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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: [email protected]
• Tufts OnLine: http://student.support.tufts.edu/• Email: [email protected]
• Php app (v3): email [email protected] for .zip• RoR app (v4): email [email protected] for svn
access (still under heavy development)
