Coldfusion XML Web application development - Tracking System Requests

Situation

A Web Operation Team needed a system to track requests coming from differents clients and manage assignments between Web operators responsible to address clients' requests. The team received requests such as media advisory, news releases, social media messages, slideshow, statements, speeches, intranet programs messages, reports and had to publish them on internet and/or intranet. The system needed to show an overview through reports and stats of the number of requests received and completed by the Web Operations Team.

Challenge

Developers were not available to accomplish the task and the team needed a simple, user-friendly and effective system to meet its needs. The system could not use a database storage system and required to use another data support system to keep all the information.

Technologies used

ColdFusion, XML, XSLT, XHTML, CSS, AJAX and Javascript

Solution

Our developer decided to implement a tracking system with ColdFusion 9 and XHTML to build Web interfaces and XML
to store all the data of the system

Our developer built different interfaces :

• to capture requests providing from differents clients: a client could choose one or multiple types of requests to post,
  attach files, provide details of the requests, submit requests and get a ticket number to track it.
• to manage assignments to Web operators by a team leader : all requests posted by clients were displayed in a dashboard
  managed by a team leader of theWeb operations team who assigned requests to Web operators available.
• to help clients interact with Web operators and provide additional resources : while proceeding to the requests, Web operators
  could ask more informations or resources to clients if needed and the clients could also update their requests.
• to produce reports and stats for executives and managers: all the requests stored in XML files with relevant
  information such as date posted, client's name, details, ticket numbers, Web operator's name, the time spent to complete the request, etc were displayed in HTML tables with graphics and could be exported to Excel format if needed.

The return

The tracking system requests enabled the overview of all the requests sent daily by clients to the Web operations team, improved the management of tasks assignment by the team leader to Web operators and also enabled to appraciate the volume of work done by the resources available.