Helpdesk Documentation

[saeed]

hello there, I am in search of sample documentation of ASP Applications such as eClassified Website, Helpdesk Application, Mailing List Application. Can anyone help me regarding this.


immediate reply will be a life saver.

Saeed.

[raf]

I think that you need to be more speciffic to get a quick reply. What do you mean with 'sample documentation'. 'eClassified Website, Helpdesk Application, Mailing List Application' --> or those real products or do you just mean 'that sort of applications'?

[saeed]

Well, I mean to say the Flow of Application, for example when a developer makes an application mostly they used to make a flow how it should work, what will be the functionality, what are the restricted areas, how many fields are going to be used through out the website, how the forms and website layout are going to be look. etc etc.

I hope you understand what I am trying to ask.

warm Regards,
Saeed.

[raf]

I guess you're talking about the technical design of an app. I never came across a good tutorial on that, but there will surely exist some good books on it. I've learned it the hard way (worked a few years as business expert and business projectmanager, then did some functional analysis for about a year + did some programming after hours). Never came across a good method and never saw anyone with an amazingly good approach. IT departments kinda tend to specialise in setting up administrative procedures and projectmanagementtools that focus on budgets, riscmanagement, SLA's etc + are more interested in bits and bytes and tables then in what the business realy needs and in creating business sollutions.

IT departments spend insufficient time in analysing the users needs and his abilitys. (software ergonomics is kind of non existing) And because of this, they actually don't have enough info to make a good functional design and create an application framework that can grow and evolve like the business does (if responsetimes are reasanable, if there are no know bugs and if the layout isn't realy scaring everyone, then they tend to speak like "we've made what you wanted (!) and it runs fine"). I, for one, am very disappointed in the abilitys of the analysts i worked with + I can fully understand the disappointment and disillusions of many managers and end users who got expensive applications that don't realy help them to get the work done.

But along the way, i picked up some tricks and created my 'own' approach, which i try to implement at work and use for the app's i write myself. I've planned to write some stuf down and to include some examples of analyses into a turorial, but haven't found the time yet. The best way to get into this is running along with some analyst and keep your eyes open + measure the time you spend on analysing, research, db-design, coding, bugfixing, maintenance, updating, modifying...
The better you get at researching and analysing (both technical as functional), the more you will be able to cut down on the other stuff. But there is no such thing as 'the' technical design for helpdeskapplications etc.

I start by registering all functionalitys at the highes possible level (sort of use cases approach --> which users need something at some time). Like "order a product". Then i break this down into smaller steps : loggin in, browse catalog, pick article, order. Then these steps in return are also broken down, until i get at the level of value transfers between client and db. Then i put frequencys and prioritys on all processes at each level. To visualise this, i've made my own approach to work with ishikawas (form of schema's for linear processes. Most complex functionalitys require circular processing but this makes the analysing somewhat different and unique) If you do this for all functionalitys, you 'see' the logical pageflows, the dataflows, db-design and application framework. Only if this is clear, you should start thinking IT-wise and select technologies and should take some make or buy decissions. I've tryed to explain this approach for one speciffic feature here
http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17608&highlight=ishikawas
It's that sort of questions i ask myself and end user in the analysing phase (how frequently does a proces happen, which responsetime is needed, are it expert-users, can we shift some of the lofic into a wizzard approach etc etc)
Well, gotta get start working now. Just let me know if you want more info.