Overall Summary

I believe I learned quite a bit through the Fall semester working at Austin Peay. I passed a milestone of 1 year working here while in this class. This means that the class went hand and hand with me getting more responsibilities and learning more. You could say that I was given the real key to my job instead of the limited one… With that said, my work situation is quite a bit different than some of my classmates.

I work in the technology field and use different types of technology every day. I generally don’t need people to show me how something works. I didn’t have someone to sit with me and show me how everything worked. I found it out on my own which is good because I like to figure it out myself. This is good because you shouldn’t ask too many questions when given an assignment. Now that I have the disclaimer out of the way, I will discuss some of the major things that I learned during the semester.

I’ll start off with the programming side of things. Before the semester started, I had been at Austin Peay for over 8 months. I already knew how to make most programs and do most parts of my job. One thing I didn’t’ have a good grasp on was Web Self Service. It’s a confusing, unintuitive mess of a way to write the program. You have to think differently when you are writing something in self service. During the semester, I was given some time to learn more about self service and was expected to write a program to reset banner passwords. I started by looking at some other self service programs and then started to form my own. After many errors, I got the program working and then tweaked it to make it what it is now.  It’s really amazing to see something that you built work when you didn’t have a clue how to do it starting out. Recently, we had our first live test with the self service package and it passed with flying colors. The best part about this is that I know self service now. If another package is needed,  I should be able to create it more easily. 

Next , I’ll talk about working with other non-technical employees to fill requests.  I actually got to do this quite a bit this semester which is something new to me. Throughout the semester, I had several meetings with athletics, HR, and a few other departments. The meeting ranged from software requests, to report requests, to bug fixes.  I learned how to ask the right questions.  Since these are non-technical users, they generally don’t’ understand how something works. They just want what picture in their heads. This can present problems because sometimes, what’s in their heads isn’t possible or is extremely hard. I had to learn how to effectively communicate what can and can’t be done with projects.  I also had to learn how to convert their non-technical requests in to a request with technical details.

Finally, I’ll talk about training. I was in training a little over a year ago. It’s amazing how much things change in just one year.  This semester, we got a new employee and I actually got to start training him. I got to show him how all of our programs work, and get him started in the right direction. Training a technical employee is quite a bit different than working with a non-technical employee. The technical employee generally knows a lot more about the technical side of things. I learned that this can be a double edged sword. On one hand, the technical employee won’t ask non-technical questions. They will generally understand how everything works. This lets you move more quickly when showing them new material. On the other hand, the technical person asks more technical questions. The technical person will ask why something works the way it does while the not technical person generally accepts the situation. It’s something that I learned that you need to be prepared for.

As you can see from the information above, my experience was quite a bit different than some of the other students. This isn’t a bad thing though. Throughout the semester, I learned many things. I actually learned so many things that I probably couldn’t detail them all If I was asked to come up with a list. The above is just a summary of some of the biggest things I learned.

Dec 5 - 8

I know I'm a little early on this one, but I am off tomorrow and all next week. I just bought a house and finally get to move in. The wait was 6 weeks and I never thought it would get here. In just 1 short day, I will have keys to my new home. I'm very excited!

I completely finished the Banner Password Reset Page this week. My boss wanted me to change a couple "small" things so I did. In reality, they were small requests, but the programming had to be completely rewritten to accommodate them. It didn't take too long though.

After I complete the page, I spent a couple hours trying everything I could to break it. I didn't succeed which is a good thing. Any time we are altering passwords, we need to be very careful. If someone breaks the system, very bad things could happen. That's why I took a big chunk out of my day to test the new piece of software.

Other than the password reset page, I didn't do any other projects. My main goal was to test and set up RDP (Remote Desktop) on the iPad. I had a couple technical issues (DNS resolving related), but got them worked out. We now have a good idea of how well RDP'ing to our computers will work.

The rest of my time was spent helping and training our new employee. I trained him on how Web Self Service Packages work and got him started on one. I also showed him how Argos works in more detail. He is currently completing his first self service package.

Nov 28 - Dec 2

The year is wrapping up! I worked the whole week this week but I'm off on Friday and off the whole next week moving. Come back a week then get another week off for Christmas then the following Monday off for New Years. This is the best time of the year!

I completed a few projects this week. It's amazing how timelines change...

The main thing I wrapped up was the HR Time Sheet Reports. We had a couple things change with it, so I had to recode a big portion. I met with HR and discussed how to pull the employees needed. Once I got that, everything was relatively easy.

After the program was set up. I had another meeting with HR to train them on scheduling. Now, someone can easily go into Approx(our scheduling program) and click on the days they want the reminder to be sent out. It's pretty cool.

In addition to the HR Reports and meetings, I met with another section of HR. This time is was about the web directory. It appears that some people's title either isn't showing up, or is showing up wrong. It's something that I will have to look into.

The final thing I worked on was more changes to Peaybay. We've made many changes. We had another test on Friday with typical users (not IT) which found some more bugs. The final version has to be wrapped up by the end of next week.

That's all for now. I'll probably update the blog one more time.

November 21 - 23

A short week!

Everyone likes a short week.

This week I mainly worked on one project. It's a banner password reset page.

First I'll give a little background on the situation.

Our Staff uses something called INB (Internet Native Banner) to track students, report grades, report attendance, bill students and more... It's used for just about everything related to a student.

It seems that we get multiple calls a week stating that someone had has been locked out of their account or forgot their password. Users will be locked out if they guess the wrong password too many times... A lot of time was being wasted reseting accounts and resetting passwords. What could be done?

My co worker created a function to reset the banner password when I passed it certain information. I created a Web Self Service, which uses a totally seperate password where users can log in and change their password. It resets the account if it's locked.

This will be a huge help for our department and a big help for the faculty that forget their passwords. With one click (well 2 now), users can quickly reset their banner password.

Much work needed to go into this package. It seemed simple, but you have to account for all kinds of errors.

It was a great project for a short week and should be moved to production sometime soon.

November 14 -18

Somehow this week's information was lost. I'll do my best to recreate it.

This week I worked some more on PeayBay. I had to make some changes to the PeayBay query because we had a few people not show up. At the end of the week, we had a test run and even had several auctions. Unfortunately, everything didn't go smoothly. More work will have to be put into the Drupal version of PeayBay before it goes live.

I worked on some more athletics reports that were requested a while back. These were mostly simple. I did have to communicate with the requester to see what they wanted. Sometimes, you don't get the information you need. You have to fish for it.


I looked to Web Self Service some more and started working on the new Banner Reset Password Page. There will be more on that next week.

A big part of my job is learning new programs and processes. The Self Service piece above is an example of that.

Nov 7 - 11

Another week gone! This year is going by fast….

This week I worked on several small projects.

I continued to work with HR on the emails to bi-monthly staff. This process should be done by the end of next week.

I worked on transferring PeayBay to Drupal. PeayBay is an employee incentive site that our web admin built. It’s really cool. You can give points to people and then at the end of the year, bid on various items. 

Our web admin wanted to move it to Drupal, so I had to set up some processes to let him do that. He now gets a list of all eligible employees every night.

I worked created an Athletic report for the Athletics office. I worked with them to find what information they needed.

I created a report for the African American Office. Again, I had to work with them to find out all the information they wanted.

I worked on adding some more information to Housing’s Event Tracking report.

I also did various other maintenance tasks.

Event tracking has now tracked over 75 events! It looks like we have ordered more scanners too. It’s good to see something that you spent time on actually used.

Oct 31 - Nov 4

What a fun week! A lot got accomplished this week.

I started this week by training the student worker. He’s getting better and better at SQL which is good. He hadn’t had any previous experience with programming at all, so it’s really nice to see him catching on. Generally, it’s better to have experience in some kind of programing language so you can transfer your skills. The student worker also started training on Drupal which is a content management system that APSU’s website is built in. Hopefully he catches on quickly.

I also worked with HR throughout the week. We are starting to get time sheet emails sent out to semi-monthly employees. This will take a while because we have to go back and forth to make sure we have the right group, but should be done in the next couple of weeks.

I made some more individualized reports for even tracking. I’ve now had over 50 events tracked.

I also have to include the maintenance. It again took a big part of my week. I’ve been tweaking several programs to make them run better. I hope I’ll be able to work on the event tracking some more in the next couple of weeks. I need to make some additional tweaks to it.

October 24-28

This week was about research and training.

At the beginning of the week, I researched the new mobile application technology that I learned about last week. I found out how everything worked, how it compliled, what steps you had to take to start development as well as what hardware you needed to get started. I found some pretty instersting information...

It seems that if you use a product where you write one piece of code, it's going to do one of 2 things. The first is make a "custom" web browser for the OS that you compile for. This is the only code that's different between the different OS. Everything else would be written in HTML. You basically write an application to browse a website. If you are doing that, why not just make a mobile website? The only advantages to a mobile application in this sense would be push notifications and access to the camera.

The other method is for the program to be complied specifically for the OS. This requires more use of java when coding. The big problem with this method is that it doesn't perform as well as it can on each OS. If you write an application for a specific OS, the application should take advantages of all the OS's features and architecture. This isn't the case with method we learned about last week.

I also helped train our student worker. He's starting to learn SQL. I set him up a sandbox to play in that was created from an external table, then copied to a permanent one. The student worker can query and modify the table as he wishes. One quick command can restore the table to it's original condition.

Oct 17-21

The first 2 days of the week were spent at MTSU at an IT conference covering mobile applications. We learned about the the development of the application, the background needed to set it up, the programming languages and more. We took notes and are looking into developing one of these applications in the future. 

Programming languages include Groovy, Ruby On Railes, Java, and Grails.

You write one program and then can compile it for many devices including iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. 

I worked on bug fixes on Wednesday. 

I was out of the office Thursday and Friday. 

October 10-14

This week was a short week as I was in meeting most of the week.

The biggest thing I worked on was adding features to the event tracking automated emails. I added breakdowns of given criteria. For example, the email will now contain the total number of students, and the count of fr, so, jr, sr, and gr students. It's a quick way to for the users to see how different demographics are attending the game. I also worked more on customized reports.

Other than that, I mainly worked on support issues since much of the office was out.

October 3 -7

What a fun week!. This week focused on improvements. One of the first things I did this week was meet with several people to discuss event tracking. I needed to get some more information on what was wanted out of the reports. I met with 5 people from different departments to discuss what information should be sent via email to everyone that creates and scans and events and what other specific information that certain departments wanted. This information will be put into an Argos report and only be accessible by that specific departments. After the meeting, I had a good grasp on what additional information is needed and started to work on it.

I also worked on improving a couple of automated emails. I made some corrections to the 2 monthly emails that remind users to fill out their leave reports.

The last thing I worked on was phone directory. I made changes to how the directory worked internally, added departments to the directory, and added a drop down box to select those departments. It seems to work really well, but was a lot of work. Now, if you select a department from the drop down box, you see the department information first (if available) and then everyone in the department. I also worked on getting faculty and staff ORGS worked out. For example, I now show up as Office of Information Technology instead of Inf Tech. Everyone in the Office of Information Technology shows up like this now. It's a big improvement. All changes should go live on Monday.

Sept 26 -- 30

Another fun week!!!

This week was mainly a maintenance week yet again. One of the bigger things I worked on was improving the efficiency of the event tracking system. Reports were taking anywhere from 45 seconds to 10 minutes or more to pull up. This didn't matter too much when I created the system because emails were automatically being sent with a report attached to them...

The same doesn't hold true once people request to have their own reports with their own data. These reports are created on demand. This means that the user must wait to pull the actual report up. Waiting 10 minutes just isn't acceptable. I set out to fix it... I rewrote some queries, improved several functions that give us data and recreated the tables with indexes. It took me a while to do all this but the end result is amazing. One report that pulls around 1000 students' information originally took around 11 minutes. After rewriting and optimizing the exact same report takes 4 seconds.

That's a huge improvement.

Sept 19 - 23

A lot of new projects didn't get completed this week. It was more of a maintenance week.

Monday was eventful. I found a couple problems with the event tracking system that I had to correct right before we moved it to production. This took up most of my day. I also worked on created a new report for the event tracking system and did some maintenance on out work order system .

Tuesday morning was the day to move the automated email system for event tracking to production. I put in on production, but couldn't get it working. After a couple hours, I finally got it set up and working. It turns out that I didn't have access to write to a directory, so the whole process was bombing. I finally got it up Tuesday for I left and had everything working 100%

Wednesday through Friday were basically maintenance days. I modified several programs and made some bug fixed. I also worked to par the Phone Directory Department list down. I'm hoping to get it down to 200 or fewer choices that way the new drop down box won't be too cluttered.

That pretty much sums up this week. There wasn't a lot of new projects, but the old ones always have to be maintained.

Sept 12 - 16

What a hectic week!

This week I mainly focused on programming an automated email system for event tracking. I had worked on it in previous weeks, but really set out to make it work this week. I had a goal of getting it working by friday.

This may seem like a lot of time to integrate an automated email system, but believe me, it's not. We didn't have any examples of this working at Austin Peay.

The main problem I had with setting up the system was sending attachments from Oracle. This is not an easy thing to do as there are no built in functions. I had to research and find multiple ways to do it. Eventually, I found a way to get it working, but the max attachment size was only 32k. This would hold data for about 500 students. Seeing no other ways to get it working, I implemented this process and tested it.

It worked!!! Now to test the size limit.

I made a file with 10k student records and tried to send it..... It Worked!!! Perplexed, I did further research on the size limit. It turns out that the size limit imposed is per line. Since I'm building the attachment with multiple line (CSV File), it have me no problems.

I finally got the automated email system up. It should be live on production by Tuesday!

Sept 6 - Sept 9

This was a short week! With that being said, plenty of work got started.

This week, I worked some more with the Event Tracking. I tested to make sure all the data was getting to us and getting in the correct tables. I found an issue with events that aren't booked using the room reservation system. Currently, we are having problems linking an Event to and Event ID if the event wasn't booked using the room reservation system. I have created several solutions and began testing them. I'm hoping to implement one of the sometime next week. I will begin working on automatic emails to the event creator next week.

I have also been working on the phone directory. I'm attempting to get everyone with the same department to have the same department name. I'm setting this up so that I can have a department dropdown box requested by Dr. Luck. Hopefully I can get this up and running next week too. We currently have over 300 departments and I deem that a little too many to scroll through when looking for a specific department.

I also created and automated several reports for different faculty and worked with the faculty to ensure that the reports are being delivered in a readable format. I had to walk several people through opening reports in different programs.

Even though it was a short week, I moved forward on several projects and created some additional reports. 

Aug 29 - Sept 2

The main project I worked on this week was Event Tracking. I'm currently trying to set up an Event Tracking system that many departments around APSU will use to track student events. It consists of an iPod touch in a housing that contains a bar code reader and magnetic strip reader. The students card will be scanned and later uploaded to a database on our servers. Once this is complete, the event creator will be able to pull reports of every event attended. It's actually a pretty complicated process. I'm simplifying it quite a bit. 

Other activities that I worked on last week included report creating for several faculty and fixed to the APSU phone directory. 

I'll continue working on the event tracking system next week.