Design Question

[RobPolley]

I want to do an application that automates a paper form that teachers in my school system use to request a day off. They fill out a 3 part form and pass it to their principal. He or she approves it (or not) and passes it to the human resources person, who also approves it (or not) and returns a copy to the teacher who started the process.

My question is, web, or hybrid? I think hybrid, because I want to have each person receive an email when he or she has an action to perform, and I think the built in email functions of the desktop version would be easier to use than to code in the web version. But I want each person to use a webform for their part of the process.

I'm sure that a document routing application is not a new idea, so if anyone has any thoughts, I'd appreciate it.

Also, I can download files with staff names, email address, their principals, etc. to make creating the whole thing easier to build.

Thank you.

[whanigsberg]

Re: Design Question

-Will the process run within the school's local network, from outside, or both?

-Why email? Is this a necessity or just a first thought as regards the means of passing the information around?

After all, browser-based application could write records to a table which everyone could see without using email.

[RobPolley]

Re: Design Question

Thanks for your thoughts.

This will run on our network. I was thinking that email would tell each player when they had an approval to make and a link in the email would take them to a brower based form to check.

Thanks!

[whanigsberg]

Re: Design Question

I work in a big school (10K students) mostly as a teacher but sometimes as a developer.

Over the last few years we have gradually evolved away from paper forms towards something along the lines of what you propose.

For example, we got rid of paper work orders for physical plant maintenance. If a light goes out in your office you fill in a form on a browser and press submit. If you wonder why it hasn't been fixed yet you go to plant and facilities home on the intranet and press track work order. I didn't write that one and it doesn't use Alpha 5 but I could have easily written it using Alpha 5 and you could too.

On the other hand, when I have been sick I have to fill in an absence report which is a word document. The leap into the future on this one is that I can fill in the doc, save it, and attach it to an email which I send to someone who prints it out and retypes the information into another college system. (Not kidding about this!)

The moral I draw from this is that when we move to online solutions we should resist modelling the paper flow of the process we are replacing. This is sometimes controversial because people are comfortable with the existing process and wish to retain the familiar.

This said, there is sometimes a need for email notification.

[RobPolley]

Re: Design Question

Bill,

I understand your experience, but I don't see a connection to my situation. My thoughts about the email are not on the basis of duplicating paper. I'm thinking of email as a notification to those involved that they have an item to attend to. I'm open to other ideas for this reminder. I didn't want the principals or human resources person to constantly have to look to see if there was a new time-off request.

Thank you for your thoughts.

--Rob