AppointmentmentPeach Appointment Manager CSCI 6442 Project Spring, 2018

Requirements Build a WordPress plugin, accessible (and free) for anyone’s use Plugin provides a shortcode that can be pasted onto a page of a WordPress site Shortcode adds an appointment manager to that page Can be used by the organization to allow its clients to schedule their own appointments Each client sees only their own appointments Flexible reporting tools

Objections This isn’t the latest, fancy buzzword technology I will have to adapt to a limited database environment Why do I have to program in PHP?

Responses When you actually work, you’ll often need to adapt to the technology that’s available, not always the very newest MySQL has the basic capability for a competent data model and reasonable SQL use Often we have to program in what’s available; and PHP is easy to learn Note that you also will gain experience in the Web/application hosting environment that is dominating the World Wide Web

Introduction AppointmentPeach: A WordPress plugin to add client appointment self-scheduling to a WordPress Web site for a practice. Support for : Selection of provider and type of appointment, schedule, reschedule and cancel appointments Reporting: Clients can see all of their appointments; providers can each see their personal schedule of booked appointments; practice administrator can see all booked appointments and all client actions Administration: Practice administrator can schedule and reschedule appointments, edit providers, appointment types, appointment lengths, provider schedules

Why AP? Flexible : Can be used to schedule appointments for a variety of groups and individuals Up-To-Date : Keeps track of all appointments Quick and Robust : User Friendly Interface Reporting : Provides convenient on-line and off-line access to schedules For an example of the capability, see the Scheduler page of Gaithersburg Dental Care.

Technical Environment Web server from a commercial ISP Staging sub-domain for pre-release versions WordPress to give us a pre-built UI MySQL DBMS

Getting Started on WordPress There are two links on the class site for WordPress plugin development: Intro, followed by more details on OO plugin development The WordPress Plugin Handbook There are several books on WordPress plugin development on Amazon

Teams and Membership System Engineering Team : Leads the Project, coordinates with all teams, controls requirements, establishes software development and configuration control environments (2) Data Administration: Develops and maintains data model and stored procedures (2) Scheduling Team : Develops functionality for client scheduling and client rescheduling and notification of all appointment changes Reporting Team : Provides access by providers, administrators and clients to appointments, and access to appropriate change capabilities (change capabilities provided by Scheduling Team). Provides pdfs of schedules.

Team Requirement Each team must have a balance of experience levels SET should have software development experience DBA team should have significant db experience

Project Requirements A requirements document will be given to the project shortly Use case forms are on the class Web site Data model design, code design, software engineering process and environment should all begin at that time Weekly progress reports due from each person Accomplishments during the week: specific accomplishments, not just “worked on” Planned accomplishments for next week Homework grade is given for each progress report, based on difficulty of assignment and accomplishments

Development Environment Nothing is considered accomplished until it works in a shared environment Shared environments: Development—for software that’s undergoing test Test—for integrated test of the entire product Staging—release ready for production Production SET will establish rules for software release to each environment Only SET will publish into production environment

Development Methodology Usually software development is design, build, test That won’t work—we don’t have time We will conduct design, build, test all at the same time, starting now SET configures test environments, establishes submission, release procedures DBA team designs data model, first doing parts needed by development teams Development teams develop the first plugin with some functions

Project Grade Large component of project grade is the final result High quality UI Lots of useful function Of course the whole thing working Easy for a new person to pick up and use Easy for an enterprise to sign up and sign up their members Large component of project grade based on ranking of contribution Each project member will do a ranking of all participants by contribution to the project Your position on that ranking will be a factor in your grade Large component of project grade based on my personal assessment If the project is a failure no one can expect a good grade from it

Communication Biggest problem in projects is lack of communication Not everyone knows what others are doing, or problems they are having Use the class email list for all project communications—yes, it goes to everyone Use subject line carefully so that we don’t all read things we don’t need to This way everyone will have a picture of what’s going on

The Key to Success The biggest reason for success is teamwork Disputes waste time!! Iron-clad rule: never criticize another project member! It’s OK to criticize their idea, their approach, even their work But not the person Don’t say “you are wrong”. Say “I don’t agree that X, I think Y is correct.” Don’t say “you made a mistake.” Say “I tested your version of X and can’t get it to do Y.” If you criticize another project member, you get F for the project. Really.

Bottom Line The project is doable The application is of real scale, can be demonstrated during, say, an interview It will also be very satisfying to produce a useful project that is quite professional Working closely with the project you will become good friends with some smart people

Goal for Next Week Each team choose a leader. You can keep that leader or rotate leadership First tables of data model to be designed, agreed by all teams, created by dba team. Test appointment data to be inserted. Plugin to be created by the Scheduling team so that it creates a shortcode that demonstrably works Reporting team to produce a pdf of appointments on demand. All of this to work on the staging site and demonstrated next week