ABSTRACT
Personnel department is service-oriented towards staff and entails day-to-day activities of units some of whose functions overlap and involves recruitment of staff, retirement of staff, termination of appointment, processing of request for sabbatical leave, staff training and development, pension funds administration, health management organization, etc., and will be easier, faster and secure adopting a virtual approach rather than its manual counterpart. This project work will establish the need, importance and usefulness of Electronic Data Interchange, Enterprise Forms Automation, Content Management System, Enterprise Right Management and Identity Management system and how these technologies can be used to reduce universities over dependence on paper. The Object-Oriented Systems Analysis and Design methodology was used in the analysis, design and development of the system with the following Unified Modeling Language (UML) techniques: use case diagram, class diagram and sequence diagrams. Implementing a virtual system in our university administration will enable us to have much better control over processes, workflow will be faster, less of paper, less tonner for printer will be used and lesser printers are needed, fewer employees are needed, leading to a lesser cost in the overall system.
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.0Â Â Â Â Background of Study
Paper has been the most common medium of documenting information. In our university system, the use of paper-based communication has created some challenges that contribute to make university administration expensive. These challenges include time and paper consumed during processing of personnel files, poor storage and insecurity of the paper files. Paperless office is a work environment in which the use of paper is eliminated or greatly reduced. This is done by converting documents and other papers into digital form.
This project work presents a virtual system that enables all activities involved in a university personnel administration to be carried out without paper.
 1.1 Statement of the Problem
The manual method in administering personnel services in a university is characterized by the following:
- It takes days and sometimes weeks to complete the process of staff recruitment and retirement, resignation and termination of appointment, health management and pension funds administration schemes
- Paper files and personnel records easily get missing due to human negligence and poor manual storage facilities undermine data integrity and security as well as ease of reference.
- The amount of stationery required for typing, printing, photocopying and circulation within personnel services units attracts some overhead cost coupled with the issue of duplication of duties among units through overlapping functions.
1.2 Â Objectives
The objectives of this project are:
- To develop a functional software that would enable user to create and validate account, apply for job, view and update profile, apply for leave, recruit employee, issue appointment letter, record mail and manage staff records.
- To design and implement a software that is capable of storing and processing personnel data in any standard database management system such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc.
- To develop a software that will reduce the amount of time required for searching, processing and data retrieval to produce a timely report to management.
- To develop a university personnel management software that will enable the records and statistics unit to produce a schedule summary on monthly or annual basis through the web portal.
1.3 Significance of the Project
Paper-based university administration is very expensive and time consuming. With the help of internal networking and database management software, personnel officers do not have to waste time searching through tons of data in paper files anymore. There is much better control over processes, the workflow is faster, less of paper, less tonner for printer are being used and lesser printers are needed, fewer employee are needed, leading to a lesser overhead and budgetary cost in the overall system.
1.4 Scope of Study
This research work is on Virtual University Administration. The study covers the existing structure of a paper-based university administration and personnel management system. The study also covered the design and implementation of the new system and the technologies used in the development of the Virtual system. Finally the web development technologies used for the application.
1.5 Limitation of study
The limitations of a virtual system can be listed as follows:
- There may be cost and temporary productivity losses when converting to a virtual office.
- Electronic communication requires both the sender and recipient to have access to appropriate software and hardware.
- Finding a qualified specialist with personnel management functional area knowledge can be difficult and costly.
- Human error during information input.
- Costly technology to update system and malfunctions or insufficient application to support personnel need.
1.6 Organization of study
- Chapter one is an introduction and background of the study. The background provides an overview of paper.
- Chapter two presents the theoretical background, review of related literatures on Personnel management and technologies for attaining a virtual office.
- Chapter three discusses the methodology and system analysis that was chosen for the study.
- Chapter four is the system design and implementation.
- Chapter five summarized and concluded the virtual university administration.
1.7 Definition of Technical Terms
Virtual is a computer created, simulated or carried on by means of a computer or computer network.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is used for transfer of documents from source to destination, retaining its original quality and format.
Hypertext markup language (HTML) is a text based programming tool used for describing the content of a web page, such as making a text to appear bold, capitalized, underlined and other forms of contextual definition required to make the web page content readable to humans.
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a text-based programming tool used for definition of the layout or presentation of the content of a web page.
Asynchronous JavaScript And Extensible Markup language (AJAX) It is a web development technique used for construction of the search engine module
SQL(Structured Query Language) is a programming tool used to access and manipulate the database
MYSQL is a freely available open source Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL).
PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is widely used open source general-purpose scripting language that is specially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML
JavaScript (JS) is a dynamic computer programming language used for validation and submission of HTML form elements to MYSQL.
Portal is most often one specially-designed web page at which brings information together from diverse sources in a uniform way.
Web page is a web document that is suitable for the world wide web and the web browser.
Server is a computer in a network that stores application program and data files accessed by other computers.
PHPMYADMIN is an interface between user and database.
System Development Life Circle (SDLC) is the stage/phase involved in the development of a system.
Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general purpose modeling language that is use for the design and implementation of an application.
Methodology is the method you intend to use to collect data.
Organogram is a diagram that explains relationship between different people in an organization.
Flow Graph is a directed graph with a distinguished root node that can reach every vertex.
