List of features ready and TODOs for future development
- This project is currently under development and is not currently stable enough for deployment.
- Python >= 3.7
- React >= 16.13
- Redux >= 4.0
- Django REST framework >= 3.11.0
- Django >= 3.0.8
In order to execute this application you must first download the source code. You can do so by either selecting the green code button on our github repository, or just click here to download the zip file of the project. Or, you can use git to clone the project. To do so, use the following code in your terminal emulator:
git clone https://github.com/CS4398-Capstone-Project/Ledger.git
After you have downloaded and extracted the project, simply run the included build script located in the top directory of the project. This script will only work on unix based operating systems in a terminal emulator using bash.
./build.sh
If you are on a Windows or other operating system or would like to build the project yourself please refer to the setup section. It's super easy.
Otherwise, you are all set and you can start the servers for both the frontend and backend with the following:
./runServers.sh
Once you have started the servers, your preferred internet browser should open to the home page of the Ledger system where you must then login. All new users are designated as customers and so will only be able to view available appointment times, make appointments, and edit their own user information. To create a new account with either employee or administrative privileges an existing administrator must either create and assign you account with such privileges or you must request an existing administrator to elevate your privileges.
The Default administrator account username is txst with the password bobcats, you can use this account information to log into both the frontend and the backend.
Both the frontend and backend have unit test cases to test the functionality of crutial elements of the system. For the frontend, these tests include the requests to the backend and the accurate rendering of components. For the backend, these tests include the handling of requests and the calculations applied to user data.
Acceptance testing of this system was preformed by the opposing development team in this project throughout the development to meet the requirements set out by the System Requirements Specification.
Below are the instructions for the operation of the testing suites for both the frontend and the backend.
In order to run the testing suite for the Ledger system, you simply run the following command in your terminal from the frontend directory.
$ npm test
after which you should see the tests running and something similar to the following output:
.
├── backend
│ ├── api
│ └── env
└── frontend
├── node_modules
├── public
└── src
The system is structured as a fullstack environment with a server for the frontend user interfaces and a server for the backend calculations and database. This design decision was made in order to allow users of this system to host and/or store their information locally or remotely. Because the system uses react as the frontend, it can easily be customized and hosted remotely and can be upgraded, scaled, and migrated to different hosts without effecting business and the user would still have access to their data locally.
The essential algorithms to the operation of the Ledger Scheduling System include an initial "first come, first serve" queue for assigning appointments to available time slots and then a hashing of the available employees to these appointments. There can be multiple assignments to the same time slot Only if there are enough available employees (i.e.: three customers can have have an appointment at 8 iff there are three employees available at that time) if there aren't enough employees available then the time slot is not available for a customer to select.
After the customer has selected a time slot and the appointment is set, their appointment will be added to the database and the schedules of the employee's will be updated. The two groups of 'appointments' and 'employees' creates a bipartite graph which we then map the appointment to an employee but these connections in this graph must be one-to-one, that is, an employee should only have one appointment at any given time. There may be special cases in which their may be a walk-in customer or a customer would prefer a specific employee. For the consideration of these instances and to maximize employee time the Ledger system has implemented several other algorithms to include: priority queueing of customers who are in urgent need, co-operative multi-appointment scheduling for appointments with customers that exceed a specified time slot, and an implementation of the auction algorithm to calculate the best mapping between appointments and employees.
The auction algorithm Ledger uses takes in priority as a weight upon the edges of the mapping of appointments to employees this weight could reflect the level of skill required by an employee to perform the task required to complete the appointment with the customer or it could reflect urgency as in an medical facility or emergency response. When Ledger generates the employees' schedules it will put them up for 'bid' and the highest 'bider' is the employee with the highest skill level. The auction algorithm is used to solve the assignment problem that would occur in this automated schedule generating process.
The backend API has documentation generated using Swagger UI, These documents are generated by the backend server so in order to view them you must first run startServers.sh and then go to the documentation website found at this link http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs/, there you will find the Django-REST framework's interfacing request endpoints with which you can make GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE requests to the backend in order to communicate with the backend and the database.
Created by Texas State University Students contact us at:
- Aaron Carrasco: [email protected]
- Eduardo Dominguez: [email protected]
- Trevor Chaney: [email protected]
- Keondre Credit: [email protected]