14 September 2008
The National Piping Centre - Tuition Diary
While working as an administrator for the National Piping Centre I developed an intranet system to help me and my colleagues to schedule lessons, manage student records and streamline many other tasks.
The original lesson booking system was a spreadsheet on a shared file server. One big problem with this was whoever opened the diary first locked out anyone else from saving changes. Before you could say "database" I started working on a PHP/MySQL solution to the problem...
As well as an AJAX interface to book lessons, I linked in a student database which I originally created in Microsoft Access. When you book a lesson in the system, the booking is linked to the relevant student record so you can quickly get to their contact details, exam results, course bookings etc.
There is still some work in progress but other interesting features are:
- semi-automated e-mail-merge system (manage mailing lists for course confirmations etc.)
- a holiday leave management system
- a template system for setting up availability and regular fixtures in the diary
- use of metaphone sound-alikes gets round the Mc vs Mac problem!
- audit trails for almost all changes to the diary makes changes to, say, exam results, accountable
Last updated: Sunday, 14 September 2008
