ITS032 - Edge Database - Update 2

This is week two of the Edge project.

So far I have done basic familiarisation with the existing software which I have touched on in my previous entry. I still feel that I am not fully confident in my ability to carry out the required remedial work on the system AND the project tasks. I also believe that this is normal and what I am about to learn will fill that confidence gap.

Meeting 03/02/11

Myself and my project manager attended a meeting at the careers office with two representatives Darcey Gillie and Gavin McCabe. The purpose of this meeting was to ascertain what state the project was in, what work still needed to be done and revise the original requirements and make any required adjustments.

We came away with a number of action points from the client which were discussed and agreed on at the meeting. We have noted at this point the client is asking for features that were not in the initial requirements, as we have a limited budget I feel that agreeing to these will take us well beyond the time/funding allocated.

The outstanding points are as follows:

1. The website is no longer planned to be embedded in Polopoly, but will be available through the Employability website, linked from here: http://www.employability.ed.ac.uk/studentdevelopmentgateway.html This obviously means that we will not have the Polopoly work but will probably have to work with Darcey and co on integrating the application into the above site.

2. Gavin asked about getting two extra fields added to the database, and the related forms/code. These were email address and senders name on Submissions. You told him that would amount to a couple of hours work and this was acceptable. If it is any more, let me know so we can discuss with them.

3. The Notes box on Opportunities needs to be removed from the 'public' Opportunity display. We also discussed making the 'Further Info' box larger.

4. Saving Search results was discussed - all fields should be included and you said you would look at the formatting options for saved searches (e.g PDF)

5. Reporting is waiting on more info from Gavin before starting any work on this. One option I thought of afterwards was using an ODBC connection that would allow them to access the data using MS programs, but with read only access. I will pursue this.

Looking at the tasks in our documentation, the following are outstanding

1. Set up CF email schedule - this is estimated at 1 day's effort, and you said that this was straightforward enough to do.

2. Save search results to file (3 days) - the solution for this will involve some investigation but can be based on work done by Alyson.

3. Managing submitted Opportunities - this has been done.

4. Scheduled task to change status to 'archived' (0.5 day) - again, you thought this would be easy to do.

On a personal note I feel the meeting went well, I felt confident and gave a good demonstration of the software as it currently stands.