Enterprise Collaboration Tool Analysis

Enterprise Collaboration Tool Analysis Abstract: Enterprise Collaboration Tool is rethinking how technology can help companies manage customer relationships. ECT, the market leading CRM application, delivers a feature-rich set of business processes that enhance marketing effectiveness, drive sales performance, improve customer satisfaction and provide executive insight into business performance. Supported by deep collaboration and administration capabilities that adapt to how your company operates, ECT is delighting customers of all sizes across a broad range of industries. Enterprise Collaboration Tool is a powerful modular Internet/Intranet application framework. It features a scheduler, Meetings, Messaging, address book, file upload and download and feedback. Everything is designed to collaborate online. Objective Effective planning and scheduling of time bound work and monitoring the work done by the employees and effective use of online system to communicate and collaborate with the members of other centers of a decentralized organization. Scope System with adaptability to any organization to monitor the work done by people with respect to time and also assigning work. Features Captures daily work done by employees Provides communication module. Summary reports on work done by employees. Attendance report based on the entered work details. Online work log entry and work assignment. Address book to store the contact numbers and personal info Scheduler to keep mark notes on a particular day. Feedback, which ensures the management to look up the comments by the employee. Uploading and downloading facility Information about all the existing branches of the organization. The newsletters regarding the day-to-day affairs of the organization. The proposed Enterprise Collaboration Tool consists of a login screen from which the users and administrator could logon in to the system. In this System, the users are given different roles. Each role is associated with some services. The various roles are administrator employee, programmers etc. Admin is the head of all branches and is responsible for user management and branch administration. The Enterprise Collaboration Tool process starts with the creation of users and mapping their roles from the administrator login. The system will maintain the check-in time and checkout time daily and will allow the users to enter their worklog daily and has a provision to enter the yesterdays worklog details also (exemption given to enter backlogs of previous day). Company Profile: Verza Soft is quickly emerging as an innovative and essential business software applications development resource. Since 1985, Verza Soft has provided custom design, implementation and support solutions to a variety of information management industries and business environments. Experienced and intuitive, the professionals at Verza Soft understand how fast technologies change and we remain committed to solving the unique information management application challenges of todays business world while developing and evolving strategies for tomorrows. With over twenty combined years of professional software development experience, the principals at Verza Soft are business applications authorities. As specialists, weve learned to anticipate individual client application needs and design software suites to complement virtually every hardware technology. We offer 24-hour customer service and employ a qualified team of trainers, technicians and creative designers who assist in developing the comprehensive, user-friendly software programs that distinguish Verza Soft as the perfect answer to the often puzzling questions inherent in contemporary information management technologies. Weve been working on an offshore development model from day 1 and have perfected the process of onsite-offshore interaction over the past seven years. Our services are highly cost effective enabling our clients to get the best value for their money Working primarily within Sun family of productsto combine expert use of hardware technology and state-of-the-art software, Verza Soft is ware its at! From software programming and applications development including custom Internet integration to system architecture and technical design, through continuous support solutions, Verza Soft pieces together todays information management puzzle to create optimal, full integrated, interactive packages that best meet global business demands. Working one-on-one, we can develop innovative applications that not only satisfy your specific business requirements, but also complement your companys investment in essential information management technologies. Were dedicated to making you look good custom design ware by Verza Soft its the solution that fits! Verza Soft understands the significance of a good quality assurance (QA) process for creating world-class products. With hundreds of person-years of experience in the field of testing, it has expertise in the development and execution of tests for applications in the client/server, internet/web and the mobile space, using both automated and manual methodologies. Functional testing verifies whether a product/application performs as per specifications System Analysis: Existing System Here the existing system is nothing but a manual system using which the administrator task from the main branch becomes more complex to prepare schedules for all the employees working in different branches and sent them manually and tracking their status. Generating the different reports by co-relating different things is a tedious process. In this system the sub center individually manually maintains their database regarding employees daily work log, scheduled work, progress of work, attendance, leaves, payments etc.. and sends reports to the main centre through email attachments or by post. Unless and until the main centre manager receives reports from sub centers, he is unable to take decisions regarding employees and their salary, promotions, meetings, daily schedules, scheduled projects, customer details etc. Drawbacks: Doesnt provide effective co-ordination between different branches Doesnt provide role based security for the data Generating different kinds of reports becomes more complex Doesnt provide effective communication for our employees with in the company Doesnt allow the administrator to monitor overall activities of the company. These drawbacks of the existing system leads to the present web based application called Enterprise Collaboration Tool. There by the management is now relieved from all tensions from which they faced previously. Proposed System The proposed system is a software solution for the existing system. It is a powerful modular Internet/Intranet application framework which provides good co-ordination between our branches and allows the administrator to effectively track activities of the company. It features a scheduler, Worklog, Meetings, Messaging, address book, file upload and download and feedback. Everything is designed to collaborate online. Advantages: Provides effective co-ordination between different branches regarding work schedules through scheduler and worklog facilities. Improves the quality in planning and managing works Generating different reports will be very easy Provides a facility for the administrator to track overall activities of the company Provides good communication channel for the employees to interact with in the company Provides upload and download facilities to share the documents Provides a facility to collect the feedback from the employees Provides a facility for the employees to maintain the contacts in their address book. Feasibility Steady Feasibility steady is an important phase in the software development process. It enables the developer to have an assessment of the product being developed. It refers to the feasibility study of the product in terms of out comes of the product, operational use and technical support required for implementing it. Feasibility study should be performed on the basis of various criteria and parameters. The various feasibility studies are: Economic Feasibility Operational Feasibility Technical Feasibility Economic Feasibility: It refers to the benefits or outcomes we are deriving from the product as compared to the total cost we are spending for developing the product. If the benefits are more or less the same as the older system, then it is not feasible to develop the product. In this product if we have developed this application then the amount of time spent in preparing the schedules, sending it different branches and monitor the work will be reduced which indirectly increases the production for the company. Operational Feasibility: It refers to the feasibility of the product to be operational. Some products may work very well at design and implementation but may fail in the real time environment. It includes the study of additional human resource required and their technical expertise. This application will also work in any environment with out any problems since we are implementing this project in java language. Technical Feasibility: It refers to whether the software that is available in the market fully supports the present application. It studies the pros and cons of using a particular software for the development and its feasibility. It also studies the additional training needed to be given to the people to make the application work. For this project we need not recruit any additional staff to make use of this application. If we train our staff for one hour then it will be enough to work with application. Since this application uses the softwares which are already used by the company so that the company need not purchase new software to run this project. Software and Hardware Requirements: HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS: Pentium IV processes architecture 1. 512 MB RAM. 2. 160 GB Hard Disk Space. 3. Ethernet card. SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS Database : Oracle 10g XE Web Server : Apache Tomcat 5.0 Front end : JSP / Servlets, J2SDK 1.5, HTML, Java Script Functional Requirements Non Functional Requirements: Functional Requirements The main purpose of functional requirements within the requirement specification document is to define all the activities or operations that take place in the system. These are derived through interactions with the users of the system. Since the Requirements Specification is a comprehensive document contains a lot of data, it has been broken down into different Chapters in this report. But the general Functional Requirements arrived at the end of the interaction with the Users are listed below. A more detailed discussion is presented in the Chapters, which talk about the Analysis Design of the system. The system holds the details of the employees and their braches. It holds the schedules of different employees of the company. It holds the details of all works done by the employees. The system allows the administrator to manage different users. It also allows the administrator to prepare the schedules and assigns them to different employees. It allows the administrator to post the meeting details which will be displayed for all the employees. It allows the employees to store the customer contacts in their address book. It allows the administrator and employees to share the documents using upload and download facilities. It allows the employees to post their feedback It allows the administrator to view customer feedbacks. It allows the administrator to broadcast the news information It allows the employees to send a message to other employees or a group of employees at once. It allows the administrator to view work pending report NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS: The non-functional requirements consist of Constraints. Guidelines. Constraints These are the requirements that are not directly related to the functionality of the system. These should be considered as mandatory when the system is developed. The following Constraints were arrived at for the system: The system should be available over the intranet so that the Users like the administrator employees can use the system from their respective locations which could be with in the company. For gaining entry into the system the employees should be registered by the administrator and should be able use login passwords for gaining access to the system. The users should be able to change their passwords for increased security. The system should be easy to understand and organized in a structured way. The users should also receive appropriate messages about any errors that occur. There should be no limitation about the hardware platform that is to be used to run the system. Data integrity should be maintained if an error occurs or the whole system comes down. Guidelines We have discussed mandatory requirements in the previous section. The requirements in this section should be taken as suggestions they should be thought of as recommendations to further enhance the usability of the system. The system should display a menu for users to choose from. The system should display users requests in a reasonable time. Services of the system should be available 24 hours a day. The system should be designed in such a way that it is easy to enhance it with more functionality. It should be scalable easily maintainable. Execution Methodology Methodology The different phases of the implementation of the project here is Phase 1 Business Process Requirements analysis Phase 2 System Requirements Specifications Phase 3 Design and Development Phase 4 Testing Debugging Phase 5 Implementation Phase 1 Business Process Requirements analysis Business Process Requirements analysis is the phase when the relevant business area is studied in detail. This process brings out the gaps between the existing systems and identifies the areas where the business operations should be modified, keeping in view the way it needs to be carried out to encounter the problems during this phase the required documents are prepared defining the existing and required setup for the project Phase 2 System Requirements Specifications The information about the requirements is collected which contains the information about the current user system and the proposed system as seen from the user perspective. At the end of this phase a detailed requirement specification document is prepared and approved. Phase 3 Design and Development In this phase the framework for the design of the proposed product is designed to meet the requirements specifications documented. The product is developed as per the framework to meet the objectives of the system requirement specifications approved. Phase 4 Testing Debugging This phase contains the preparation of test cases and the standards of testing. The end users using the dummy User Ids carry out the testing. Phase 5 Implementation The project enters the implementation phase when the product is ready to be implemented/piloted on the production environment and after thorough training to all the end users the product is implemented Project Estimates The estimated time lines for completing the implementation of the application identified and its approach is enumerated as below Phase Duration in weeks 1 Business Process Req.Analysis 2 System Requirements Specifications 3 Design and Development 4 Testing Debugging 5 Implementation Dubious use of the System If the user is deliberately going to handle the system improperly, like he can enter incorrect time/out or he may submit wrong worklog or feedback. The System is to be further developed to countercheck the employees entries with that of the local authorities. System Design: Logical Design Design for WebApps encompasses technical and non-technical activities. The look and feel of content is developed as part of graphic design; the aesthetic layout of the user interface is created as part of interface design; and the technical structure of the WebApp is modeled as part of architectural and navigational design. Dix argues that a Web engineer must design an interface so that it answers three primary questions for the end-user; Where am I? The interface should (1) provide an indication of the WebApp has been accessed and (2) inform the user of her location in the content. What can I do now? The interface should always help the user understand his current options- what functions are available, what links are live, what content is relevant. Where have I been; where am I going? The interface must facilitate navigation. Hence it must provide a â€Å"map† of where the user has been and what paths may be taken to move else where in the WebApp. Design goals- the following are the design goals that are applicable to virtually every WebApp regardless of application domain, size, or complexity. Simplicity Consistency Identity Visual appeal Compatibility. Design leads to a model that contains the appropriate mix of aesthetics, content, and technology. The mix will vary depending upon the nature of the WebApp, and as a consequence the design activities that are emphasized will also vary. The activities of the Design process; 1. Interface design-describes the structure and organization of the user interface. Includes a representation of screen layout, a definition of the modes of interaction, and a description of navigation mechanisms. Interface Control mechanisms- to implement navigation options, the designer selects form one of a number of interaction mechanism; a. Navigation menus b. Graphic icons c. Graphic images Interface Design work flow- the work flow begins with the identification of user, task, and environmental requirements. Once user tasks have been identified, user scenarios are created and analyzed to define a set of interface objects and actions. 2. Aesthetic design-also called graphic design, describes the â€Å"look and feel† of the WebApp. Includes color schemes, geometric layout. Text size, font and placement, the use of graphics, and related aesthetic decisions. 3. Content design-defines the layout, structure, and outline for all content that is presented as part of the WebApp. Establishes the relationships between content objects. 4. Navigation design-represents the navigational flow between contents objects and for all WebApp functions. 5. Architecture design-identifies the overall hypermedia structure for the WebApp. Architecture design is tied to the goals establish for a WebApp, the content to be presented, the users who will visit, and the navigation philosophy that has been established. a. Content architecture, focuses on the manner in which content objects and structured for presentation and navigation. b. WebApp architecture, addresses the manner in which the application is structure to manage user interaction, handle internal processing tasks, effect navigation, and present content. WebApp architecture is defined within the context of the development environment in which the application is to be implemented. J2EE uses MVC architecture; 6. Component design-develops the detailed processing logic required to implement functional components. Modules: Scheduler Work Log Module: User Management Branch Management Module: Communication Module (Messages, Meetings, Notices Module News): Address Book Feedback Module: Reports Scheduler Work Log Module: This module helps in preparing the work schedules and monitors work simply by sitting at the main branch. It provides user friendly screens which include calendars to select the date. Once the administrator has added the work to the schedule then it will displayed to all the employees in all the branches. It will be easy for an employee now to know his work schedule, complete it and intimate it to the administrator by entering the work details in the work log so that the administrator can monitor easily. User Management Branch Management Module: This module helps the administrator to add new branch details to the database, edit the existing branch details and delete the branch. It also provides a facility to the administrator to add the employee details and create the logins for the required employees, edit the user details and the delete the user information from the database. Communication Module (Messages, Meetings, Notices Module News): This module provides a facility to the employees to communicate each other very easily by sending the messaged in this application. The messages provides options to send a message to another employee, view the message list, open a message a message, delete a message and send a message to all the employees in a group at a time. This module provides a facility to the employees to know the details of the meetings which are going to be conducted just by clicking view meeting details option in meetings link. The users can also post the meetings details at any point of time. This module provides a facility to the employees to send the notices prepared by one branch to another branch then these people can upload the notice document and that will be downloaded by another branch people. It is just like sharing the documents across the branches. This module helps the administrator to post the news details which will be displayed to all the users when ever they logged in. Address Book Feedback Module: This module provides a facility to the employees to store their individual contact details in the address book. It allows us to add, edit and delete the contact details in the address book. This module helps the users to post their feedback about a policy which was implemented by company from online and allows the administrator to view the feedbacks posted by all the employees. Reports: This module allows the administrator to view different kinds of reports according to his requirement. It generates the reports based on employees, employee work report, groups reports and employee report. Physical Design UML Diagrams Data Dictionary Data Modeling Overview A data model is a conceptual representation of the data structures that are required by a database. The data structures include the data objects, the associations between data objects, and the rules which govern operations on the objects. As the name implies, the data model focuses on what data is required and how it should be organized rather than what operations will be performed on the data. To use a common analogy, the data model is equivalent to an architects building plans. A data model is independent of hardware or software constraints. Rather than try to represent the data, as a database would see it, the data model focuses on representing the data as the user sees it in the real world. It serves as a bridge between the concepts that make up real-world events and processes and the physical representation of those concepts in a database. Methodology There are two major methodologies used to create a data model: the Entity-Relationship (ER) approach and the Object Model. Data Modeling In the Context of Database Design Database design is defined as: design the logical and physical structure of one or more databases to accommodate the information needs of the users in an organization for a defined set of applications. The design process roughly follows five steps: planning and analysis conceptual design Logical design Physical design implementation The data model is one part of the conceptual design process. The other, typically is the functional model. The data model focuses on what data should be stored in the database while the functional model deals with how the data is processed. To put this in the context of the relational database, the data model is used to design the relational tables. The functional model is used to design the queries, which will access and perform operations on those tables. Components of a Data Model The data model gets its inputs from the planning and analysis stage. Here the modeler, along with analysts, collects information about the requirements of the database by reviewing existing documentation and interviewing end-users. The data model has two outputs. The first is an entity-relationship diagram which represents the data structures in a pictorial form. Because the diagram is easily learned, it is valuable tool to communicate the model to the end-user. The second component is a data document. This is a document that describes in detail the data objects, relationships, and rules required by the database. The dictionary provides the detail required by the database developer to construct the physical database. Why is Data Modeling Important? Data modeling is probably the most labor intensive and time consuming part of the development process. Why bother especially if you are pressed for time? A common response by practitioners who write on the subject is that you should no more build a database without a model than you should build a house without blueprints. The goal of the data model is to make sure that the all data objects required by the database are completely and accurately represented. Because the data model uses easily understood notations and natural language, it can be reviewed and verified as correct by the end-users. The data model is also detailed enough to be used by the database developers to use as a blueprint for building the physical database. The information contained in the data model will be used to define the relational tables, primary and foreign keys, stored procedures, and triggers. A poorly designed database will require more time in the long-term. Without careful planning you may create a database that omits data required to create critical reports, produces results that are incorrect or inconsistent, and is unable to accommodate changes in the users requirements. Summary A data model is a plan for building a database. To be effective, it must be simple enough to communicate to the end user the data structure required by the database yet detailed enough for the database design to use to create the physical structure. 1) Table Name: LOGIN_TWM NAME DATA TYPE SIZE PRIMARY USER ID VARCHAR 10 PASSWORD VARCHAR 10 FNAME VARCHAR 15 LNAME VARCHAR 10 ADDRESS VARCHAR 40 PHONE NUMBER 15 MAILID VARCHAR 25 GROUPID VARCHAR 8 CREATED_DATE_TIME DATE LASTUSED_DATE_TIME DATE BNAME VARCHAR 15 2) Table Name: LOGINOUT_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY USER ID VARCHAR 10 L_DATE DATE 3) Table Name: MESSAGES_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY SENDERID VARCHAR 15 RECEIVERID VARCHAR 15 M_DATE DATE SUBJECT VARCHAR 15 MESSAGE VARCHAR 50 4) Table Name: GROUPS_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY GROUPID VARCHAR 15 GROUPNAME VARCHAR 15 5) Table Name: GROUPUSERS_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY GROUPID VARCHAR 15 USERID VARCHAR 15 6) Table Name: MEETINGS_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY M_DATE DATE M_TIME VARCHAR 10 PURPOSE VARCHAR 20 AGENDA VARCHAR 50 CONCLUSIONS VARCHAR 50 7) Table Name: SCHEDULAR_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY USERID VARCHAR 15 S_DATE VARCHAR 25 SCHEDULE VARCHAR 50 8) Table Name: ADDRESSBOOK_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY LOGINID VARCHAR 25 USERID VARCHAR 25 FNAME VARCHAR 15 LNAME VARCHAR 15 ADDRESS VARCHAR 45 PHONENO NUMBER 15 OFFICEADD VARHCAR 45 OFFICEPHONE NUMBER 15 9) Table Name: WORKLOG_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY USERID VARCHAR 10 W_DATE DATE SLOTTIME VARCHAR 15 TASKS VARCHAR 45 10) Table Name: FEEDBACK_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY W_DATE DATE L_TIME VARCHAR 8 SUBJECT VARCHAR 15 COMMENTS VARCHAR 45 11) Table Name: NEWS_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY M_DATE DATE NEWS VARCHAR 49 12) Table Name: NOTICEBOARD_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY UNAME VARCHAR 15 FNAME VARCHAR 15 FCONTENT BLOB POSTED_DAT DATE MSGID NUMBER 4 13) Table Name: DOWNLOAD_TWM NAME DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY UNAME VARCHAR 15 FNAME VARCHAR 45 FCONTENT BLOB POSTED_DAT DATE MSGID NUMBER 4 14) Table Name: BRANCH_TWM NMAE DATATYPE SIZE PRIMARY BRANCH_CODE VARCHAR 15 BRANCH_NAME VARCHAR 25 E-R Diagram Technological Requirements: HTML HTML, an initialism of Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based