Homegrown Office Management and Payroll Applications Brad Edmondson Senior Student Supervisor Tufts...

Homegrown Office Management and Payroll Applications

Brad Edmondson

Senior Student Supervisor

Tufts OnLine, UIT, Tufts University

Tufts University

• 5000 Undergrads• 1000 Grad students• 3300 Total residents

Technology Services at Tufts

Tufts University

University IT

Tufts OnLine

IT Services

Systems

Tufts OnLine

• Functions:– Provide student desktop support– Manage all UIT student contact– Manage itself– Budget: small

Tufts OnLine Staff

• 1 full-time Supervisor• 1 Student Supervisor or Senior Student

Technician• 2 Student Technicians• 1 Student Secretary• 25 Total

Challenges

• Busy students• Student employees: coursework vs. our

work• Small budget• Complicated, changing schedules for all

involved

Available Resources

• Lots of computing power• Plentiful bandwidth• Student employees• Open-source and free software

Tufts OnLine Student Website

• How-to's and troubleshooting docs• Software downloads• Console MAC registrations• Conference MAC registrations• Already running on a VM

– VMWare host has RAID 1

http://student.support.tufts.edu/

Result: Tufts OnLine Portal v1-2

• Scheduling• Hours recording• Punch clock• Contact info• Drop-shift emails

Tufts OnLine Portal: v3

• Same features• AJAX user interface• Tough to administer• Firefox only• Available to all UIT groups• Permanent and dynamic schedule model

http://tol.uit.tufts.edu/

Tufts OnLine Portal: v3: PII → VM

• Old PII machine• HD fails• Late-night data recovery and VM setup

• Results: Website in one VM, portal site in another

p.s. - always RAID your mission-critical systems

• Frameworked– Ruby On Rails– Model-View-Control

• New problems, new opportunities– Students learning Ruby, Rails– More and faster coding thereafter

• Currently pre-alpha– Source access available on request– Will be released open-source when ready

Tufts OnLine Portal: v4 (payrails)

http://localhost:3000/

• Coming features:– Administrative email notifications, statistics– Students emailed for open shifts, 18-hour

punch-ins– Internal help, documentation, configuration– Pay rates– User-editable contact info– Collision detection

Tufts OnLine Portal: v4 (payrails)

Tufts OnLine Portal: v4 (payrails)

• Coming features:– Administrative announcements– Massive punch-in/out– Block out holidays– Accounts for everyone

• Authentication, select actions by group• Software downloads, device registrations

– Organization editor

Development Patterns

• Students have limited development time• Frameworks make efficient use of time

Programming Man-Hours

Function 2Function 1Framework (RoR)

LAMP Ruby on Rails

Tim

e

Tufts OnLine Portal: v5 (payrails 2)

• Possible features:– Installation instructions– Student worker seniority– Automatically build schedule– Students choose their own shifts– Repeat offender tracking for missed shifts– Track/alert total $$ earned per student– Arbitrary day start/end time

Contact Information

See also: ConPortal, developed at Pomona, enhanced at BucknellContact: casper@bucknell.edu

• Tufts OnLine: http://student.support.tufts.edu/• Email: bradlee.edmondson@tufts.edu

• Php app (v3): email tolhelp@tufts.edu for .zip• RoR app (v4): email tolhelp@tufts.edu for svn

access (still under heavy development)