1.24.2019
Hello! We are the new IntelliChoice team. This semester we are actually going to be starting on a new project. We met the IntelliChoice sponsors as well as our mentor this week and we decided that it would be a good idea for each of the team members to visit a branch that IntelliChoice operates in Dallas. This way we can see what the issues the branches are facing firsthand and be able to provide solutions.
This past week, we have been working on the Final Report. This includes what we have accomplished so far, as well as a plan for future teams. The following are some screenshots of our report:
This is our semester timeline, which includes important milestones, responsibilities, and resources.
This is our plan for future teams, displayed in the form of a chart. It shows the timeline for next semester and its relationship to the overall project timeline.
Today, we started to brainstorm tips for future teams based on what we found difficult when starting the project. Some tips are below:
Our plan for the second half of the semester is to decrease the ramp up time for future teams by creating scripts and documentation that will help them with setup/installation and developing the necessary skills.
Today, we started compiling resources that would help future teams on a Google document. The following are some of the resources we have compiled:
We have finished the tasks we were supposed to have completed by March 6, which include:
The following are some screenshots of our code:
Great news! We ended up getting past the major errors and the web server is now generating our reports! However, they are not yet being populated with information from the database, but that is a wonderful task to hand off to next years wonderful group of Intelligineers.
The team has spent a lot of time trying to implement the attendance sheets, but that does not come without its own large set of bugs and errors. They are an unfortunate part of coding. We are attempting to use various plugins (Originally wkhtmltopdf) to output our HTML code to PDF, however, we are working with a system created by someone else, so this brings up challenges for us to appropriately identify and alter code for our needs. That said, we are still making progress!
The end of the semester is nearing, and we are still hoping to get part of this working in the next week. After that, it will be an exciting transition to a new team who can continue to do great things for IntelliChoice. Stay tuned for hopefully one more update on our success!
The first step we are taking on putting our new attendance documents on the IntelliChoice website is adding the individual attendance charts for students/parents (See example in the post below). We added the buttons for this a few weeks ago, so now we are creating fake parents and children to implement the feature and test it. So far, we have enabled the button and began working on functionality. We are hoping to get the attendance sheets working soon!
Progress is coming along!
We worked with the IntelliChoice IT folks to come up with an attendance sheet design that meets their needs and legal requirements. We have different reports for students, volunteers, and branch managers. After creating the initial design using graphic art tools, we adapted it in HTML/CSS code, the first step in making it a part of the IntelliChoice website.
To convert attendance data to a PDF document, we are using a NodeJS plugin called wkhtmltopdf which allows us to create a PDF from HTML webpages. By creating the HTML templates for the attendance sheets, we have already been able to test out the functionality of wkhtmltopdf. The attached PDFs were actually created by the plugin, and are exactly what we hoped to see!
Now that we have the template code down, all we need to do is feed it the correct data on the website. We’ll see you when that’s done!
We are getting closer to implementing the attendance reports, but we had to plan for their arrival first!
In that light, we planned for their functionality by creating disabled buttons for use when we have created PDF generation functionality. This is a significant step, because ensuring we have the right permissions set for the correct users is one of the most integral parts of the process. Only branch managers should be able to get the branch attendance report. Only parents and branch managers should be able to look at their students’ attendance. Only volunteers and branch managers should be able to look at the volunteer’s attendance. By creating these buttons, we have successfully mapped out this hierarchy.
From here, we just have to make those buttons do something when they are clicked. We re on our way to success!
Parent View
Volunteer/Student View
Branch Manager View
