iManagement application was extended in the last months with new functionalities and some of the basic behavior was much improved.
One of the biggest extensions is the new “Fileshare” plug-in (Fig.1), this was created for sharing files between project users. Based on the application rights a user can view, upload, delete create new directories. This feature is available at project level, but also in the ‘Central Information’ section.
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Another important improvement is in the ‘Activity Reports’ functionality from Scheduler. Although this was created some time ago, it was not fully used by the managers. From now on, an agent will run on every Saturday and will generate activity reports for all the users on every project they worked on. The report is actually a snap-shot contain user tasks and worked hours for a certain period. Later delete of tasks from the scheduler will not affect this data. The Project Managers will validate the hours for every employee (Fig. 2). The validation can be done from the whole Activity Report in one action to task-hours-day fine granularity. The list of the activity reports will be accessible from the dashboard and from project level.
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Based on the estimated time for tasks added at task creation (Budget Cost of Work Scheduled), the worked time input daily by user (Budget Cost of Work Performed) and the validated time that is accepted by the managers using Activity Reports Functionality (Actual Cost of Work Performed) a new graph will be generated in the Scheduler -> Reports section. This is called the Project Performance Graph (Fig. 3) and it can show in an image the status of the project at the current time.
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One of our present goals is a better integration of our application with external tools. So we’ve added an iCalendar feed (Fig.4) in the main dashboard that will permit you to export meetings, milestones, delivery and planned tasks to any device that implements this standard (Outlook, Google Calendar, Windows Vista Calendar, PDAs etc). using the web link of the feed which can be copyed from the dashboard, you can auto-refresh your calendar and permanently receive all the new tasks that were scheduled for you. The internal behavior and export data of this functionality is subject to change an evaluation of internal needs in our company.
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Because email is an important day-by-day communication channel we’ve added some new functionality that makes use of it.
By example an old functionality that was sending notifications whenever an issue was created or changed was reengineered and transformed in an agent that is memorizing the modified issues and sends notifications emails containing data from the issue at preset time intervals. You can subscribe or unsubscribe to notifications regarding an issue from the menu in the issue edit page
IssueByEmail is new email functionality that was added to our application. This will permit our clients to add issues regarding their collaboration with us by simply sending an email to a predefined mailbox (ex. imanagement@support.wpcs.ro). An agent will process emails at preset time intervals and will transform them in issues if enough information is available. If not they will be stored in the unprocessed bulk issues basket. From here a user will process them manually (Fig.5 Bulk Issue Processing) and send them to issues. If an email contains images and attachments, these will automatically be transformed into application attachments.
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The Orders plug-in (much more familiar to management personal), was extended with an email agent too. This will run every morning and will send an overdue invoices email (Fig.6) to managers according to the roles they have in a project.
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All the automatically sent emails we talked about contain quick link information that will allow direct access to issues, invoices etc with a single click.
To improve application accessibility we’ve added a dashboard as starting page of the application. This contains much of the information a user needs, avoiding navigation through application tree. The dashboard is based on the new web part control from Microsoft. The user can self configure the structure of the dashboard page and his access to a particular web part can be set from the security module. For example, only managers will see the web parts related to orders.
The available web parts are:
My activities (Fig.7)– the user is able to see the scheduled tasks for him (by day, week or month) and input his work time. Tasks from all projects will be displayed. This is similar to My Tasks page from ‘Central Information’ section.
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Work ahead (Fig. 4) – Shows planned tasks for the following week and permits access to iCalendar feeds add-in
My issues (Fig. 8) – Shows the user’s issues for all projects. Double clicking will open the page in the project where editing is possible. Also the filters that the users defined are accessible from the left corner of the web part. If one is selected as default, it will be used when the web part loads
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Activity reports (Fig. 9) – This is intended for manager’s use. It displays a list with the self assigned activity reports and with the unassigned activity reports and permits quick access to the reports using double clicks.
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Project selector (Fig. 10) – it replicates the functionality found in the old Workspace start page (for the ones that remember it). This allows access to project level, has quick create functionality and allows project creation if the user has the right security settings.
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Invoices (Fig. 11) – Shows all overdue invoices and permits quick access to them. This is intented for managerial use
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Also we’ve added task id as accessibility element in most of the pages. Using it for searching filtering, bindings etc can make the user’s life much easier.
Other improvements for accessibility reasons can be found in Tree View pages (Fig.12). Left/right arrows collapse/expand nodes, up/down arrows and mouse scroll change tree selection and enter key performs the double click action in the tree. You’ll find an improved version of search box in our controls, that will change color when the search string doesn’t exist and permits executing an action on the selected row by using the enter key.
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A new print functionality has been added for issues. The user can generate a report for all project issues or for a single issue and print the result or save it as excel. (Fig. 13)
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The employees that work on a single project have now the possibility to load it directly without using the main dashboard for navigation. When you open a project (fig. 14) you’ll see that a new link-icon have appeared on the project page splitter. By adding the link to favorites you can access your project without passing through the dashboard. You can go to the main dashboard anytime by clicking the ‘iManagement’ link in the header section.
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The application GUI was improved using new and more suggestive icons and a simpler color palette. Web Part Controls and AJAX pages are also a new addition to the interface.
Some improvements have been done in the backend and database too. The application code has been upgraded from .NET 1.1 to .NET 3.5 and from NH 1.0.2 to NHibernate 2.0 . The tables related to the scheduler have been reengineered to ensure an increased performance in the reports area and in my tasks area of the plug-in.
Attention! Some of the features presented here may be available only to some of the employees, for security reasons.
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