Portfolio Details - Time keeping & scheduling application with MIS reports

Time Keeping & Scheduling Application with MIS Reports (Using Microsoft’s Outlook Appointment Add in component and other 3rd party tools)

Case Study

Project Details

Category: Microsoft Outlook plug-in, Desktop Application
Client: Medical clinic in Australia
Domain: Services, Healthcare
Project Duration: 2 months

Challenges / Problem Statement

Client was using Microsoft Outlook’s Appointment module to create appointments but he was not able to put in and store additional details i.e. whether appointment is chargeable / non-chargeable, hourly rate, etc. related to appointments in structured format.
Client neither had any data/information on his business KPIs nor had access to any MIS reports. Client was not able to figure out performance of various business activities and identify areas which needed more focus.
Client also wanted the reports to verify overall performance as well as employees' performance month on month basis for key business areas

About Client

Client is Australia based financial institution who advises its clients in areas of cash-flow and taxation planning, wealth creation, investment opportunities, Risk assessment & wealth protection, etc. They charge the client for the services on the hourly basis and they schedule and keep track of appointments with the clients using Microsoft’s Outlook application.

Solution

As client was already using Microsoft Outlook for appointment and scheduling, solution developed has to be Microsoft Outlook centric only and hence outlook plug-in was developed. In order to enable user to provide additional information related to appointment, new UI developed where user can key in appointment related additional information.
All the appointment information was saved into the database so that data can be used in generating reports.
Separate reporting application developed which generated six different reports along with charts to measure the business and employee performance
Client can also set monthly targets for each employee and different business activities and measure actual performance against set targets.

What client has to say about the solution

“We got excellent solution which was perfectly meeting our needs. Solution development team took great interest in understanding our work flow and provided the solution without changing any of our work flows. Also, the reporting application developed is excellent and it helps us immensely to track my business and employee performance. Thank you very much for providing excellent solution to our business needs”

- Director and owner

How solution implemented

Microsoft’s office applications i.e. Word, Excel, Outlook, Power point, provides the capability to extend the standard functionalities provided by these applications by writing the add-in applications. In our solution, add-in was developed for Outlook application where we added UI form region to allow user to enter additional information related to appointment. Each appointment data (including the custom fields) was stored locally in outlook data file as well as SQL server database. Facility was also given to sync the local outlook file data and sql server data in case if there is a data mismatch between the two by any chance. Apart from appointment data, additional tables were created in sql server database to store performance target and actual work done data for business activities & each employee. Reporting application was developed using Time Scheduling & Syncfusion’s charting controls. Pie chart, stacked area chart, column bar graph were configured to plot performance & MIS data in graphical format.