DEVELOPER’S GUIDE FOR ProjeX

ProjeX THE DEVELOPER’S GUIDE

This guide is for anyone who wants to make maintenance or additions to the system. Below you will find :

Module definitions
Component definitions
Class architectures
File structures of the system
Database design
Development Environment

1.Modules of the Program

While designing and implementing ProjeX, object oriented methods will mainly be followed. Therefore we first decided on the basic entities and their attributes that will be used in the design of the system and then elaborated the working parts of the program. A module simulates a general view of a functional part of the whole system. A module might take inputs that specify its action and it includes methods or other modules that it calls to perform necessary operations.

The modules explained in this section include all single parts of the whole ProjeX functioning system. These modules are a slightly revised version of the modules we put in the initial design report o ProjeX.

The following modules are explained in the following sections:

Help Module
Create Account Module
Login Module
Display Project Module
Project Operation Module
Task Operation Module
User Operation Module
Group Operation Module
Resource Operation Module
My Office Module

Help Module

This module does nothing but opens information pages of ProjeX. Any person visiting the main page of ProjeX will be granted the opportunity to get information about what ProjeX is and how it works. On the other hand an existing user of ProjeX would like to consult the user manual of the program. So Help Module will be there to open the necessary information pages of ProjeX whenever a visitor or a user demands for it. Help Module will take as input the state of the help button (check section 3.1 of this report) so that when a visitor or a user clicks on this button it will perform necessary operations for opening the necessary information pages. The so called help button is displayed on almost every page of ProjeX so Help Module may be called in any phase of the program.

Ø Methods related to Help Module may be listed as:

- CheckTheStateOfHelpButton() : Checks whether the help button is clicked on.

- DisplayHelpPages() : Display user manual of ProjeX

Create Account Module

This is the module responsible for creating a new account for starting to use ProjeX. Once an account is created then a company may create projects inside the account; tasks, resources, groups inside the projects; may create user profiles and assign users to tasks etc. The creator of the account will automatically bear the “administrator” status and have all the permissions. Once an account is created then the creator may add new users inside the account by creating new users [Check User Operation Module, 4.7].

When a new account is to be created a user profile should be created for the creator of the account. This evidently requires providing a user name and a password for the creator. Hence in order to create an account one must supply the following information:

company_name [STRING] : Name of the company for which the account is created.

This is in fact the name of the account.

user_name [STRING] : User name for the creator of the account.

user_password [STRING] : Password for the creator of the account.

The information above must obligatorily be provided to create an account. Other information about the creator profile may be provided later [User Operation Module, section 4.7]. Once an account is created the system will automatically open it for the usage of its creator.

Ø Methods related to Create Account Module may be listed as:

- GetCreatorInfo() : Get the information provided by the user to create the account.

- CheckCreatorInfo() : Check whether the information provided by the user to create an

account is sufficient.

- SendInsufficientInfoMessage() : Send a message to the user stating that the

information provided is not sufficient to create an

account.

- CreateAccount() : Create a new account with the information provided.

- OpenAccount() : Open the account just created.

Login Module

Login Module is responsible for identifying an existing user of the program an opening his account. An existing user means a user already registered to an account inside ProjeX. Once the user provides necessary inputs for logging in to his account Login Module will perform the operations to check the user’s inputs and open his account. In order to open his account a user must provide three inputs to Login Module: the name of the account (which is named as ‘company login name’, his user name and his password. So Login module will accept the following three inputs from the user in order to identify him:

- company_login_name [STRING] : The name of the account

- user_name [STRING] : Username of the user

- user_password [STRING] : Password of the user

If these three inputs provided by a user are not valid for any existing account, Login Module will reject the user’s demand of logging in to an account.

If the inputs above are valid then Login Module will open the corresponding account for the user. Before opening the account, the status of the user will be determined by his information in the database. This is necessary since the session opened to a user bearing the “manager” status is different than the session opened to other normal users. The number of operations that a manager may perform is also greater hence the system should know who is logging in. The status of a user is determined once when the user logs in and is kept in memory till the user logs out of his account. This helps checking easily whether the status of a user allows him to perform a specific operation like adding/deleting tasks, creating new user profile etc…

Ø Methods related to Login Module may be listed as:

- GetUserInfo() : Get the company name, user name and password of the user

- CheckUserInfo() : Check the company name, user name and password of the

user.

- GetUserStatus() : Get the status of the logged in user.

- OpenAccount() : Open the corresponding account of the user.

- RejectLogin() : Reject the login demand.

- SendRejectionMessage() : Send the necessary rejection message.

Display Project Module

Display Project Module is the part of the system responsible for exposing correctly the features of a project and for calling appropriate functions or modules in order to perform necessary operations on the exposed project. Display Project Module is designed to be the program part running behind the Projects Pages [see section 3.4] so you may find it useful to have a look at that interface in order to get better insight to the functioning mechanism of this module.

Display Project Module is invoked whenever a user opens the interface for displaying a project. First job of the module is to properly list the tasks of the concerned project according to three constraints:

Task List Property:

The user would like to list all of the tasks, only the incomplete tasks or only the complete tasks of a project. Hence Display List Module must consider what we call ‘Task List Property’ while displaying the tasks of a project.

Task List Filter:

The user would like to list only the tasks bearing one or more special properties like all tasks having the ‘urgent’ priority, all tasks whose start date is before 07/11/2004 etc… ‘Task List Filter’ will impose to Display Project Module which tasks are to be displayed.

Sort Criterion:

As the name implies, ‘Sort Criterion’ will provide necessary information to Display Project Module for sorting the tasks by a special property (like due date or task number) whenever the user wants so.

The above constraints for listing the tasks of a project will be determined by the inputs taken from the user.

The interaction between the user’s demands and Display Project Module will be performed with the use of buttons on the display project interface. If a button on the interface is clicked on by a user, the module will check which button is clicked and will then perform the necessary operations.

Along with displaying the tasks of a project according to some criteria, five other types of operation may be demanded by the user:

An operation on,

1. the displayed project

2. a task of the displayed project

3. a resource

4. a group

5. graphical data display

To perform the possible operations on the above features Display Project Module has to invoke the necessary modules. These modules are respectively “Project Operation Module, Task Operation Module, Resource Operation Module, Group Operation Module and Graphical Data

Project Operation Module

This module is responsible for performing the three main types of operations about a project:

Create Project : Create a new project inside an account.
Display Project : Display attributes the project.
Delete a project : Delete completely a project from an account.

Project Operation Module takes one input, operation_type [INTEGER], and it is this input that tells to the module which of the above three operation is to be performed.

Project Operation Module starts its function by checking the status of the user invoking it. The module will let the user perform any operation on a project if his status is appropriate for that operation.

When the operation is ‘Display Project’ the system will display the attributes of the project like due date, estimated moths etc… If the status of the user permits it, the fields displaying the attributes of the project will be editable. Hence a user might change the attributes of a project (if his status allows it) after having invoked ‘Display Project’ operation.

Ø Methods related to Project Operation Module are as follows:

- CheckUserStatus() : Check the status of the user to see whether he is allowed to

perform the requested operation on a project.

- SendRejectionMessage() : Send a message to the user stating that his status is

not appropriate to perform the requested operation on a project.

- GetProjectInfo() : Get the information (attributes) provided by the user

to create a project.

- CheckProjectInfo() : Check whether the information provided by the user to

create a project is sufficient.

- SendInsufficientInfoMessage() : Send a message to the user stating that the

information provided is not sufficient to create a new project.

- CreateProject() : Create a new project with the information provided by

the user.

- EditProject() : Let the user edit the attributes of the project.

- SaveNewProjectInformation() : Save the changes made on the project’s

attributes.

- DeleteProject() : Delete completely a project from the account.

Task Operation Module

Similar to Project Operation Module, Task Operation Module is responsible for three kinds of operations on tasks: creating a new task, editing an existing task and deleting an existing task. Such task operations are limited only to users bearing an appropriate status. For example a user can create a task only if his status permits doing so. Hence whenever the Task Operation Module is invoked, the module fist checks whether the status of the user invoking it is appropriate. If it is so then a task operation may be performed. If not the task operation request is rejected.

A task has the following attributes. In order to create a new task the creator should provide the ones marked with ‘*’:

task_name* [STRING] : The name of the task

task_description [LONG STRING] : Description of the task

task_status* [INTEGER] : Official status of the task that shows whether

the task has just started or tested or

completed etc..

percentage_of_completion [INTEGER] : Numeric data showing how much of the task

is completed.

task_priority* [INTEGER] : Priority of the task.

start_date* [STRING] : Starting date of the task.

due_date* [STRING] : Due date of the task.

estimated_hours [STRING] : Estimated hours of completion for the task

Apart from the attributes provided by the user, the system will automatically assign the following attributes to a newly created task:

task_number [INTEGER] : Number of the task inside the project. The first

created task will have 1 as its number, the second 2 etc…

task_creator [INTEGER] : ID of the user who created the task

Ø Methods related to Task Operation Module are as follows:

- CheckUserStatus() : Check the status of the user to see whether he is allowed to

perform the requested operation on a task.

- SendRejectionMessage() : Send a message to the user stating that his status is not

appropriate to perform the requested operation on a task.

- GetTaskInfo() : Get the information (attributes) provided by the user to

create a task.

- CheckTaskInfo() : Check whether the information provided by the user to create a

task is sufficient.

- SendInsufficientInfoMessage() : Send a message to the user stating that the

information provided is not sufficient to create a

new task.

- CreateTask() : Create a new task with the information provided by

the user.

- EditTask () : Let the user edit the attributes of the task.

- SaveNewTaskInformation() : Save the changes made on the task’s attributes.

- DeleteTask() : Delete completely a task from the account.

User Operation, Group Operation and Resource Operation Modules

User Operation Module, Group Operation Module and Resource Operation Module all work in a similar manner so we choose to explain them in this same section.

These three modules are responsible for four kinds of action:

Create
Edit
Assign
Delete

A project manager should first create a new user profile inside a project and then assign this new user to a task. He is also free to edit the attributes of the user or delete completely the user profile from the account.

On the other hand, a group of users might be created and be assigned to a task inside a project. Again a project manager may create a group with already existing user profiles in a project (like database group, hardware group etc…). One can also create a group and then edit it, to add new users to the group for example. Finally the whole group might be completely deleted by the project manager.

As a user and a group, a resource for a project might be created, edited, assigned to a task (or to the whole project) and deleted.

The methods related to these three modules function in the same manner as the ones related to Project Operation and Task Operation Modules. The only different method is Assign(task_number):

- Assign( task_number [INTEGER] ) : Assigns a user, a group or a resource to a task. The

task to which one of these three will be assigned is determined by the argument task_number. If task_number is zero, then the concerned user, group or resource is assigned to the whole project not to a specific task.

We provide in Figure 4.7 the flowchart for Resource Operation Module. The flowcharts for User Operation and Group Operation Modules are similar.

My Office Module

This module is the part of the program running behind My Office Page [section 3.8]. My Office Module is responsible the part of the system responsible for exposing correctly the features of My Office Page and for calling appropriate functions or modules in order to perform necessary operations invoked by the user in ‘his ofice2.

My Office Module is quite similar to Display Project Module in its functioning. It is invoked whenever a user clicks on My Office button on a page of ProjeX. All the possible operations that a user might perform by means of Display Project Module are also possible with My Office Module and they are performed in the same way.

2. Components

The system can be decomposed to the following packages which can be implemented independently. These packages resemble and comply with the modules whose detailed definitions have been made in the “Modules” section of the report. The general system is composed of the packages seen in the below diagram:

Ø Packages for project/task/human scheduling (General Project Management)

Ø Packages for GUI

Ø Packages for database

Ø Packages for file management

General Project Management Component

This package is the main package that requires user-interaction. The inputs (either from user or other modules) are processed here. It consists of the following sub-packages:

Ø Company worker management

¨ Group Leader

¨ Administrator

¨ Project Manager

¨ Project Developer(ordinary user)

Ø Project management

¨ Discussion forum

Ø Task management

Ø Group management

Ø Account management

¨ Sign-up

¨ login

Ø Statistics & performance evaluation

¨ Listing

¨ Status overview

¨ Filtering

Ø Resource Management

¨ Hardware Resources

¨ Software Resources

¨ Human Resources

¨ Other Resources

These component relationships can be summarized as follows:

GUI Component

Instead of having hardware components, the tool is just software because it is a web based program. Thus graphical user interfaces are very important to orient the users. The users will see the links active if they have the permission to use that link. The GUI is divided into the modules below:

Ø Project member GUI

Ø Project manager GUI

Ø Project administrator GUI

Ø Non-project member GUI

Database Component

The tool needs a database to keep the information belonging to different instances. The basic entities can be grouped as below:

Ø User database

Ø Task database

Ø Group database

Ø Project database

Ø Resource database

3. System Classes

One can refer to the Class diagram of the system, if he/she wants to see the relationships between the classes in the system and their methods and properties as below:

The Class Diagram above shows the relationships between classes in ProjeX.

4. File Formats

The ProjeX has been written utilizing the Microsoft .NET Visual Studio. The programming languages used are : C #.NET, ASP.NET and HTML.

The page backgrounds (the basic GUI’s and buttons) were prepared using the Photoshop and its layering functionality. Then these backgrounds are implemented in to the system

The file formats in the program are composed of two extensions:

ASP.NET extensions files : The ASP.NET scripts embedded into HTML scripts for GUI displays
Corresponding C# extension files: The C# extension files corresponding to an ASP.NET file with the same file name but the extension of “aspx.cs”. These files store the procedures for calling sql commands and using them to process the system’s responsibilites.

Default.aspx page is the default page where one can start the login process. This page links to other pages whose names are self-explaining. Ex: CompanySignUp.aspx- with coresponding CompanySignUp.aspx.cs, CreateUserProfile.aspx with corresponding CreateUserProfile.aspx.cs , etc..

The project that is created by the Visual Studio consists of Code , Data and Images directories also. These directories include:

Code Directory : extension “.cs” files of classes for procedures
Data Directory: For Background (GUI) files, such as “.jpg”, “.psd” and “.png” extensions that were created by using Photoshop program.
Images Directory: Some background files and button pictures with the similar extensions described below.

The common controls used in every file:

System,System.Data,System.Configuration,System.Web,System.Web.Security,System.Web.UI,System.Web.UI.WebControls,System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts,

System.Web.UI.HtmlControls

Other than these default files, the files like “.cs” extension files in the Code Directory are included in the files if required.

5. Database Design

Below one can find the entity-relationship diagrams for the database of ProjeX. The dashed lines in the diagrams show the relationships set via the FOREIGN KEY’s among entities.

1) The following figure shows the relations among COMPANY, ADMIN, PROJECT_MANAGER, PROJECTS and TASKS entities which are set via the FOREIGN KEYS.

The tuples in PROJECTS table have a CompanyID field, the projects and companies are associated via that field. Similarly, the ProjectID fields in ADMIN and PROJECT_MANAGER tables show who is admin or project manager in which project. Admin and project manager are automatically associated with companies since every project is associated with a company. Tasks are associated with projects with the ProjectID field appearing in TASKS table.

PREDECESSORS relationship associates each task with its predecessor.

2) The second figure has got much to say. First of all it shows the relation between a group and its members. The relation between USER_LOGIN_DATA and USERS table is set via the foreign key UserID in the USER_LOGIN_DATA. So that after the user enters the login information, the tool can identify him correctly. The remaining part of the figure shows the relations among projects, tasks, users and groups and the rights of users.

3) The following last figure explains the relations of the RESOURCES entity with the others. ProjeX allows users to associate a resource with a project, a task, a user or a group. These relations are shown in the figure.

Akış Çizelgesi: Karar: RESOURCES_
PROJECTS

RESOURCES

TASKS

PROJECTS