I work on a desktop support team at a corporation. We do hardware/software support, configuring & deploying equipment, mobile device support, etc. My duties nowadays is more logistics & special configurations along with development for our tools.
Our process for end-users to request a computer was all over the place. Requests were made through a simple web page form that sent an email to a shared mailbox, requests were tracked in that mailbox using different 'status' folders, and equipment was tracked using an Access database which could also provide some standard reports.
We were looking to make this entire process better as it took 1 person all day to deal with this stuff, requests and equipment weren't tied together in one place, old request history could get lost because of Outlook archives (pst files) getting corrupted, and it was difficult to get metrics on any of it.
Having some web development experience, I volunteered to make this happen. It took a few months (not working on it full-time) but we then had a new intranet site with a smallish back-end system written in Classic ASP & VBScript with a SQL database. We used that for a few years but it was getting hard to implement new features with ASP's linear page rendering.
At that point, I took it upon myself to rewrite the entire thing using ASP.net (and learning C# at the same time). When I released this version, it had everything we needed at the time: request workflow, equipment tracking & history, access control, standard & custom report generation. I've been able to upgrade and implement new features into this system many times over the years - things like creating meeting notices for delivery appointments, providing charts for metrics, more intricate reporting, a front-end facelift with Bootstrap, integrating a web service to receive requests from the company's new global form (instead of our user-facing form), and the ability for other support teams in other offices to use the app as a 'self-maintainer' like our team does. I'm currently getting things ready so our UK support team can use it soon.
Long story (made short) I know but it's my big thing that I take care of. This web app has been in service for over 14 years now and it has saved our team & company time and (probably) money because of process improvement along with the reporting features.
Sometimes I do look at the older code in it and wonder why I ever wrote it like that. There's a lot of room for refactoring but not much time to do it. I am still proud of this app and the success it has brought our team in getting everyone else's jobs done faster. Plus I got to learn a lot - from front-end (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to back-end (C#, SQL, SSIS, IIS).
Great story and great job building it! Sounds like it delivered above and beyond!
I do hope that you do have a chance to refactor different bits in time. Even if there aren't any particular issues, just having something that can be maintained more easily by removing some tech debt is always great.
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I work on a desktop support team at a corporation. We do hardware/software support, configuring & deploying equipment, mobile device support, etc. My duties nowadays is more logistics & special configurations along with development for our tools.
Our process for end-users to request a computer was all over the place. Requests were made through a simple web page form that sent an email to a shared mailbox, requests were tracked in that mailbox using different 'status' folders, and equipment was tracked using an Access database which could also provide some standard reports.
We were looking to make this entire process better as it took 1 person all day to deal with this stuff, requests and equipment weren't tied together in one place, old request history could get lost because of Outlook archives (pst files) getting corrupted, and it was difficult to get metrics on any of it.
Having some web development experience, I volunteered to make this happen. It took a few months (not working on it full-time) but we then had a new intranet site with a smallish back-end system written in Classic ASP & VBScript with a SQL database. We used that for a few years but it was getting hard to implement new features with ASP's linear page rendering.
At that point, I took it upon myself to rewrite the entire thing using ASP.net (and learning C# at the same time). When I released this version, it had everything we needed at the time: request workflow, equipment tracking & history, access control, standard & custom report generation. I've been able to upgrade and implement new features into this system many times over the years - things like creating meeting notices for delivery appointments, providing charts for metrics, more intricate reporting, a front-end facelift with Bootstrap, integrating a web service to receive requests from the company's new global form (instead of our user-facing form), and the ability for other support teams in other offices to use the app as a 'self-maintainer' like our team does. I'm currently getting things ready so our UK support team can use it soon.
Long story (made short) I know but it's my big thing that I take care of. This web app has been in service for over 14 years now and it has saved our team & company time and (probably) money because of process improvement along with the reporting features.
Sometimes I do look at the older code in it and wonder why I ever wrote it like that. There's a lot of room for refactoring but not much time to do it. I am still proud of this app and the success it has brought our team in getting everyone else's jobs done faster. Plus I got to learn a lot - from front-end (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to back-end (C#, SQL, SSIS, IIS).
Great story and great job building it! Sounds like it delivered above and beyond!
I do hope that you do have a chance to refactor different bits in time. Even if there aren't any particular issues, just having something that can be maintained more easily by removing some tech debt is always great.