Open-source, on-demand Program Management Software

Transcription

1 Case Study Open-source, on-demand Program Management Software THE CUSTOMER A start-up provider of management software catering to participants of the United States Food Stamp Nutritional Education (FSNE). The FSNE is a US federal/state partnership, which targets educating food stamp recipients about proper nutrition and diet. The FSNE network consists of state agencies from all the 50 states of the US, community-based, non-profit organizations, educational institutions and others, who work together to ensure nutrition education for food stamp families and individuals. THEIR NEED To build a highly scalable, web-based specialty software to manage the FSNE, which is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and land-grant universities. The management software to be built had to comply with federal reporting guidelines and act as a planning, sharing, tracking and reporting tool for all the projects that come under the FSNE network Aspire helped the customer to build a flexible management system, from concept to implementation. The product was built using the open-source LAMP stack, which helped reduce development time and cost. Apart from internal applications used by individual organizations/universities as part of the FSNE, there was no other similar management system available to FSNE participants and the customer s product was the first to cater exclusively to them. OUR DEED Aspire helped the customer to build a flexible Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) management system from concept to implementation that simplifies the FSNE network management operations and improves collaboration among all the participants of the FSNE. As the sole technology partner of the customer, Aspire built the web-based solution from scratch on the open-source LAMP stack and integrated it with a custom-built MVC framework, which is customizable for future expansion s of the FSNE network. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGIES USED Language: PHP 5.1.2Framework: Customized PHP MVC framework. IDE: EclipsePDT. Database: MySQL 5.0 Web Server: Apache Configuration Management: SVN repository Operating System: RHEL Plug-ins, Tools and Technologies: Ext-JS, JSON, Smarty template engine, PHP-GD, AJAX & BIRT. 01

2 The Food Stamp Nutritional Education The Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE) is a US federal/state partnership, which aims to help low-income families in the US budget properly and get the best nutrition out of what they can afford. The US Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) which is the direct federal funding agency of the FSNE provides guidance to those states that most encourage the use of efficient tools and strategies in nutrition education. 1 2 The 3 FSNE targets educating food stamp recipients and those eligible for food stamps, 4 particularly mothers, children, elderly people, those with development disabilities, and youth, about proper nutrition, eating habits and an active lifestyle. The Program management software for the FSNE participants included modules for customer management, project management, user management, educational session and materials management, a collaboration suite and a reporting framework. 5 As individuals from low-income backgrounds have a higher propensity for disease because of the poor nutrition associated with low income, the FSNE strives towards a stream-lined approach to educate them. It involves various agencies and organizations to work cooperatively in spreading health education. Program management system for FSNE participants The customer s Program Management System (PMS) caters to non-governmental agencies, universities and other community-based health, trade and faith based organizations who manage different nutrition education s (projects) as part of the FSNE. A project could include say a nutritional on the value of fruits, reduction of high trans-fat and salty foods and include teaching the preparation of soups and healthy snacks. Educators from NGOs, schools and other agencies use the management software to plan and manage various educational sessions and tasks for their different projects. Information related to the project start and end dates, goals and objectives of the project, locations of the various sessions with contact details and other administrative details, curriculum and course materials are all integrated into the system. The PMS also provides a dashboard view for a quick review of all the projects coming under a and their various activities, status of plans, session details, other news and events planned. Some of the key functional areas of the PMS developed by Aspire within a period of 6 months (beta in 3 months) were: FSNE Network Customer Management FSNE Project Management User Management Collaboration Suite with Calendar, News and Reminder Integration Complex Educational Session and Materials Management Reporting Framework 02

3 The reporting framework is an important feature of the Program Management System. It allows educators who conduct sessions to immediately record the number of people who attended a session, collect ethnographic, demographic and several other details from attendees online. All of the reports are then generated into a format that complies with federal government regulations and can be used to compare progress against the project plans. The reports would also allow information to be distributed and viewed by key members (like the project managers, supervisors, manager/sponsor etc.) in a controlled fashion. On-demand solution using the open-source LAMP stack The product was built to enable single sign-on and multitenancy capabilities. Hence, multiple agencies and organizations that are a part of the FSNE could use a single instance of the hosted service offered by the customer. The PMS was built as a SaaS product allowing for single sign-on and multi-tenancy. Hence, multiple agencies and organizations that are a part of the FSNE can use a single instance of the hosted service offered by the customer. The product also allowed a fair amount of customization of the user interface to cater to the different agencies using it. Aspire built the on-demand management software right from the architecture, design, db and rights design to development, testing and implementation for the various agencies and organizations involved. As the customer wanted to use open-source technologies to develop the product, Aspire chose simple but adequate technologies to bring the solution to market in a very short period of time. The PMS was built on the LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) stack known for the following advantages: It reduces development time considerably, close to 40%. Built-in features allow for Web 2.0 experience. Clear separation of business logic and presentation template. Fast, robust and easily portable to different databases/servers. Advanced reporting methods. Open source, and can be easily used to change and extend the system PHP and Smarty template engine PHP was chosen as the development language as it suits simple web development and in particular v was chosen for its object oriented development. Additionally, the PHP Smarty template was used to clearly separate the presentation logic from the business logic, and for its caching mechanism. Smarty s caching enhances response times and compresses the html by stripping the white spaces, enabling faster page loading times 03

4 Open-source, on-demand Program Architecture A custom-built MVC framework was used to develop the PMS which included Ext-JS, a very powerful and effective JavaScript framework which includes Web 2.0 capabilities. Custom-built MVC framework and Ext-JS A custom-built MVC framework was made use for developing the PMS which included Ext-JS, a very powerful and effective JavaScript framework which includes Web 2.0 capabilities. This allowed a collapsible layout, dynamic listings, dynamic rearrangement of columns and grouping on the fly using Ajax, an easy date and time picker etc. The framework also provides dynamic Ajax connections where the data for the listings are pulled as JSON data for faster response and displayed as dynamic listings in the pages with the options to sort / group by all the fields. Aspire is still enhancing the framework to be flexible to be adapted for other s administrated through FSNE Network even though the solution was mainly targeted for Nutritional Education. 04

5 Benefits to the customer By developing the complete end-to-end Program Management System as a web-based SaaS solution, Aspire enabled the customer to offer all FSNE participants a cost-effective, hosted solution requiring no maintenance from their end. Built on the open-source LAMP stack, the time and cost required to develop the product was also reduced drastically. Aspire s custom built MVC framework gave the customer a scalable product which could be easily extended to include other s (besides nutritional education) administered through the FSNE network and has the potential to be used by all 50 states of the USA and their affiliated organizations and participants Aspire provided the customer with a scalable product which can be easily extended to include other s administered through the FSNE network and with the potential to be used by all 50 states of the US and their affiliated organizations. ABOUT ASPIRE SYSTEMS Aspire Systems is an Outsourced Product Development firm committed to helping our customers build software products better and faster. We work with some of the world s most innovative Independent Software Vendors and software-enabled businesses, ranging from start-ups to established industry leaders, transforming the way software is built. Aspire provides complete product lifecycle services, ranging from new product development and product advancement to product migration, re-engineering, sustenance and support. Our product development teams are spread between our Global Innovation Center in Chennai, India and offices in the United States. For more information : Website : info@aspiresys.com Phone :