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Difference between revisions of "IS480 Team wiki: 2009T2"

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#Promotional offer - table of promotional offers attached to offers
 
#Promotional offer - table of promotional offers attached to offers
 
#Capture - Ability to change the picture if not readable
 
#Capture - Ability to change the picture if not readable
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====Client Meeting 3: (17/2/10)====
  
 
===Supervisor Meetings===
 
===Supervisor Meetings===

Revision as of 00:19, 14 April 2010

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About Us

Team Members:

  • Abhishek Kumar (abhishek.k.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg) – Lead Programmer
  • Deeptarka Hazra (deeptarka.h.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg) – Interface Designer
  • Namrata Sen (sen.namrata.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg) – Chief Tester
  • Priya Raghavan (priya.2007.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg) – Chief Liaison Officer
  • Shiv Whorra (shiv.whorra.2007@sis.smu.edu.sg) – Project Manager

The Project

The primary aim of the project is the design and development of a comprehensive e-commerce site for a travel agency dealing with national and international travel coupled with related services. The site seeks to provide an end-to-end facilitation platform for online transactions supporting the agencies’ core business process as well as for auxiliary services (such as insurance packages) provided by the agency.

The scope of the project encompasses studying the business needs of the travel agency and translating them into a site design incorporating all of the business logic captured as well as the development, testing and deployment of the e-commerce solution.

We will be working in tandem with Team Autobots to come up with our database structure. Due to constraints we will only be able to meet and discuss with them issues such as dependencies and the API in the first week of January. Our scope of the WebXTravel solution is limited to developing the user-facing front-end solution. Team Autobots will provide the back end (database) support for our project.

The Motivation

The motivation behind the project is the facilitation of a foray of the travel agency into the online realm serving the purpose of allowing for the conduct of transactions related to the agency’s core competency – selling travel packages - on an exclusively online platform. The agency seeks to capture new and wider markets through its e-commerce initiative. The website allows for this in a streamlines, low cost and effective manner.


StakeHolders

The project sponsored is designing the user-interface (front-end system) of the eCommerce travel agency website - WebXTravel, the project was introduced to us by Metor LLP, a company of a faculty member at SMU’s School of Information Systems. Prof. Ilse will be the facilitator between the company and our team – communicating to us requirements and the scope of the project as well as supervising the progress we make on the same.

Client: The client in our scenario is a travel agency, WebXTravel, for whom we are developing the e-commerce site. It is the agency who will employ what we develop and use the same in their organization. The client will host the website and allow for their end users i.e. potential travelers to use the web-site to make bookings or carry out other transactions with our client (the travel agency) via the platform provided by the e-commerce site.

End User: While our client is the travel agency, an important stakeholder we will consider during the design and development of our solution will be the end user of our website - the aforementioned customers of the travel agency as they will, in fact, be the ones interacting with and using out system most often.

Supervisor: Professor Ilse Baumgartner.

Course Coordinator: Professor Benjamin Gan

Use Case Descriptions

Search

This is the search function in our web application that allows users to search for possible holiday destinations by country, region, their preferred dates and even allows them to enter their price range to look for holidays within a certain budget limit. This functionality has been implemented such that the user can search for any criteria with any possible combination. This means that if they are unsure of the dates, they can leave the date field blank to check availability first and then book accordingly. They can also search for holiday packages just based on their budget by entering the price range only or only enter dates and see the variety in offers based on different prices.

Send Enquiry

This function is implemented such that a user can request more details or post enquiries regarding a particular offer to one of our enquiry offers. On clicking the ‘Offer Enquiry” button, the details of the offer are directly duplicated on the new pop up leaving the user with only the details of the question to fill up. On clicking send, the enquiry is sent to the enquiry officer.

Browse

The browsing has been made very intuitive and user friendly for the user. The user is able to browse for offers either category wise or randomly. The top offers during that period of time are present in the middle of the home page and on the sides of every page making it easily accessible.

Book

For the booking aspect, we plan to implement in such a way that it allows several bookings in the same transaction. After the bookings, the payment will be done using an external vendor, for e.g. PayPal. Users will also have access to add ons such as Insurance offers, high speed train tickets, limousine transfers, etc. depending on what offer they choose. A ‘Capture’ check will be implemented towards the end before the final confirmation.

Midterm Reflections

For Supervisor

The midterm report and video have been emailed to the supervisor and can also be downloaded here.

For Reviewer

Emailed to the supervisor is a video demonstrating the use of our travel-agency web portal. The video demonstrates the current working functionalities facilitated by the site- browse, send enquiry and search. For a description of the two functionalities, you can refer to our use case descriptions detailed above. Above is also a brief summary of the project and its scope.

The midterm report and the demonstration video can be downloaded here.

Risk Mitigation

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Meeting Minutes

Minutes - Meeting 1 (Group Meeting)

Meeting 1

DateNovember 20, 2009
VenueSIS Level 2 Benches
Duration 3 hr
Meeting AttendeesTeam #
Abhishek, Deep, Namrata, Priya, Shiv
  1. Agenda:
    1. Gathering requirements based on first meeting with the client.
    2. Creating Use Cases to further simplify the requirements
    3. Work Break Down Structure

Completed: Requirement Gathering was the only aspect completed during this meeting as it took us longer than anticipated. The meeting was ended early after the requirement gatherings had been set due to up coming examinations. It was decided in this meeting that the meetings till the examinations end will be shorter ones and we will try to finish as much as possible in these.

To be completed: Creating Use Cases WBS Structure Start off with Gantt chart

Minutes - Meeting 2 (Group Meeting)

Meeting 2

DateNovember 23, 2009
VenueSubway Benches
Duration 3 hr
Meeting AttendeesTeam #
Abhishek, Deep, Namrata, Priya, Shiv

Agenda: Creating the Use cases Work breakdown Structure Start off with the Gantt Chart

Completed: All use cases were made and completed during this meeting. The work break down structure was created too. However, as per this Work Break Down structure, we were following a waterfall process when ideally we would like to follow an iterative process. This would be changed later on after the meeting with the client to clear out the requirements for Phase I. The Gantt chart shaped in this meeting was a general one without much detailing. The detailing would also be added in once we were clear on the requirements.

To Be Completed: Role Allocation Risk Identification and Mitigation Start on the Project Proposal

Minutes - Meeting 3 (Group Meeting)

Meeting 3

DateNovember 29, 2009
VenueSIS Level 3 Benches
Duration 2.5 hr
Meeting AttendeesTeam #
Abhishek, Deep, Namrata, Priya, Shiv

This is the last meeting before December, as our team members would be occupied over December in various competitions and community service projects. More than anything else, we set out with the agenda of starting the draft project proposal and finishing as much of it as possible. Role allocation has been completed and the following permanent roles have been assigned to each member – 1. Abhishek: Lead Programmer 2. Deep: Lead Interface Designer 3. Namrata: Chief Tester & Database Manager 4. Priya: Liaison Officer & Database Manager 5. Shiv: Project Manager Everyone in the team will take up all of the roles at some point of time during the project. However, for most of the project, the above-mentioned people will be the heads in the respective departments to overlook when the others take over. Risk Identification has been completed in this meeting too and added to the draft proposal report. The standard matrix taught to us in Software Engineering has been followed here. The Draft report has been completed and is ready for submission and feedback.

To Be Completed: Currently on time and waiting for supervisor feedback.

Minutes - Meeting 4 (Group Meeting)

Meeting 4

DateDecember 18, 2009
VenueOnline
Duration 2 hr
Meeting AttendeesTeam #
Abhishek, Deep, Namrata, Priya, Shiv

Agenda: An online meeting to finalise the proposal draft, before submission on 4th January 2010.

Completed: The meeting lasted roughly 2 hours and was the only meeting we were able to coordinate over the December break since the team members were all over the globe attending different events. Supervisor feedback was incorporated. Resources and references were improved upon and everything else was left untouched as we were told that our report was fine and could be submitted.

To Be Completed: Get feedback from Ben and submit final report before 4th Jan.



Minutes - Meeting 5 (Group Meeting)

Meeting 5

DateDecember 30, 2009
VenueOnline
Duration 5.5 hr
Meeting AttendeesTeam #
Abhishek, Deep

Agenda: Change report based on feedback from Ben (Online Meeting) The feedback was as follows:

  1. Not clear what is in front end and back end (no database on your system? What API? What dependencies?)
  2. Such as insurance packages is not clear
  3. The supervisor is playing both roles as supervisor and client (can there be other client rep? Testers for the client side, domain users, travel agency, etc?) Stakeholders should be clearly identified.
  4. The scope is only at level 1. Needs 2 more level down. What fields? You need to have an agreed database schema quickly or the dependencies will delay one or both teams. Details on main page (screen shots? Prototype?), criteria for search should be clearly described (keywords? What search engine? Multi keywords? Etc), workflow on the shopping cart, what payment methods (research/reference on how to do this) I don’t understand what is 7. Be specific on 8. Limit the scope with the sponsor. If insurance package, say insurance package only. This is usually where the sponsor and the developer differ in what it means.
  5. The WBS looks like waterfall. Deliverables need dates! Rough dates are OK 2 week iterations? With user testing on each iteration?
  6. Lack of familiarity is top risk exposure but team have 2-4 VS. Mitigation over dec but what does it mean? Is there assigned work in dec? What prototypes have you developed? Anyone done google analytics/map? Crystal reports? There are good tutorials. These needs to be in the resource and references section. Links to your training. (more than the 3 footnotes).
  7. The learning objectives are included in all IS480 projects. I suggest you concentrate on 1 or 2 and define it as an X factor in your project. As you are doing the front end, maybe learning about Usability and research on HCI, usability testing, etc might be good.

The agenda of this meeting was to try and incorporate as much of Ben’s feedback as possible into our proposal with the short time we had.

Completed: The meeting lasted almost 5-6 hours so that we could incorporate as much of the feedback as possible. The changes have been documented in the versioning history of the proposal report. However, not all changes could be made since we were still unclear on various aspects of the project, as we had not had our first client-team meeting yet. The Proposal was submitted for grading

To Be Completed: Get started on Elaboration phase I after 1st meeting with client.

Minutes - Meeting 6 (Group Meeting)

Meeting 6

DateJanuary 5, 2010
VenueSophia Food Mall Study Area
Duration 4 hr
Meeting AttendeesTeam #
Abhishek, Deep, Namrata, Priya

Agenda: UI Conceptualization Gantt chart updating Class Diagrams

Completed: The UI Prototype had already been made over the December break and we roughly had an idea of what was required in the application. It was further discussed and a UI template was finalized for us to start work on. After the meeting with the client and all members being back, we updated the gantt chart with details of the project timeline. Class Diagrams were created during the meeting and previous class diagrams were updated. Updated in documents

To Be Completed: Sequence Diagrams System Sequence Diagrams Use Case with descriptions


Minutes - Meeting 7 (Group Meeting)

Meeting 7

DateJanuary 11, 2010
VenueSophia Food Mall Study Area
Duration 4 hr
Meeting AttendeesTeam #
Abhishek, Namrata, Priya

Agenda: The agenda of this meeting was to complete the following: Sequence Diagrams System Sequence Diagrams Use case with descriptions

Completed: All the system diagrams and system sequence diagrams were completed so we could get started on the coding aspect of the application. Previous use cases were updated and new ones created. Use case descriptions were added to each use case.

To Be Completed: Start coding on the user interface Start creating the design website layout




Supervisor/Client Meeting Minutes

Client Meetings

Client Meeting 1: (13/1/10)

Points Discussed:

  1. Confirmation with other team on database and catagories
  2. Dynamic links on the left since categories should keep changing
  3. Star ratings should depend on hotels not offer
  4. Can add star ratings for cruises, etc. too
  5. Price title should not be in price
  6. Create a new table to link offer and price title and every price title can have as many prices and presets as required.
  7. Maximum of 6 combinations
  8. Category of meta info is missing
  9. Travel related, price related and offer related information
  10. URL field in meta info
  11. Travel info like visas and vaccinations are free text information. people enter whatever is necessary
  12. Sort key issues
  13. Size of the images (default 120*180)
  14. Can upload as many images as we want to. For one particular, one set of dimensions should be used.
  15. Assigning to offers - starting from (minimum price)
  16. Currently its on send and enquiry. Later on book and something is retrieved.
  17. The URL that's being clicked leads to different forms.
  18. Enquiry email field required all the time.#
  19. Use iframes to use target attributes. so when you click on the category, the new thing opens only in the iframe.
  20. Totally 4 or 5 pages - primarily managing searches and top offers, etc.
  21. Stored procedures

Client Meeting 2: (17/2/10)

Points Discussed:

  1. Change main page to 6 images
  2. Make main page more appealing
  3. Use sections with titles and different colours. Looks too bland
  4. Price table should be there
  5. Divide the data in main page into sections
  6. Price, itinerary and meta info section.
  7. Use colour for section headers
  8. Have a breadcrumb to make sure where you are in terms of navigation so that you know where you are and can always go back
  9. Get more data in so that it looks nicer
  10. Stretch it so that it fits the data in
  11. Try collapse and expand for information grouping
  12. Use smu smtp server to send emails: smtp.smu.edu.sg
  13. Use html format for emails and embed the image and get the text into it

Points for next iteration after midterm evaluation

Iteration 2: Browse

Points Discussed:

  1. Check whether it is online or not
  2. Validity of date
  3. Pop up window for online booking (separate)
  4. Can't book entire offer, can book only per price
  5. When it pops up, sections need to be completed
    1. section 1 - enter no. of travelers, all basic details of specific offer
    2. section 2 - last name, first name, title, DOB
    3. section 3 - add-ons (insurance, limousine transfers, etc.) might not be there or might be there
    4. section 4 - invoice address (can select either one of three entered previously) or brand new invoice data
    5. section 5 - Notes section (travelling with children, etc.), Capture (to check if human), promotional code (some people have this option to get discounts and stuff)
    6. section 6 - Summary page with Terms and condition checkbox
    7. Section 7 - Mode of payment (credit card and banking transfer) BT - save entire details to DB and send to person in charge. CC - go to online payment provider. Send email upon successful booking
  6. Transaction number while booking is being done. On success, you have a final booking number
  7. Category of add ons - Insurance (depending on what you're booking, you get something accordingly. Eg. <2000 euros, you get 80$ or something, 2000-5000, 150 euros), Tickets/high speed train tickets/limousine transfer (nothing to do with the price of the travel) Have to set in the database that which particular add on is related to which offer
  8. Promotional offer - table of promotional offers attached to offers
  9. Capture - Ability to change the picture if not readable

Client Meeting 3: (17/2/10)

Supervisor Meetings

Supervisor Meeting 1: (20/1/10)

Points Discussed:

  1. confirmation of UI because of MVC
  2. database clarifications
  3. can stick with MVC but it doesn't add any particular value
  4. show progress to ilse regarding UI
  5. get database fixed by monday -after that no issues
  6. trouble shooting with sql server 2005 and 2008 - what to do

Supervisor Meeting 2: (03/2/10)

Points Discussed:

  1. Better to use URLS for images since image objects are too heavy. Just store a relative path.
  2. use of iframe or update panel or multiview
  3. change the refreshing part of the page.
  4. no model pop ups for search and to be displayed in the page itself.
  5. pop up only for the emails and nothing else.

Supervisor Meeting 3: (10/2/10)

Points Discussed:

  1. Difficulty in uploading images in the way mentioned.
  2. Home page should consist of 5 large boxes with 5 images
  3. Search Display: Name, short description, validity to-from, hotels, star rating, price from
  4. Search by region and country is not necessary - only by country, price and date.
  5. At least one criteria - can't have empty search
  6. For procedures - write dynamic SQL statements
  7. Stored procedure to execute string - sp_executesql http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188001.aspx
  8. It's ok not to implement the iDisposable class

Supervisor Meeting 4: (17/2/10)

Points Discussed:

  1. Change to 6 images
  2. Make main page more appealing
  3. Use sections with titles and different colours. Looks too bland
  4. Price table should be there
  5. Divide the data in main page into sections
  6. Price, itinerary and meta info section.
  7. Use colour for section headers
  8. Have a breadcrumb to make sure where you are in terms of navigation so that you know where you are and can always go back
  9. Get more data in so that it looks nicer
  10. Stretch it so that it fits the data in
  11. Try collapse and expand for information grouping
  12. Use smu smtp server to send emails: smtp.smu.edu.sg
  13. Use html format for emails and embed the image and get the text into it

Supervisor Meeting 5: (03/03/10)

Points Discussed: BOOKING:

  1. Check whether it is online or not
  2. Validity of date
  3. Pop up window for online booking (separate)
  4. Can't book entire offer, can book only per price
  5. When it pops up, sections need to be completed
    1. section 1 - enter no. of travelers, all basic details of specific offer
    2. section 2 - last name, first name, title, DOB
    3. section 3 - add-ons (insurance, limousine transfers, etc.) might not be there or might be there
    4. section 4 - invoice address (can select either one of three entered previously) or brand new invoice data
    5. section 5 - Notes section (travelling with children, etc.), Capture (to check if human), promotional code (some people have this option to get discounts and stuff)
    6. section 6 - Summary page with Terms and condition checkbox and data needs to be displayed in sections and link to go back to each section
    7. section 7 - Mode of payment (credit card and banking transfer) BT - save entire details to DB and send to person in charge. CC - go to online payment provider. Send email upon successful booking
  6. Transaction number while booking is being done. On success, you have a final booking number
  7. Category of add ons - Insurance (depending on what you're booking, you get something accordingly. Eg. <2000 euros, you get 80$ or something, 2000-5000, 150 euros), Tickets/high speed train tickets/limousine transfer (nothing to do with the price of the travel) Have to set in the database that which particular add on is related to which offer
  8. Promotional offer - table of promotional offers attached to offers
  9. Capture - Ability to change the picture if not readable

Supervisor Meeting 6: (17/03/10)

Points Discussed:

  1. Show book now button next to the price
  2. Don't need to show availability
  3. The URL needs to be formatted properly, nothing else needs to be passed
  4. Need the price_id and ordinal
  5. For the Book - Add a simple HTML link
  6. Create data grid at code and dynamically go through it and turn visibility off for what ever's empty.
  7. Price|Button
  8. Price|Button is the format for the booking

Supervisor Meeting 7: (31/03/10)

Points Discussed:

  1. Restrict travellers to 4 max at one booking
  2. Hide toolbars and stuff when window pops up
  3. Drop down for no. of travellers (1-4)
  4. Hotel is missing in booking detail
  5. Add title "Child"
  6. Individual travel insurance and family travel insurance are separate
  7. Family (individual names should be displayed). Some may take insurance, some may not
  8. Implement insurance and users on database level as well as on the portal