DCA : (Data capturing application)

Abstract

Imagine an institute with thirteen departments functioning under it. Now imagine most of these departments functioning with their own methodology, and most of them using their own software system. Can you think of a scenario where the upper management requires data, where a part of it is available from department ‘X’, another from ‘Y’, and a third from ‘Z’, and with this all these departments sending their Excel sheets to the upper management. Now can you imagine the nightmare it is going to be for management in consolidating the huge amount of data it has received from various departments, and then applying filters so as to obtain the exact data that is required? The situation is going to be worse if along with this, some historical data is also to be consolidated into this set, with the departments complaining that the requested data had already been sent months back, which the management has had got misplaced in its ocean of excel sheets. To solve this practical problem, a software system, named DCA- an abbreviation for ‘Data Capturing Application’ is developed. The system rests on exactly three users:, 1. Super Admin 2. Departmental Admin 1 3. Departmental Admin 2 in the descending order of their privileges. The application serves as a platform where forms can be generated dynamically by Super Admin, where each of them will have an association with one of the departments of the institute. Upon generation of a form and allocation of a department to it, the same will then be accessible to the remaining two admins of that department. Each generated form has a deadline, upon elapse of which. no more modifications in the data are permitted by any of the three users. Generally, the responsibility of feeding in the data lies with Departmental Admin 2. The form is then to be submitted by the Departmental Admin 2 once all the data feeding is complete. This action is to be performed prior to the deadline. Upon submission of the form, no more changes are permitted for Departmental Admin 2. However, in case of any changes thereafter, the same can be made by Departmental Admin 1 up to the deadline. Any changes in the data thereafter require Super Admin to extend the deadline of the form in order to enable Departmental Admin 1 to make those. If Departmental Admin 2 is also to be permitted to make changes in this situation, then along with extending the deadline, the action of unsubmission of the form is also required by the Super Admin. Upon agglomeration of data of various forms, a final report can be generated by the Super Admin with join operations and application of queries available as utilities in this functionality of the software.