A Web-based System for Maintaining a Departmental Personnel List and Telephone Directory Patrick R. Michaud Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences Isabelle N. Michaud Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science

Conrad Blucher Institute 50+ staff and researchers 4 major divisions 4 locations –Corpus Christi (2) –College Station –Houston

Needs Assessment - 1 Up-to-date telephone directory and address book –Frequent changes in CBI staff locations –No centralized personnel authority –No central place for storing directory –Cost of distribution of updates

Needs Assessment - 2 Maintenance of staff profile pages on web site –Frequent changes in location/project –50+ profiles to maintain –Difficult to gather information –Difficult to enforce style consistency

Traditional Solutions - 1 Telephone Directory –Designate a "directory maintainer"  Consumes significant workload  Typically a "low-priority" task  Requires procedure for sending updates to maintainer –Maintain a shared directory file  Difficult to enforce consistency  File may be corrupted  Need to inform staff of location of "master file"

Traditional Solutions - 2 Staff Profile Web Pages –Delegate to webmaster  Consumes lots of data entry time  Poor utilization of skills of highly-paid person  Difficult to gather information in timely manner

A Solution Create web-based personnel list and telephone directory –Centralizes location of personnel and telephone information Use Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts to automate updates –Other staff can effect directory updates –Style and consistency can be enforced by script

Challenges Who is responsible for updating the directories? Who has access to the update scripts? How can quality control be handled?

Our Approach - 1 Who is responsible for updating the directories? –Empower staff to effect updates directly. "Those who are bothered by out-of-date information are responsible for updating it."  Implication: All employees must have access to CGI update scripts.

Our Approach - 2 Who has access to the update scripts? –All CBI employees/staff –Use Apache web server access control features Computers on CBI networks allowed access Offsite computers require username/password

Our Approach - 3 How can quality control be handled? –Traditional approaches Review/approval by single authority prior to release –increases workload –delays updates Immediate release with periodic review of web site –poor quality information may be missed –periodic review is tedious, low priority

Our Approach - 4 How can quality control be handled? –Our solution: Updates to web directory causes notification to entire CBI staff Many immediate reviewers, who have ability to immediately correct errors Peer pressure reduces likelihood of errors/poor quality Notifies staff of personnel additions and changes Gently reminds others to update information if needed Multiple small changes within an hour result in only one message

System Demonstration

System Structure persform Perl/CGI script to update data file in /persdb/username/data.txt mkpersonnel Creates personnel directory HTML from data files in /persdb/*/data.txt mkphonelist Creates telephone list HTML file mkbio Creates individual personnel page in /persdb/username/index.html

Observations Effective mechanism for updates Initial flood of updates Some employees continued to maintain manual lists after system created Difficulty in publishing location of update script Easy to effect style redesigns Provided source for populating LDAP database

Future Work Redesign system to update/maintain information in LDAP directories Similar systems for project directories, facilities information Patrick & Isabelle Michaud CCSC-SCC April 14, 2000