DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EVENT
SCHEDULING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of study
The continuous advancement in the
information and communication technology as contributed a lot to the universe,
making life easier for individual, organization, institution and every field
now see the importance of ICT as the world goes global and tend towards
ubiquitous computing. The rate of time consuming task and tedious activities
has reduced as a result of this advancement because many tasks can now be
automated with the help of technology improving the manual way of processing,
storing, accessing, communicating and providing information from one person to
another or among group of people.The
role of information is inevitable in our daily lives. Information is extremely
important to the successful functioning of any organisation. The constant and
steady stream of communication and information helps to build credibility and
reflect a sense of transparency in our daily interaction. Various people assemble together for
the purpose of communicating with one another towards achieving the
organisation’s goal.
The workspace in our daily
activities requires proper interaction as event is considered as one of the
frequent task in an organization. Events have the distinctive ability to bring
people physically together, and to motivate and make them communicate in ways
that cannot be easily copied by other means. Although events are important part
of human life but the subject however is poorly developed and there is need for
proper enlightenment. (Malhotra,2002).
An event covers extensive
functionality and many different contexts. It concept includes social
gathering, sport, meeting, entertainment, festival etc and it has become a
fashion to use the word event for something that involve people and time in a
particular place. It is seen as a functionality “primitive” meaning something
that happens attached to a time frame. Events could be anything from an item in
a personal schedule, such as informal gathering, a formal gathering. Event is a
word that is generally used for an occurrence at a given place, a special
circumstances, which can only occur ones. One key characteristic of an event is
that they are time limited, it is not a continuous process, each event has a
start and finish time and it is very difficult to replicate an event no matter
how one tries (Getz, 2007). Further study of this subject shows that beyond the
ability to create an event (time and scope), some functionality are also
required such as registration of event, email notification of event updates,
multiple event administrators (with different level of authentication).
Though scheduling an event within
similar or different group is a very tedious work because it is very difficult
to find suitable time between multiple individuals. Different techniques,
tools, technology have been developed in time past to solve problems relating
to how to properly manage an event. The need for scheduling
was birth with the question of how to manage time and execute plans in our
daily life. Scheduling is considered one of the old problems in
the field of the computer science, this problem has been recognized in number
of computing field, in order to solve this problem number of integrated
solutions have been developed. A large number of the research works and implementations
of different algorithms have been designed, developed and simulated for solving
the critical problems linked with the scheduling. There are numbers of common
algorithms which have been utilized for solving the scheduling problem such as
“Priority Scheduling, First-Come, First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling, Round Robin
(RR), Shortest-Job-First (SJR) Scheduling and many others”.
Event
management is a new evolving field which was birth in order to manage different
kind of event, depending on the number of people involved. Event management is the
organization of all the tasks and activities necessary for the execution of an
event regarding its strategy, planning, implementation, and control, based on
the principles of event marketing and the methods of project management (Loos
et al, 2008). The context of event flows includes multiple states and
participation from different people such as event registration, pending
registration, cancelled event, approved registration, attendees, and event
managers. The manual process of managing an event is time consuming as man is
prone to error.
As
the world goes through internet revolution, the demand for system that ease
human from their daily work is increasing and there are lots of internet
applications that provide support for organisations so as to help them achieve
their goals. One of these applications is a web based application for proper
event management.
1.2 Statement
of the Problem
Event
involves bringing people together within a time frame in a particular place.
The major problem is how information about the event is been communicated and
how to secure a proper venue for each event.
The manual way of conveying messages bring about certain restrictions
such as non-availability of the proposed receiver, omission of vital details
from the dispatcher, etc. Another problem is people forgetting about the event
date or time, because there is no proper documentation about the event. Sometimes the purpose of the event is not
well sent out, so lack of preparation for such meeting occurs.
In
addition, we have different unit in an institution, each with different work
and functions. Sometimes different unit fix the same event venue, the same day
and time, without knowing that the venue as been schedule for another meeting.
This leads to congestion of event and most events as been terminated or
conducted lately because of lack of venue. It is in this light that this
project seeks to develop a system that will provide solution to these problems
stated above.
1.3 Aim
and Objectives
The
aim of this project is to design and implement a web based event scheduling
management system. To achieve this, we shall be guided by the following
specific objectives.
§ To extensively carry out an analysis on how event is been managed in
the institution.
§ To improve on the existing method by automating
the manual ways of scheduling an event.
§ To develop and implement event scheduling
management system for the institution.
1.4 Significance of Study
In academic environment,
proper coordination of venues for an event and those that are to participate in
such event is of high importance towards preventing clashes of venues and also
uninvited personnel to a particular event. In this modern age where computing
is becoming ubiquitous, organizations are being encouraged to have an
information system that will assist them in the management of events.
The Event Management
System developed in this research work will be beneficial to the staff of a
particular institution (Federal University of Technology). The institution will
benefit immensely from implementing this system as it will make the assigning
of event venues and sending of notifications to attendee a seamless effort.
The employee of the
organization will also be able to get notification when a new event is created
in which they are to be part of, also the System will send a reminder in form of SMS and Email to
the attendee in some days or hours as it is being setup by the organization.
Finally, the organization
can generate frequent reports on event venues, date, time and those that are to
attend a scheduled event
1.5 Scope of Study
This
project which will be a web based application will handle issues related to
scheduling and management of event within the institution. It will be confined
to creation of meetings by the administrator, online venue reservation and
sending of information as regards to the meeting to employee, with detail
meeting description such as time, duration, agenda and venue that will be
needed for meeting via their email and mobile phone. This system will also send
a remainder before the meeting, to enhance full awareness and preparation.
1.6 Limitation
of Study
This study is not a new
concept but a modification of existing concepts using the new designing and
development technology to design an effective application. Although this
project is designed with mobile connectivity in mind, but the mobile
application interfacing with this application is not developed. Also the application does not include a
conference or video calling integration.
This system is a web
application design only for Information and communication technology staff, FUT
Minna. This project does cover the whole institution.
1.7 Operational
Definition of Terms
Information: Knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or
circumstance; news
Event: An
occurrence, especially one that is particularly significant, interesting,
exciting or unusual
Scheduling: Planning work that needed to be done, showing the order in which tasks
are to be carried out and the amounts of time allocated to them.
Organization: A group of people identified by a shared
purpose or interest.
Management: The act of controlling or handling something successfully.
System: An assembly of computer hardware and software peripheral working
together.