a web-based system for maintaining a departmental personnel list and telephone directory patrick r....
TRANSCRIPT
A Web-based System for Maintaining a Departmental
Personnel List and Telephone Directory
Patrick R. Michaud
Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
Isabelle N. Michaud
Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science
Conrad Blucher Institute
• 50+ staff and researchers
• 4 major divisions
• 4 locations– Corpus Christi (2)– College Station– Houston
Needs Assessment - 1
• Up-to-date telephone directory and address book
– Frequent changes in CBI staff locations– No centralized personnel authority– No central place for storing directory– Cost of distribution of updates
Needs Assessment - 2
• Maintenance of staff profile pages on web site– Frequent changes in location/project– 50+ profiles to maintain– Difficult to gather information– Difficult to enforce style consistency
Traditional Solutions - 1
• Telephone Directory– Designate a "directory maintainer"
Consumes significant workload Typically a "low-priority" task Requires procedure for sending updates to
maintainer
– Maintain a shared directory file Difficult to enforce consistency File may be corrupted Need to inform staff of location of "master file"
Traditional Solutions - 2
• Staff Profile Web Pages– Delegate to webmaster
Consumes lots of data entry time Poor utilization of skills of highly-paid person Difficult to gather information in timely manner
A Solution
• Create web-based personnel list and telephone directory– Centralizes location of personnel and telephone
information
• Use Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts to automate updates– Other staff can effect directory updates– Style and consistency can be enforced by script
Challenges
• Who is responsible for updating the directories?
• Who has access to the update scripts?
• How can quality control be handled?
Our Approach - 1
• Who is responsible for updating the directories?– Empower staff to effect updates directly.
"Those who are bothered by out-of-date
information are responsible for updating it."
Implication: All employees must have access to CGI update scripts.
Our Approach - 2
• Who has access to the update scripts?– All CBI employees/staff– Use Apache web server access control features
• Computers on CBI networks allowed access
• Offsite computers require username/password
Our Approach - 3
• How can quality control be handled?– Traditional approaches
• Review/approval by single authority prior to release– increases workload
– delays updates
• Immediate release with periodic review of web site– poor quality information may be missed
– periodic review is tedious, low priority
Our Approach - 4
• How can quality control be handled?– Our solution: Updates to web directory causes email
notification to entire CBI staff• Many immediate reviewers, who have ability to immediately
correct errors
• Peer pressure reduces likelihood of errors/poor quality
• Notifies staff of personnel additions and changes
• Gently reminds others to update information if needed
• Multiple small changes within an hour result in only one email message
System Demonstration
System Structure
persform Perl/CGI script to update data file in /persdb/username/data.txt
mkpersonnel Creates personnel directory HTML from data files in /persdb/*/data.txt
mkphonelist Creates telephone list HTML file
mkbio Creates individual personnel page in /persdb/username/index.html
Observations
• Effective mechanism for updates• Initial flood of updates• Some employees continued to maintain manual
lists after system created• Difficulty in publishing location of update script• Easy to effect style redesigns• Provided source for populating LDAP database
Future Work
• Redesign system to update/maintain information in LDAP directories
• Similar systems for project directories, facilities information
Patrick & Isabelle MichaudCCSC-SCC April 14, 2000