TAFE Tasmania Case Study of a Web-based application for capturing and managing a Fixed Term Employment Register
Background:
TAFE Tasmania provides a wide variety of accredited training courses to students all around Tasmania. They are the largest registered training organisation in the state and the only training provider in Australia to be awarded ANTA's National Training Provider of the Year twice.
Flexibility is key, with courses delivered in the home, at the workplace, at Online Access Centres via computer managed learning, or at TAFE campuses.
The Problem:
Due to the ever changing, ever increasing number of courses delivered, as well as the dynamic nature of the industry, there is a constant need for new staff. Many contracts are for non-permanent, part-time positions. Each year TAFE advertise for applicants to register their interest for upcoming positions. This was a manual, form-driven process, and due to the large number of responses was time-consuming to effectively administer.
The Solution:
In the second half of 2004 Future Medium won a contract to develop a web application to manage the entire process online. The system was to provide a comprehensive, easy to use interface to collect all the necessary data from potential applicants, as well as an administration interface to manage al the options presented to the user and provide methods to search for suitable applicants from the system.
By moving to an online system we were able to guide the user through the process, thus ensuring their details were complete, and that they provided the necessary information for each position they applied for.
A summary list of features include:
- Self registration system for users so they can sign up online and enter and update their details at any time via a web-browser
- Easy to use, clear entry screens for all the information requirements, with a summary page detailing all information entered so far, with highlights on important areas that have not yet been addressed. This has dramatically decreased the administration burden on TAFE as the search function automatically screens out applications that have not been filled in properly
- Ability to upload further information such as an already existing resume
- Complete administration area for TAFE staff to enter new position descriptions, send emails to users and search and print applications
- TAFE staff can also upload documents to the system, which can then be access by potential applicants
- Users are automatically hidden from search results if they have not logged in for a certain amount of time. This helps ensure that search results are kept up to date and relevant
Technical Details:
The application was developed using the following technologies:
- Java 1.5 (combination of servlets and Java Server Pages)
- Tomcat Java Application Server
- Novell eDirectory
- Oracle 9 database
All application details are stored in Oracle, while an interface to eDirectory provides authentication information for access to the administration functions. The original system maintained a list of TAFE users who had access to the system. eDirectory was used to check an admin user's credentials to ensure they were valid, but the user was then checked against the list to see if they were allowed to access this particular application.
The system has since been modified to utilise NDS groups instead. This allows TAFE administrators to allocate users to a particular group, which is then checked by the application during the login process. This has removed the need to maintain a separate list of allowed users.
Summary:
The system has been very well received, and the entire paper process has been eliminated. In late 2005 it underwent some minor revisions and had some new features added ready for the 2006 year.
