Today we met with our two clients Ms. Kate Zimmerman and Mr. Brian Smith.
Our clients told us about their objectives for our
projects. The main objective is that
they want an electronic database for the course catalog. This database will be able to allow write
access for specific professor to make changes and then can be posted on the web
as a PDF and DOC file. Our meeting
concluded with setting up a regular meeting time with our clients for Wednesdays
at
Client Meeting #2
In our second meeting with our clients we discussed concerns that they may have had from our presentation. A couple of the concerns that Ms. Zimmerman and Mr. Smith had was the languages that our software would use. Instead of using an Oracle database, they have requested SQL and instead of using C++ for programming, they would rather us use ASP or PHP. Also during the meeting, we became better informed about the time period that the catalog works with and also the check off process for making changes to the catalog. The software built must not only account for course description changes, but also other aspects that may be changed, including faculty positions.
Client Meeting 3
The meeting started off with an outline that John created to help us get a better understanding of the work flow for making changes to the catalog. From this outline, we learned that the catalog is a subset of the Banner program. This will help as we may be able to retrieve the old course descriptions off of Banner instead of re-keying in the information (Mr. Smith’s idea). From this idea, the meeting concentrated on how this could work and the pros and cons of this method. The main con is the time needed to format the queries off of the Oracle based Banner. Also we started to discuss the table setup for the database.
Client Meeting 4
Today at the client meeting, we discussed with our clients who would be actually making the changes to the catalog. These changes included not only courses but also financial aspects, college statements and other various policies. This will be used to institute passwords for changes over the web. Also our clients started to discuss the potential web design for the software.
Client Meeting 5
This weeks meeting was spent further discussing how the web will be used in the software. We brought in a preliminary copy of our context diagram to help get a visual feel for the data flow for the software. The meeting was spent discussing who and how the changes would be made to the web and also we got information about other changes in the catalog made by administration offices in the college. We concluded the meeting by saying that the web page will probably have a mandatory login with a guest account for external users who only have read privileges.
Client Meeting 6
We presented preliminary screen shots to our clients and then got the opinions from our clients. One of the main changes that were requested was that Ms. Zimmerman and Mr. Smith both agreed that the different users should have a different layout. This design changes would concern the amount of control the user has. Ms. Zimmerman also requested that she be given complete authorization of the catalog. Also we were told that we are working on the back-end of the web program and that the universal user to read only is not our concern at this point. It was recommended that we meet with Mr. Serbalik from the registrar office to discuss the use of banner.
Client Meeting 7
Today’s meeting was used to clarify our requirement specifications with our clients. The major clarification dealt with exactly who does what in the system and also their proper titles. Our specifications were confusing the access level of assistant deans and administrative vice presidents. Also our clients told use who can access what and that the vice-president is not always who will make the changes. Also our clients requested a few ideas for the pages for the check down process.
Client Meeting 9
In today’s meeting, we finished the spreadsheet that we built to figure out the hierarchy for changes to the catalog. This was done for every section of the catalog.
Client Meeting 10
This client meeting was attended by Mike, John, Tom, Ms. Zimmerman, Mr. Smith and Dr. Lederman. Dr. Lederman led the discussion of the meeting in order to get the technical aspect of the software figured out. We learned that our Banner tables can be used in an Oracle Database and that the other data will have to be either a .doc or .txt file. Depending on which file is used, then that will let us know which word editor to use. If notepad is used instead of Word, then Dr. Lederman informed use that we will have to find a applet for a text editor. Also at this meeting we were informed that the printing company prefers that we send them a hard copy of a file.