Room Scheduler System 

Executive Summary

Our customer is a leader in innovation for interactive presentation products and collaboration tools.

 

The Room Scheduler System can be used to schedule meetings, reserve meeting rooms and invite attendees and it is imperative to have a tool that allows to reserve/schedule/cancel conference rooms through web on any floor without leaving your desk in a 50 storey tall buildings in Manhattan or Tokyo or San Francisco.

The objective of ennovate’s engagement was primarily to maintain, test and enhance the Room Scheduler product. In the following 5 years of serving as an offshore development partner, ennovate has supported an entire spectrum of technologies such as Java, Linux, Shell scripting, Web based application, Exchange server, and even Firmware development. Apart from enhancing the product with over 20 new innovative features, ennovate has brought down product development and maintenance costs by over 25% by leveraging appropriate mix of resources and flexible engagement model.

The Customer

  • A leader in bringing innovation to interactive presentation products and collaboration tools. From traditional whiteboards and chalkboards, to interactive whiteboards and presentation tools for the Education, Corporate, Government and Military markets, our customer's products are widely accepted globally
  • The customer has developed a Room Scheduler product which can be used to reserve meeting rooms, schedule meetings and invite attendees through its own user interface or through web in conjunction with a server

The Challenge

  • Understanding the existing product in absence of any documentation
  • Incorporate email functionality to enable automatic delivery of meeting notes to individual participants captured during the meeting by a different device. The application was built on legacy framework using legacy language which left no room for implementing this functionality. This was a very critical functionality, because the attendees used to forget downloading the notes manually
  • Enable SSL based remote communication between exchange server and the product through a connector, which worked only locally and that too without SSL encryption
  • Enhancements as well as testing were required to be completed in a very short span of time

The Solution

  • Design & Development

    ennovate team understood the existing application by going through the code.

    ennovate implemented a feature which eliminates the need to download the notes. Now the Room scheduler automatically e-mails the notes to the meeting participants following a meeting (or during a meeting). In this way, the requirement to download the notes is effectively eliminated, making it easier to jump to the next task without worry of losing the notes.

    In order to solve the problems arising out of unknown email IDs, ennovate implemented a feature that allows system administrator to specify an LDAP server during setup.

    The product's Clustered Exchange Connector was developed to support communication between the product and Exchange server remotely on clustered environment.

    • It also supports SSL, Caching mechanism and Exchange Server 2000/2003/2007
    • The software supports English, French & Spanish languages
    • The Software lends support to an integrated camera that senses the number of attendees in a meeting room.This number is displayed on the external Unit as well as to all attendees paged by the software. The meeting time commences as and when the number becomes non-zero. This feature is called Room Sensor
    • Information transmitted through the software utilizes the medium of internet, rendering it vulnerable to malicious acts. To ensure information fidelity and security, SSL has been introduced which enables data encryption and decryption at transmitter and receiver ends
  • Testing

    ennovate testing team created test plans and executed test cases before release. The following tests were performed on the system:

    • Functional Test
    • UI test
    • Regression Test
    • Compatibility Test (to ensure software compatibility on two different hardware units)

    For exchange server tests, we developed test plan and generalized test cases to test Exchange Server 2000/2003/2007 in simple and clustered environment.

  • Sustenance

    ennovate is responsible for solving customer issues and enhancing/adding features as per customer requirements related to:

    • Room scheduler product application (software related issues / feature enhancements with front panel and web interface).
    • Exchange connector (interface between Room scheduler and Microsoft Exchange server (standalone or cluster) to retrieve and/or schedule meetings from Microsoft Outlook).
    • Lotus Connector (interface between Room scheduler and Lotus Domino server to retrieve and/or schedule meetings from Lotus Notes).
    • ennovate has been maintaining this product since January 2005 during which 10 major releases have been undertaken.
  • Release Management

    ennovate proposed a unique solution to automate the process of firmware tarball creations through cvs. We conceptualized a script that generates full tarball for the desired tag. Initially user had to run the patch manually by ssh/telnet to device unit. With automation in place, user could now use the web interface for patch upgrade apart from firmware upgrades.

The Technology

  • Core Java
  • Servlets
  • Linux
  • Lotus Script
  • ASP, ASP.NET 2.0
  • C# 2.0
  • Exchange Server 2000/2003/2007
  • XML

The Benefit

  • ennovate team was able to drastically cut down team size as required by customer to enable smoother coordination and task handling despite the project being technically diverse. ennovate offered fewer engineers who were able to support the range of technologies at ease
  • Team ennovate worked round the clock and proposed innovative solutions to enhance the product and give it an edge in the market ultimately making the product a market success
  • Our clustered exchange server solution enabled remote access, improved performance with caching and enhanced security for the product. Also, with .NET based development, deployment can be done instantly as opposed to configuring the connecter with a large instruction set

Customer Testimonial