Food Services Dilemma
Caitlyn Schmidt
2.1.05

Overview:

Food Services currently uses an outdated program to manage their payroll and
work schedule.  This system was written in 1997 by a student using Microsoft
Access.  Problems with Atomic are the system is outdated, there is no documentation, and
maintenance is difficult.

I propose a new program be written that reflect the current functionality of
Atomic in a more stable environment not dependent on an external program
susceptible to updates.


Main Problems:

Lack of Documentation:
A central problem to this system is that there is little to no documentation on
it.  Because of this, more knowledge is lost every time a new Student Manager
takes over. The program itself does not have a
intuitive user interface.  There are a lot of features (queries, reports,
buttons) which the users have no idea what they actually do.

From a technical aspect, there is little documentation on how the databases are
connected and what features do.  Often, a query or function will break and
because there is no information on what this function changes or works on,  it
is difficult to fix it or figure out what went wrong.

Outdated:

This program was written in 1997.  Since then, the software (Microsoft Access 97)
has become outdated and unstable.  Microsoft Access has also proved problems by crashing on them a couple of times
and they are unable to update their version to a more stable one out of fear of
breaking the system.  This crashing halts functioning of the SMO for a couple of
days around three times a semester.  

There has also been many administrative
changes within the SMO and they may not necessarily be reflected in Atomic.

User Interface:

Currently the user interface is not very intuitive and there is little
description of each feature.  SMO wants a UI that is friendly and
self-descriptive.

Documentation:

It is particularly important that new software is very well documented.  There
are new employees learning the system (for use and maintenance as much as a couple times a year.  An
extensive resource needs to be available for both use and maintenance.

Target Users:

This program is mainly used by the Student General Manager at the SMO.  It is
maintained by Computer Consultant (also a student, usually with programming
knowledge).


Functionality:

A mandatory part of this project is for it to reflect the current functionality
of Atomic.  All items listed with a ** or *** are suggested improvements not
currently in Atomic, therefor optional to add.  Items with ** have a higher
priority of ***.


Store Student Information:

    * basic info: name, phone number, mailing address, year, sis #, hired date,
      birthday

    * hours:
	- available hours
	- total hours worked

    * position:
	- supervisor, cart shifts only, sub

    * status: 
	- active, abroad, terminated, quit, commencement worker, graduated
	*** for each semester

    * application status:
	- not yet received, applied, approved, denied
	- date
	*** store application information for more then one semester

    * warnings
	- how many
	- reason (per warning)
	- status of each warning (redeemed)

Store Shift Information:

    * date(s) of shift
    * time of shift
    * worker / open
    * supervisor of shift
    * type of shift


Functionality:

    Security
	- view & edit
	- view only

    Search:
	* for Employees by
	    - year
	    - hired date
	    - first/last name
	    - sis#
	    - box#

    Generate Queries:
	* Birthday List
	* Mailing list of employees with x status
	** Email list of employees with x status
	* List of Warnings
	    - by person
	    - by number of warnings
	    - by date
	* Employees
	    - who have worked less/more then x hours
	    - who have x status
	    - who have x application status
	    - who have x position
	    - who have x warnings
	* Phone number list of
	    - employees
	    - subs

	* List of open shifts
	* Shift List with date, time, workers

    Modifications
	* enter new employees
	* manually change all Student/Shift Information individually
	* be able to change the base wage for all new employees
	* Archive/De-Archive/Delete Students
	* Functions to:
	    - raise pay of all active and abroad students
	    - give all employees with approved applications active status
	    ** change all students with a specified year to graduated status
	    - reset application status for all students to "not yet received"

	** Automatically Assign Employees to available shifts (by Seniority and
	their listed available dates)

    *** Online Website
	*** employees see open shifts
	*** apply/re-apply for next semester