|
The Email Enquiry System was created in just one week by one analyst/programmer for a major supplier of apparel to high street retailers. A further three weeks were required for integration with Novell and the supplier's LDAP database.
The system searches and retrieves data from an MSSQL database containing millions of records.
It permits the supplier's authenticated users to find out the delivery status and history of emails sent or received. Depending on access rights, the enquirer is able view information pertaining to his/her own emails, those of everyone within the same group, or the whole database. Users are able to filter their enquiries by sender, recipient, subject, date range, and size. The number of lines displayed in response to an enquiry can be restricted to a user configurable limit, initially set to 50.
Although the system presents users with a fairly simple forms-based interface, it is rich in functionality.
Authentication of Users
Users log on supplying an email address and password. This is authenticated against a Novell LDAP eDirectory. There are three levels of user access.
 |
Super user group. Access to all emails, plus ability to update default parameters. |
|
Admin group. Access to emails of all other members sharing the same domain name. |
|
No group. Access to information pertaining to user's own email. |
Submission of Enquiries
Searches may be qualified using any combination of sender email address, recipient email address, email subject, date range and message size. If the number of lines returned by the search exceeds the (user-configurable) limit, no lines will be returned. Instead, the user will be asked to refine the search using the above filter options. Filter options remain in effect until changed.
Display of Summary Information
In response to an enquiry, summary information will be displayed for messages sent or received. Message lines will be displayed on two separate tabbed panes, with the sent pane initially showing on top. For each message line, the information shown includes a variety of data displayed in a tabulated form. Where a message is sent to multiple recipients, multiple lines are shown. If a sent message has not been delivered, the line is highlighted. Users can sort lines on display, by clicking on table headers.
Display of Email Delivery History
When a user selects a message line, its delivery history is made viewable in a collapsible pane the bottom of the screen. The information will not be visible until the user selects a message line. Within the pane, recipients, delivery history and message area history are displayed on three separate tabs.
Configuration of Default Search Parameters
Two default search parameters, modifiable by a super user, are currently stored in the system. They are the maximum number of lines to be returned in an enquiry and the date span.
|
A fully web-based application with a sophisticated forms-based GUI |
|
Server-side: runs on Novell, Linux, Windows, Unix or any other server-side platform capable of running a J2EE-compliant web application server (eg. Tomcat, Websphere, Weblogic, JBOSS) |
|
Client-side: deploys to any desktop with a browser and Sun Microsystem's JRE 1.4.1 or 1.5.x. Screen mapping and data-handling is performed by a single low-footprint applet within a browser which, once loaded is cached for future use. |
|
Database: Microsoft MSSQL. Can be adapted for any JDBC-compliant SQL database |
|
User authentication through LDAP |
|
