangers to
  better manage the employees and the projects.

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Objectives of the Project

• Cost Reduction
• Project Management and employee performance
• Facilitate management in better decision making.

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Objectives of the Project

• Basic Users (Departmental Employees)
• Admin Users (Managers/Department Head)

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Basic Users

• Can select a projects name from a list all the
  Active projects.
• Can view/add/delete/modify their comments on a
  specific project that they selected from a list
  of Active projects.
• Can view/modify/delete the entire history of
  their comments filtered by project name they
  selected from a list.
• Dont need an ID/Password to access the
  application.

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Admin Users

• Can view/add /modify projects using the Add and
  Modify Projects options.
• Can see/print the detail of all the projects i.e.
  status, cost, total hrs etc.
• Can also track/print projects and projects
  history by selecting Run Reports option. As a
  manager they can look at the comments made by all
  the users regarding a specific project.
• Can track/print employees performance by looking
  at different reports. This way manager can find
  out employees' contribution towards different
  projects.

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Development Plan

• Development Environment/Platform
• Windows XP Professional / Windows Server 2003.
• Internet Information Services 6.0 with .Net
  framework 2.0.
• Microsoft SQL server 2000.
• Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2005, MS Front Page
• ASP.NET, VB.NET, HTML, DHTML, Jscript

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Development Plan

• Web Hosting
• DiscountASP.NET, famous hosting company that
  supports ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2000/2005, IIS
  6.0 or higher.

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UI, Controls and Database

• Used CSS Style Sheets, Skins and DHTML to enhance
  UI
• Used ASP.NET and HTML controls e.g. GridView,
  DetailsView, DropDown, Listbox, Calendar,
  RadioButtonList etc.
• Used SQLDataSource and ObjectDataSource for
  database access and transactions. Developed a
  database with 4 tables and 4 database triggers.

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Basic User Website

• System displays a list of all employees in the
  department, user select his/her name to proceed.

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Basic User Website

• System displays a list of all Active projects in
  the department and the details of last comment
  user made concerning each project.

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Basic User Website

• Users can select the project and add a new
  comment to it, they can also modify the last
  comment they made concerning selected project.

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Basic User Website
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Basic User Website

• Users can click on Click for detail link to look
  at their entire history of the comments regarding
  that selected project.

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Basic User Website

• Click on Click for detail link shows the entire
  history of Users comments for the Project. It
  also adds up all the hours and shows Totals at
  the bottom, this way user can see how many hours
  they spent on each project.

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Basic User Website
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Basic User Website

• Each page has appropriate edits/checks to verify
  user input before submitting request to
  Web/Database server.

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Basic User Website

• On each of these data driven pages, user can sort
  data by any field/column. For example user can
  sort by Name, Comments, Hrs or Date on the
  following screens. Clicking first time on the
  column name will sort in ascending and second
  time will sort the data in descending order.

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Basic User Website
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Basic User Website

• Each page has a running message, which moves from
  right to left with an Image (New) and some Text,
  clicking on Click here for detail shows some
  details/help to the basic users.

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Admin User Website

• Because administrators will have access to
  sensitive information, they would need an
  ID/Password to access the system.

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Admin User Website
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Admin User Website

• The screen below shows a main menu and provides
  different tools to Manage Employees. Each page
  has a running message, clicking on Click here for
  detail shows some details/help regarding admin
  users.

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Admin User Website
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Admin User Website

• Add Projects option allows admin to add new
  project in the database. The status of newly
  added project is always defaulted to P (Pending).
  Admin can modify the project status and other
  info by clicking on modify project. Again
  appropriate edits/checks are in place to confirm
  user input and to avoid incorrect entry into the
  database.

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Admin User Website
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Admin User Website

• Clicking on Modify Project allows admin to modify
  project related information. Setting appropriate
  status is really important, basic users can only
  add comments to the active projects. Acceptable
  inputs for Status columns are A (active), C
  (Complete), M (Miscellaneous) and P (Pending).
  Admin can also modify the costs associated with
  the project e.g. TE (Training and Equipment), Mis
  Cost (Miscellaneous Cost), Hr Rate (average per
  hour rate of the all the developers working on
  the project), Benefit Rate (average per hour
  employee benefit rate) etc. These costs are very
  important to compute total cost of the
  project/employee when admin runs different
  reports.

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Admin User Website
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Admin User Website

• Manage Employees section is only created for
  testing/demo purpose. Practically payroll
  department maintains up to date employees
  information (table), other departments request
  that information on daily bases (through an
  automated database process). Daily update is
  necessary because employees get hired, fired and
  laid off every day. These types of departmental
  applications just import some information from
  employees table maintained by payroll department.
  In most companies, payroll department only allow
  other departments to just read limited number of
  column/fields, e.g. social security numbers and
  other sensitive information is normally not
  passed. Last Name, First Name, Job Title (can be
  helpful to see if the user is admin or simple
  user), and Employee ID is enough for this type of
  application.

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Admin User Website
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Admin User Website

• In some situations even managers/executives work
  on developing certain projects and want to log
  their hours in the system (for tracking and
  project cost calculation), Add Comments option
  allows them to do that. Option allows admin
  entering comments/hours, just like a basic user.

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Admin User Website
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Admin User Website
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Admin User Website

• Run Reports in one of the most important features
  of the system. Administrator can prepare report
  by selecting Project Name or by selecting
  Employee Name. Admin can select multiple projects
  or multiple employees but cant select both
  Employee and Project name, only one criteria is
  allowed. Checking active check box will include
  all active projects, checking complete check box
  will include the completed projects and Checking
  Mis check box will include all the miscellaneous
  projects etc.

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Admin User Website

• Following screen shot shows a report of 4
  different projects with Total Cost, Total Hrs and
  other columns. Normally department heads/managers
  present this type of report to the executives of
  the company. Note that Summary column is empty.
  Summary column is different from Project
  Description or regular Comments. It can be useful
  to display the summary/status (it can answer
  different question e.g. why project is in
  pending? Why its not completed etc) of the
  project to the executive. Summary can be modified
  by clicking Modify Project option from the Main
  Menu (Manage Projects page). Printed copies
  without date and time can be confusing and
  managers wont remember when they ran each report
  they have in their file. Displaying correct time
  and date is very important for tracking, this way
  managers/executives can see when they printed the
  report last time and what the status of each
  project/employee was at that time.

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Admin User Website
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Admin User Website

• By clicking on View Detail Administrators can
  look at the comments made by all the users
  regarding the selected project. Again they can
  sort the data by any column they want to,
  clicking first time on the column will sort in
  ascending and second time will sort the data in
  descending order. Administrators can ensure that
  Totals (Total hours) always match with hours
  showed in main (summary) report.

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Admin User Website

• Selecting Testing Database Queries Project and
  clicking on View Detail displays a detail
  regarding that project.

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Admin User Website

• Administrators can also track employees
  performance by selecting one or more employee
  names from a list, this way manager can find out
  employees' contribution towards different
  projects.

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Admin User Website

• Clicking on View Detail displays all the
  comments/work/hours employee entered regarding
  specific project. Screen below, shows all the
  comments made by Nancy, Davolio for Testing
  Database Queries project.

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Admin User Website

• User session expires after 20 minutes of
  inactivity and system displays the following page
  if Admin tries to use the system. Application
  also displays this page, when user tries to use
  the system without logging in.

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Admin User Website

• Code handles most exceptions and errors however
  in case of any internal error or unhandled
  exceptions, this user friendly error message will
  be displayed to the user.

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Conclusions

• Project meets the objectives i.e. the need to
  reduce costs, increase the utilization of its
  intranet infrastructure, provide better tracking
  of its employees and facilitate management in
  better decision making.
• Project also meets the needs of stakeholders.

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References

• CompuSCRIP (Steve, Williams) Retrieved February
  9, 2007 from http//www.compuscrip.org/
• Xu Niaxin (Amanda) Retrieved February 9, 2007
  from http//www.homepages.dsu.edu/malladis/student
  s/index.htm
• Stanley Singer. (Last communication was on 2007,
  June 14). Project Leader, Hertz Corporation U.S.A
  
• Terry Mitchum. (Last communication was on 2007,
  June 25). Vice President Development, a la mode,
  Inc U.S.A