Correspondence Management System

Email Workflow Tracking, and Real-time Chatting Channels

What is a Correspondence?

What is Correspondence?

• A Correspondence is a written form of communication between a sender and a recipient
• Correspondence is the letters, emails, reports, invitations, and any other type of technical writing used within an organization as a way of communication between its employees.

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Abstract

The idea of developing a Correspondence Management System (CMS) was first inspired by discovering our university's HRM "Human Resources Management System".

Abstract

• By questioning the head of the department, Dr. Mohammad Khalil, and some of our lecturers on how the communication process runs among these lecturers themselves, and among the lecturers and their heads of departments and deans for example, we concluded that the process of workflow communications and messaging inside our university is almost automated and pretty much comfortable.

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Abstract

• Hence, we began thinking of why not trying to adopt a new similar software system that offers the same essential functions and modules which the PTUK HRM system offers,
• but with an attempt to generalize the system by making it flexible to fit the needs of any organization, not only a university, since most of the establishments share a nearly similar workflow communication and messaging process, with some additional custom differences.

Problem Statement

• According to International Data Center, the average worker spends about 2.5 hours per day or roughly 30% of the workday writing emails.

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Problem Statement

• When a company grows up with its employees, the process of storing, processing, and tracking all the emails exchanged among employees becomes a real challenge.

Problem Statement

• Tracking and responding to these daily correspondences timely could become an annoying task if it is not managed correctly.

Objectives & Solution

Objective

We aim to develop a software solution to be used to store, process, manage, maintain, and deliver the content of a Correspondence across the organization.

Objectives & Solution

• The system should be customizable to satisfy the organization’s policy and vision.
• Determining messaging policy for users (Who can send to whom) is fully controlled by the organization itself.
• Making the system dynamic as much as possible.

Related Works

(Literature Review)

1. PTUK HRMS

The process of workflow communication and messaging among our university's staff is almost automated and pretty much comfortable. This facilitation was made possible by dint of the PTUK HRM software system which have been used recently.

PTUK – HRM

2. Microsoft Outlook

3.

Slack is an instant messaging platfotm which provides a new way to communicate with your team. It's faster, better organized, and more secure than email.

System Requirements

(Features)

Functional Features

1. Build the Organizational Structure

Example: Our university’s Organizational Structure

2. Registering a new employee (by the system admin)

3. User Login / Logon / Sign in

4. User Logout / Logoff / Sign out

• The authenticated user should be able to logout when they want to.
• The authenticated user should be automatically logged out when their cookie/session which stores their info expires.

5. Forgot password?

• The login user interface should have an option called: "Forgot your password?" which when clicked, redirects the user to a different user interface.

Forgot password Scenario:

An email with a secret token will be sent to the user to reset their password:

The user will be allowed to reset their password only if the clicked link is valid and not expired:

6. Send a new workflow (email)

The authenticated user can send a workflow to the people he/she is allowed to send to according to his/her position in the organizational structure/hierarchy.

6.1 Convenient Rich-Text Editor

6.2 Attach multiple files with the email before sending.�+ The drag and drop feature�

7. View Inbox Page

Inbox page shows the user all their workflows which were received from other users. Emails where users put you as a direct recipient (consignee)

8. View CC (Carbon Copy) page

CC page shows the user all their workflows which were received from other users. Emails where users put you as a CC recipient (not a direct consignee)

9. View Follow-up page

Follow-up page shows the user all their workflows which were sent by him/her. Emails which the user sent/created.

10. Archiving emails

• Archiving lets you tidy up your inbox, CC, and Follow-up pages - by moving messages into you’re the archive, so you don't have to delete anything.

• The email has been archived:

• Once the email is inside the archive, you can move it outside the archive to return to its original folder.

11. Pin / Unpin an Email

• This feature helps the user to always keep the most important emails on the top of the table.

12. On request pagination

• Imagine the delay that is caused when the user views their inbox that contains more than 1000 records for example!
• Emails should be fetched from the server only on-demand. Which means: Don’t fetch huge amount of data at once. Instead, fetch data in batches (على دفعات)

13. Show a chronological stack/sequence of all "actions" or "replies" on this specific email

14. Reply / forward / add new action to the currently clicked email

15. Print the page as PDF

Sometimes the user needs to have a physical copy of an email. So, once the user has clicked on a specific email record, the user can click on print page button to provide a .pdf or a .doc version of the chronological stack/sequence of all "actions" or "replies".

16. Search (filter) Emails

17. Fetch list of employees this user can message

Summary of all types of consignees:

18. Switch to another position while logged in

• Since the employee can have more than one position,�• although, the employee will have only one account, but he/she can determine in which position he/she is currently logged in.

19. Update basic info

The user can update their basic information, such as: their full name, phone number, birth date, city of residence, gender, marital status, and so on.

20. Change password

The authenticated user (user who is logged in) can change their password

21. Search Employees

Any user can reach this page to browse and search the list of current employees in the organization. Of course, the non-admin users have the view access only. They cannot edit other employees' information.

22. Manage employees' positions, job titles, and classifications (for admin)

• The admin can assign new positions with job titles and classifications to an employee.
• Remove some of the current positions assigned to an employee
• Update the current positions, job titles, and classifications of an employee.

23. Create a direct messaging channel for real-time chat

• Aside from the email workflow subsystem, let's now talk about another subsystem, which is the Real-time chatting (instant messaging) . �
• Each user can create a channel with any other user.

user-friendly interface

Showing details for each sent message:

24. Create a group channel for real-time chat

• Each user can create a group channel and invite any other user to it.
• The other user can accept the invitation or reject it.
• The user who created the group/channel will be considered as the group's admin.

25. Add and remove members from a channel + Rename channel

After creating the channel, the channel's admin can add new members or remove any of the current members.

26. Receive push notifications

• Push notification is an automated message sent by the web application to the user �when the user is a way.

WebSockets: an advanced technology that makes it possible to open a two-way interactive communication session between the user's browser and a server.

Non-Functional Features

These are system characteristics other than the activities the system must perform or support.

1. Usability Requirements

Operational characteristics related to users

• 1.1 Well defined color schemes

1.2 Ease-of-Use, Ease-of-Learn

In order to make it easier for users to learn how to use the system properly in a timely manner, we have provided help buttons that show guidance messages:

1.3 Responsive User Interfaces

We plan to design all user interfaces to be responsive on almost all screens with different sizes.

Desktop View �(Large screens)

Tablet/Mobile View� (Medium & Small screens)

1.4 Show alert dialogs before executing a critical action

Confirmation dialogs helps reducing user errors (when not overused)

1.5 Show tooltips & snackbars

Tooltip

Snackbar (alert)

2. Security

• the Login functional requirement, the application is password-protected.
• All passwords will be hashed before stored in the database

Hashed passwords stored in the database

BCrypt is based on the Blowfish block cipher cryptomatic algorithm and takes the form of an adaptive hash function.

For authentication & authorization: JSON Web Token is for creating data with encryption whose payload holds JSON that asserts some number of claims.

Methodology

(Technologies)

Overview of Implementation Stack

Integrated Development Environment

• Visual Studio Code

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User Interface Design & Prototyping

• Adobe XD

Front-End Technologies

• HTML5
• SASS SCSS Preprocessor
• React.js JavaScript Library
• React Material UI

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Why we chose ReactJS over other JavaScript libraries

This graph is a comparison that shows how the most popular JavaScript front-end libraries have trended over time based on use of their tags since 2008, when Stack Overflow was founded.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=reactjs%2Cangularjs%2Cvue.js

Back-End Technologies

• Node.js
• Express.js framework

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Why we chose MySQL as the Database Management System

• Since our project requires a very structured data, SQL is a great choice.

Database

• MySQL database
• Sequelize ORM (Object Relational Mapping)

Software Design

Database Relational Schema Diagram

Employee Subsystem

Organizational Hierarchy Subsystem

Workflow Subsystem

Instant Messaging (Realtime Chat) Subsystem

Challenges

• Learning new technologies

• Short time with huge project

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• Frquent updates causing versions conflicts.

• Multiple resoureses of learning

• Due to the frequent Israeli penetrations of the university’e campus, it was hard to meet with the team at the university.

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Future Vision

1. Deploying the System

• During the coming summer semester, we will be testing the system in the production environment on a small group of people – such as the staff of computer Systems Department.

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2. Marketing the System

• The next step is planned to be marketing the system through the internet for interested clients, such as organizations and start-ups.

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• If an organization is interested in our system, then they can request a demo then pay for the system to be deployed on the organization's domain. Then our responsibility will be to offer the consistent support for the system.

Closure

الخاتمة موجودة في هذه الورقة:

Prepared by:

Supervised by:

Mohamed Khalil, PhD