DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EVENT SCHEDULING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to 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 the time-consuming tasks 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 the 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 an event is considered as one of the frequent tasks 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 an important part of human life the subject, however, is poorly developed and there is a need for proper enlightenment. (Malhotra,2002). An event covers extensive functionality and many different contexts. Its concept includes social gathering, sport, meeting, entertainment, festival, etc and it has become a fashion to use the word event for something that involves 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 finishes 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 is also required such as registration of the event, email notification of event updates, multiple event administrators (with different levels of authentication). Though scheduling an event within a similar or different group is 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 computer science, this problem has been recognized in the number of the computing fields, 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 is a number of common algorithms that 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 newly evolving field that was birth in order to manage a 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, canceled 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 the internet revolution, the demand for a system that eases humans from their daily work is increasing and there are lots of internet applications that provide support for organizations 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

The 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 a meeting occurs.   In addition, we have different units in an institution, each with different work and functions. Sometimes different unit fixes the same event venue, the same day and time, without knowing that the venue as been scheduled for another meeting. This leads to congestion of events 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 a 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 an event scheduling management system for the institution.

1.4  Significance of the Study

In an 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 a 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 set up 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 the Study

This project which will be a web-based application will handle issues related to scheduling and management of events within the institution. It will be confined to the creation of meetings by the administrator, online venue reservation and sending of information as regards the meeting to an employee, with detail meeting descriptions 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 reminder 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, 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.

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