Programming
Resume
Duroform
DuroForm. Designed,
implemented and maintained a complete Internet web-based data entry system
that tracked Circuit Entries, Circuit Orders, Co-Location Data, Configuration
Changes, Contacts, Customer Data, Escalation Tickets, Facility Requests,
Incident Reports, POP Location Data, Purchase Requests, Software Installations,
Trouble Tickets, User Data, Vendors, and Work Orders (for Administrative,
Engineering, and Facilities). Project included significant interaction with
users to determine their needs. System included file attachment capability,
emails of status changes, and other features.
Duroform was a triumph of function over form.
We rapidly rolled out a whole series of data entry forms, using a web server to provide access to the data, and on the back end, running everything on Access tables. We later moved to a mixed database environment with Access and SQL both running at the same time.
We tracked everything listed above. The part that saw the heaviest multi-user use was the customer service component. People would call into the call center, and the staff could look up information, key notes and comments, and help the caller.
If I were going to do this project again today, I would skip the Access tables, and start off with SQL. Under heavy multi-user load, Access became unstable, mainly due to the ironic problem of the Access lock file getting locked.
At the time I was using a multi-step design where there is a data entry form, a seperate page that handled the save, that then redirected after a brief pause back to view the results. Now I generally build these as form pages that submit to themselves, and handle everything in one place.