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Case study: NEW COLLEGE

Case Study NewCollege Problem Logging and Purchase Order System.

NewCollege is a large and successful further education college in London. The college consists of many departments. There are different types of staff available in each department, such as teaching, admin, tutoring, support, managers, personal assistance, etc. The IT Services Department (ISD) does not have a proper system to log computer hardware issues faced by staff and monitor the progress of each case logged by them. This has been identified as a requirement to provide an efficient service to IT system users.

The staff use many hardware components such as keyboard, monitors, printers, system units, laptops, CD writers, mouse, etc. NewCollege has two main buildings (called NorthWing and SouthWing). Each building has three floors and each floor has a number of rooms (N227, N237, S15, S315, etc. N stands for NorthWing rooms and S for SouthWing). Hardware can be located in any room. Each hardware component has a unique tag number and it is located in a single room. Hardware cannot be in two locations at a given time.

When a staff calls to report a hardware problem, an IT technician type the tag number, problem and the person logging the problem into an Excel Sheet, which is in a shared drive that can be accessed by all other IT technicians. They have a system in place to indicate the location of the hardware component but it is a very basic Access Database System (DB). This DB system keeps track of all hardware tag numbers, details and the room location.

In order to improve the service provided to college staff and ensure the service is operated in an efficient way the IT Manager, Mr Kayle, is planning to have a new intranet system through which staff can log their problems providing the hardware tag number. The staff details will be captured automatically once they are logged into the new system. When a problem is logged an automatic acknowledgment is sent to the users email address with a unique reference number. This enables problem reporting staff to monitor the progress of the case and IT technicians to work on the case efficiently.

The new system should allow listing new and open cases. IT Technicians should be able to deal with any new cases and make case notes with date and time to indicate that he/she is

attending the problem/job/case. Also, technicians should be able to record the progress of the case and on completion should be able to close the job with relevant remarks.

A certain amount of new hardware stock is also stored in the IT Services department. The IT Purchasing Clerk, Ms Clarks, is in charge of issuing hardware to technicians and buying new hardware from suppliers. Ms Clarks keeps track of all hardware and relevant supplier details in a separate Access Database. This allows her to check on the stock level. If items are not in stock she then requests for quotations for new purchases. Based on quotations she raises a purchase order when hardware has to be reordered from the supplier. She uses a very simple purchase order form in a Word Document which contains item no, item details, date of order, supplier details, date required, etc. which she uses when sending to suppliers. The new system should also be able to capture purchase orders in order to determine stock levels.

Overall, the new system proposed should thus be capable of listing and printing hardware components based on location problems and name of the user reporting the issue, add/edit/delete and view all hardware and their category details.

Among other functionalities (as discussed above), the new system proposed should thus be capable of create, edit and view purchase orders, add/edit/delete and view suppliers and should able to update hardware quantities when receiving stock.

The colleges Board of Directors fully agrees with the development of the new intranet system and ask Mr Kayle to initiate the project. You work as a senior software developer in FutureIT Company. Mr Kayle has approached you to develop the new intranet system. They want to migrate the old systems data into the new system. You are required to model the current business system and propose the new, integrated software system that will include all the current functionality and enhancements needed.

You will need to produce the analysis, design and development of their new system. They have a tight deadline of 6 months for the system to go live, staff should be trained within 2 weeks and the analysis, design and development of the new system should be within the budget of 70,000 pounds as decided by the NewCollege Board of Directors. This was a project that you could not refuse, so your company decided that you will take on the project.

Questions:

1. DRAW Activity diagram for the new system
2. Just give me a small explanation so that I can write below the drawing