Requirements

[Val]

Okay so rather than list high medium low at the moment, I thought I would start to make a list of things which are "required". Add to this as you think of things!

Requirements for the system in general:
-The system should be able to be easily modifiable and maintainable in order to support any future upgrades to the business (eg new dorms)

Requirements for the front end booking system:
-The system should be able to handle various kinds of customers from business to holidaymakers.
-The system must be able to cater for all grades of room and meal packages (including no meal package)
-The system must be able to handle discounts (including the discount where non superior rooms without en suites get a discount)
-The system must inform (perhaps not functionally do?) customers of the different payment methods available and when to do so. (Paypal, cheque, card, cash).
-The system must be able to record that discounts have been given

Requirements for the staffing application (Note when I say staffing here, I mean the interface for making roats but also for staff to gain information about customers and allow them to pay bills etc):
-The system must be able to make predictions about staffing levels relative to bookings and use this information to generate staffing rotas
-The auto generated rota must be able to be manually overriden by the manager
-The system must generate a printable bill for customers on departure
-A manual override for discounts must be available to the manager.
-Staff timetables both in general (the master copy with everyone on it) and personal must be printable and generated 2 weeks in advance
-There must be a manual override on the timetables available to supervisors
-Timetables must allow for the manual entry of overspill staff
-Staff contact details must be kept on a database

Requirements for the statistical information:
-The system must be able to generate advertising material based on booking information
-The system must give information about marketing needs when booking levels are low/use the booking info to generate promotions on the front end
-The system must be able to generate reports such as occupancy levels, meals taken, customer details etc. The information is primarily permanent, but must be deleteable (oldest first) when neccessary.

Things to think about:

-Discounts will be available on the booking screen on the web, but also in the actual hotel. how will we handle this? There seems to be a few areas where the front end and the staffing system overlap. Need to look into what our applications are going to look like, and do. I assume we will have the front end web based part for customers - but should the system which the staff use in the hotel be an extension of this? Need to think about this.

[Elliot<SephSora>]

List of requirements seems good =), i think we should also look more at the Non Functional requirements and constraints of the project at the meeting tomorrow.

[Elliot<SephSora>]

By the by i managed to download and play around with Flex over the weekend. From what i can see it does indeed include some very glossy looking graphics and effects. I have had a bit of a fiddle with it and my view is that it will come in handy for various parts of the project, however i feel that many other parts should be implemented using more traditional techniques. Hopefully this will become more clear as time progresses.

Overall though, it looks very good and time saving for certain features.

Other News: One curious question that i would ask for the costing is will the hotel need a new hardware system in order to run and maintain the system. If not, how good is their current setup?...Also little thinks like how much paper and consumables will be used over a certain period of time. Also in any project team there is a mixture of expertise. I.E There may be 2 Software Engineers, a Database Engineer, An IT Manager etc etc.

CVs: Having looked at the format used in the document i sent out on Friday, what do people think of the CV format? I hope that the format of the document gives an idea as to the kind of things that need to be included in the document. It should take no more than 5 minutes to tailor the template for your own details.

Company Stuff: It would be advisable if we had a company name and logo by the time we handed in the document, it will save time later and it gives a better impression on whoever is marking it (we hope =)).

Elliot

P.S Pardon the 4am posting, habitual Night Owl, can't sleep lol. See ya all tomorrow!

[Richard]

I really don't like using "automated" software like flex so I agree with Elliot saying we should use "traditional technique". But indeed Flex might be handy for sketching or something like that.

-Discounts will be available on the booking screen on the web, but also in the actual hotel. how will we handle this? There seems to be a few areas where the front end and the staffing system overlap. Need to look into what our applications are going to look like, and do. I assume we will have the front end web based part for customers - but should the system which the staff use in the hotel be an extension of this? Need to think about this.

If there is actually another frontend that is not web based I really think we should use the same language to program both... It would be a loss of time to program low level API in two different languages and It would be rather unmaintainable (or difficult... have to merge change to both language API...). So if there is indeed another GUI that needs to be non-web I suggest using Java with Apache/Tomcat for the web part and Java with some graphical API for the other part since you all seems to know Java (at least a little). That way we would be able to avoid writing redundant code. I personally like Qt very much as a graphical API (it's really easy to implement/use, has some great features, is fully cross platform and it comes with some nice tools for GUI design/programming) as and I have some experience with it but we could use Awt or any gui api.


EDIT: If you want I will show you what we can do with Qt next time we meet... really a great API! I love it!

[Elliot<SephSora>]

I agree that we need to try and centralize our development to avoid linage problems further down the line, i know that when it comes to communicating between various pieces of software in a system it can be error prone and 'head-banging-against-the-wall' annoying to code.

As for Flex, i think that it could be a good tool graphically and animation wise but i think that we need to ascertain a better idea as to our design before we can decide where we can use it. There are many useful features but they could end up looking very generic.

P.S I do know of Qt but don't have a lot of experience with it, however it might prove useful for cutting out irritations in cross-software compatibility.

[Pip]

Requirements for the system in general:
HIGH -The system should be able to be easily modifiable and maintainable in order to support any future upgrades to the business (eg new dorms)

Requirements for the front end booking system:
LOW -The system should be able to handle various kinds of customers from business to holidaymakers.(aesthetics)
HIGH -The system must be able to cater for all grades of room and meal packages (including no meal package)
List needed from Peter

HIGH -The system must be able to handle discounts
List needed from Peter

MEDIUM -The system must inform (perhaps not functionally do?) customers of the different payment methods available . (Paypal, cheque, card, cash).
HIGH - When to pay
HIGH -The system must be able to record that discounts have been given

Requirements for the staffing application (Note when I say staffing here, I mean the interface for making roats but also for staff to gain information about customers and allow them to pay bills etc):
MEDIUM -The system must be able to make predictions about staffing levels relative to bookings
MEDIUM - Alert users to staffing rotas using generated info
HIGH -The auto generated rota must be able to be manually overriden by the manager
HIGH -The system must generate a printable bill for customers on departure
HIGH -A manual override for discounts must be available to the manager.
HIGH -Full time and part time staff timetables (the master copy with everyone on it) must be printable covering standard hours
MEDIUM - Timetables must be generated 2 weeks in advance
HIGH - Must be able to handle x-amount of staff
List needed from Peter
LOW - Personal timetables must be printable
HIGH -There must be a manual override on the timetables available to supervisors
MEDIUM-Timetables must allow for the manual entry of overspill staff
HIGH -Staff contact details must be kept on a database

Requirements for the statistical information:

HIGH -The system must be able to generate advertising material based on booking information
List of offers needed from Peter
HIGH - System must handle transactions for total number of rooms in hotel
No of rooms needed from Peter
HIGH -The system must give information about marketing needs when booking levels are low
MEDIUM - use the booking info to generate promotions on the front end
MEDIUM/HIGH -The system must be able to generate reports
List needed from Peter of the reports he needs and the priorities of the reports
such as occupancy levels, meals taken, customer details etc. The information is primarily permanent, but must be deleteable (oldest first) when neccessary.