PlaNet - Overall Design Document
Response and Glossary



  • Response to Customer Comments
  • Expected Pre-release features
  • Glossary


    • Response to Customer Comments

    Webmasters' note: ISSI divides the PlaNet software into two major subsystems, the Meeting Management System (MMS) and the PlaNet Administration System (PAS). In previous documents these were known as the Timetabling and Diary Subsytem (TDS) and the Employee Management Subsystem (EMS). We have retained the obsolete terms for the response to customer comments section as the questions posed referred to these elements of the program by their old names.

    Trivial

    1. Introduction: System Requirements Is 16 MB really going to be enough for a large system like this? We've run smaller systems on a 32MB server and they are too slow, so perhaps that is unrealistic.

    We have reassessed our original calculations and have decided that 64MB would best suit your needs for efficiency.

    2. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Starting the Application Spelling mistake "beginning with you(sic) first name".

    Is the "About" button really necessary? Maybe it could be incorporated into the help menu.

    About provides information pertaining to the software copyright, version number,etc. The Help is completely separate from About.

    3. Data Structures and Algorithms: Table: Employee
    30 characters for a last name is not enough! There are several names longer than that; we have some Dutch names here that are well over 50 characters long!

    We will make allowances for up to 50 characters.

    Non-Trivial

    1. Introduction: Users
    "Employees may also schedule personal activities,delete and modify meetings and view personal diary entries..."

    "...Administrators may also access an employee's diary,viewing details pertaining to scheduled appointments and meetings. Administrators have the ability to change users' schedules as well."

    Since administrators can view any employees diary and employees may enter personal activities, we think this feature will discourage employees from entering personal activities if someone can view them. The administrator should only be able to see if a time is available or not. This is how it should work.

    We don't think administrators should be able to change employees schedules at will. There should be some interaction between administrator and employees to alter schedules. Viewing details of a meeting conflicts with what is stated in the EMS functions section on viewing an employee's schedule.

    We have modified our system to satisfy this request. Viewing of the other employees schedules will completely be removed. Administrators will be allowed to add, delete, modify and view employee information records only.

    2. User Interface
    "ISSI has created SuperScheduler's graphical user interface, or GUI, to maximize..."

    What is a graphical user interface? There is no definition in the glossary.

    GUI has been added to our glossary.

    "To log into the system,click in the 'Full Name' field and type into it your full name..."

    Instead of typing in full name, maybe we could type in our login name.

    We've now designed the system to use login ID names. Each login name will be a unique string of up to 8 characters

    3. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Starting the Application
    "the top portion of day will highlighted if there is a meeting scheduled in the morning..."

    Can you clarify or show more examples of how this works?

    Each calendar day is represented by a square on the main screen. If the employee has any morning meetings, the top half of the square for that day is highlighted in an easily, identifiable color. If the employee has any afternoon meetings scheduled, the bottom half of the square will be highlighted in another distinguishable color. This will allow the user to easily identify free time and commited time.

    When the schedule for the entire day is displayed, will we be able to see the time for the entire day, and if not shouldn't there be a scroll bar here?

    We unintentionally overlooked the omission of the scrollbar. It has been added to the screen-shots.

    4. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Starting the Application
    Will we be able to see more of our time table at once? Instead of just the current 4 hours?

    Given the scrollbar, a user will have the ability to view the complete list of scheduled appointments for that day.

    5. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Starting the Application
    No option to print or save our schedule. Laptops are expensive and we just cannot afford to carry them around and hook them up to our network when we are in another part of the office building. Thus we need and option to save and to print our schedule.

    A print and save option will be added.

    6. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Previous and Next
    When will the "previous" months be removed? Will we have to press a button? If not at what time will this happen automatically? When will the new months at the end be added?

    On the 1st second of the first day of each month, all records of the month before the last will be removed, and the current month of next year will be added.

    7. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Delete
    What kind of messages will be sent if you delete a meeting from the diary?

    As the originator, an automatically generated message is sent to notify each employee in the attendee list that the meeting has been cancelled. As an attendee, a notice is automatically generated by the system and sent to the originator to inform them of your decline.

    8. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: View/Modify
    The screen shot indicates with the Location field the word Room. Will that be required? Will we be given a choice from a list?

    A drop box of room numbers will be used so that clicking on a particular choice is sufficient to specify a location.

    9. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: View/Modify
    Major problem in that we asked the system to handle over 200 employees. How do they expect us to choose from a very large list on the side. Is there an easier way to navigate it or do we have to keep pressing the scroll bar to move through the list. Within a large list it can be rather difficult to locate a single name (especially if you are not quite sure how it is spelled). Perhaps a way of searching the names list would be nicer. Also, how are dupli- cate names handled?

    There will be no duplicate names. Searches are accomplished by spelling.

    10. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: View the Details of a Meeting
    Will it also show the originator of the meeting?

    Yes, the originator will be included.

    11. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Schedule a New Meeting
    Will we be able to add new locations to this list as our company increases in size?

    Yes, it will be possible to add new locations as required.

    12. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Schedule a New Meeting
    The specifications say:

    "(if time permits, messages will be sent to those employees who had conflicts and at which point it will be left to the employee's discretion to make alternate arrangements)"

    This was part of the original specifications and in our opinion is very important to have this in the system. It should not be an "if time permits" thing. (By the way, there are too many of the "if time permits" statements).

    We have designed an efficient notification system which we intend to implement.

    13. Timetabling and Diary Subsystems: Change Password
    Do we have seperate passwords for SuperScheduler and our regular system passwords. If they are the same then does changing your password in SuperScheduler automatically change our system passwords?

    PlaNet is separate from your regular system. Login names will be different, but since users can change their own passwords at will, it is possible for a user to use the same password on both systems. Changing your password in this system, will have no effect on your regular system.

    "'Company Personnel and 'Meeting Attendees'...The employee names in in the "Company Personnel' field appear in bold or in light grey text..."

    The employee names in the "Company Personnel" field contain all the employees at the company but we're only interested in status of those employees we want to meet with, not the status of every employee.

    You can ignore the status of employees you do not intend to invite to your meeting. Both the employee and attendees boxes are highlighted in the same manner, so you can choose to concern yourself with the status of all employees or you can choose to concern yourself with the smaller subset you have placed into the attendees box.

    14. Employee Management Subsystem:
    How can we view a person's personal diary information (the times that is not details). There is no button on the screen shot.

    The EMS can no longer view or access personal diary information.

    15. Employee Management Subsystem: Modify
    "The administrator has full control over the employee's schedule."

    Do you mean that the administrators can change anything that they want to? Including the employee's personal meetings? We think the administrators should only have control over the meetings within the company.

    As previously addressed, administrators will no longer have the ability to view personal timetables. They are only able to view information records, ie) address, phone number, status, etc.

    16. TDS Functions: Add Meeting
    The Output reminded us of a point. What about reporting capabilities. How are people going to know if they've been scheduled for meetings/cancelled from meetings/etc if all of the messages and output are "(optional)". Also how informative are these messages that are "(optional)". Once again, too many "optional" and "if time permits" statements. What is this system really going to do?!

    We will implement a system generated notification system that sends messages regarding additions and modifications for each employee's diary.

    17. TDS Functions
    All of the "if time permits" from View/Modify Meeting, Cancel Meeting Attendance, and Cancel Meeting screens should not be "if time permits" but instead part of the core of the system. No exceptions!

    This issue had already been addressed.

    18. TDS Functions
    (Major point)
    For the Cancel Meeting Attendance and Cancel Meeting screens we are required to enter the "Meeting Title" to access a particular meeting. Will this be unique? How will we know if another meeting title is not unique? Where will it check this? What if we don't know the meeting title. Where will we find this information? Can we search for it?

    The scroll window lists the appointments for the day you have selected from the calendar. By clicking on a particular meeting in the list to delete that meeting, a location and time interval are implied. Time interval and meeting name are not required to be unique, but location for the same time interval on the same day is.

    19. TDS Funcionts...If Time Permits:
    This was part of our original specifications and should NOT be an "if time permits". We are really concerned about the abundance of "if time permits" clauses.

    Though the importance of messaging hasn't been overlooked, it was the only component of this system that we could realistically omit from the minimal system. Once the EMS and TDS are fully implemented, we intend to develop a complete notification system.

    20. EMS Functions: Add Employee
    Will they be given an employee number? Will we see this? Also will the employee name be required to be unique? If not then what will be (employee number)? Also, how do we get access to the login identification of the employee?

    The number is "invisible" to the users and used for programming purposes only.

    21. EMS Functions: View/Modify Employee Information
    What about searching for an employee. Perhaps if we don't know that person's exact name spelling (there are over 200 employees you know) we should be given some opportunity to search for that value. (The same point could be made for the "View Employee's Schedule" section as well.

    See response 9.

    22. Auxiliary Fuction: Login
    "If the user enters the Administrator Password (for which there is only one at any one time) ..."

    Do you mean there is only one Administrator Password? If there is only one Administrator Password, then can everyone who knows the password can access the EMS?

    This will be revamped. In terms of the login protocol, each administrator and each employee will have a unique login ID and a personal password. We will create an attribute which will distinguish an administrator from a regular employee so that once the login session is successfully completed, adminstrators will be given additional functionality.

    23. Data Structures and Algorithms: Table: Employee
    Will we be able to see the employee ID? If so then where?

    In this table there is an item called "UserName" which is a unique name for user in order to login to the system. However, in the "Starting the Application" section, you wrote "To log into the system, click in the 'Full Name' field and type into it your full name, beginning with your first name followed by your last name." Is "Full Name" same as the unique "UserName"?

    This has been modified to use login names instead of full names.

    24. Data Structures and Algorithms: Algorithms
    Will meetings be able to span multiple days? Perhaps a 11:00pm meeting on December 31 going for three hours? How would that be handled?

    No, meetings can not span more than one calendar day. Those that do are required to be recorded as multiple meetings. In your example, this would be entered as 2 meetings.

    25. Management Plan: (2) The Employee Management Subsystem (EMS)
    It says "The user should be able to scroll the employees..." Do they refer to the list box? Is that really an adequate means of searching through 200 employees to find four or five? We're mentioning this again because this is very important to the system's use.

    Already addressed. See response 9.

    26. Management Plan: Minimal System: TDS
    "No actual messages will [be] sent as this feature can be integrated int he the existing email system."

    How do they plan on actually doing this? Just have us write all messages to everyone? This seems like an inefficient use of time. Currently we can just write messages to people, so how would this system be a benefit to us?

    Already addressed. See responses 12 and 19.



    Expected Pre-release Features

    The system we plan to provide by May will include (in order of implementation priority):
    1. the following functions of the PAS:
      1. Add Employee
      2. Modify Employee Information
      3. Delete Employee
      4. Add Meeting Room
      5. Modify Meeting Room
    2. the following functions of the MMS:
      1. View Schedule
      2. Add Meeting
      3. View Meeting
      4. Modify Meeting (originator only)
      5. Cancel Meeting (originator only)
      6. Cancel Meeting Attendance
      7. Change Password
      8. Notification System (messaging)
      9. Common Free Time Search (across a selected group of employees)
      10. Periodic Meeting Scheduling
      11. Add and Delete Locations from Dropbox


    Glossary

    Administrator This indicates a user with special administration privileges.
    Attendees All employees that are scheduled for a certain meeting.
    Attribute This corresponds to a particular item of information that must be stored about a particular entity in the system. It corresponds to the columns of information in a table.
    Delete This button title indicates a more permanent deletion procedure.
    DFD Data Flow Diagram. This is a diagram which models the flow of data through the program as it operates. The top level is known as a context diagram; in subsequent levels processes are decomposed into subprocesses. This recursion ends when a process is deemed small enough to code without error.
    Employee This is a synonym for User.
    EMS Employee Management Subsystem. Obsolete term; q.v. PAS.
    Entity This refers to information that the system needs to remember, and therefore corresponds to the tables of information that are maintained by the system.
    ERD Entity Relationship Diagram. This is a diagram which models the information that must be "remembered" and therefore "stored" by a software system over a period of time. This information must be accessed, modified, or reported in order to deal with requests from the user.
    GUI Graphical User Interface. This refers to the use of "pictures" to be used in combination with a mouse for input to the PlaNet system.
    MMS Meeting Management System: Refers to the portion of the PlaNet system that is used by all employees.
    Originator The employee that created a meeting is called the Originator of that meeting.
    PAS PlaNet Administration System. Refers to the portion of the PlaNet system that will be used by administrators to keep employee and location records up-to-date.
    Personnel All employees, regardless of their availability.
    Remove This button title is meant as a temporary action, e.g. moving an employee back and forth between list boxes.
    TDS Timetable and Diary Subsystem. Obsolete term; q.v. MMS.


    Back to top - Table of Contents - ISSI Home Page