Intex I

Background

At the end of fall semester, all juniors in the IS program participate in a week long project and presentation. Working with the teams we had all semester, we were all given the same prompt on Monday morning. We worked almost nonstop until Friday afternoon, when we submitted our deliverable and presented to a panel of judges.

Our case was to create a solution for a made-up pharmaceutical company to improve international and internal business functions. In brief, the company took orders to perform tests on perscriptions. We were to use the skills we learned throughout our four classes in the semester: business programming, database management, project management, and systems analysis. Our deliverable was a website and a report of system designs, flowcharts, cost analysis, and so on.

Process

My role was creating the website. We created a site using C# and The ASP.Net framework. For the database, we used MS SQL Server. We used these because they were the subject of our courses for the semester, but they work well for passing data through the application. In hindsight, I would have have got more help on the website instead of taking it all on by myself. It was definitely the biggest part of the project, and we could have placed more resources towards it

The website featured the following functions:

Login

We made a login page and prevented users who were not authorized from accessing the website. In addition, various employees with different roles would only be able to view certains pages and perform specific functions. Our two main users for this product were customers, lab employees, and sales reps.

Dashboard

All users are welcomed by a dashboard once logged in. This view shows the different options each user can perform

This dashboard, for instance, is for customers. They start the workflow by clicking 'Start Order' and filling out a form. The request is then processed by other employees in the company

Status Bar

Customers and employees can track any order that has been made.

As work is completed on the order, the status is updated. We drew inspiration for this feature from companies like Dominos that let you track your pizza. These changes to the order are tracked on the order object in our database.

Results

In all, our deliverable was simply a prototype of what the company needed. Given more time, we would have added functionality for a scanning system that would update the order process. Still, we were proud of what we were able to accomplish in just a few days. Our project and presentation earned us the “snake oil” award for the most convincing presentation among the 15 teams in the class. And throughout the project, we were able to learn a lot about working as a team, making estimates for large-scale projects, and meeting tight deadlines.