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Hi-JACk
HI-JACk v3
Hi-Image Job Activity
An intranet designed for the Graphic Design, Printing and Bulk Mailing industry. The application tracks the full lifecycle of jobs as they progress from the design phase, through printing and eventually mailing allowing for data capture from all departments along the way.
The intranet is accessed via browser. It is written in Classic ASP (VB Script) and HTML and uses an MS Access database. The app runs on any simple web server capable of handling those resources.
Jobs
Each piece of work that came through from customers is entered as a job. They have a status, due date and optional departments that the work will be going through: Graphic design (G), Printing (P), Mailing Data (M), Mailing Receipts (M2), Shipping (S), Invoicing ($). Selecting the job provides a printable summary.
Customers
Customers are the recipients of the work. They can be associated to Jobs and Mailing Permits. Browse customer lists to view or edit. Customer summaries provided easy access to specific jobs.
Projects
In instances where the same design is used across multiple clients, or a client has multiple jobs with different versions, for example, jobs can be grouped into Projects. This allows another easy way to organize and find jobs in the system.
Progress
Aside from the main job’s status, each department had the ability to mark approvals and “complete” their section. This allowed us to view progress at a glance. Also, after a job was completed, then the invoicing section would show up, with its own status as well. These icons were also the links to view and edit the details for that department.
Mailing Permits
Most clients sending bulk mail have their own mailing permits for which they can use an indicia on their mailings. For others, an in-house permit was available for a fee.
Data is entered for both deposits (checks) and debits–in the form of receipts–for the mailing account. From this a ledger is generated with all historical data for that permit, regardless of job or customer.
Calendar
Outside of normal due dates and dates when certain tasks were completed, the system also maintained a calendar for entries of different types. Jobs could be added to the calendar, for any date, for a list of tasks: Print, Mail, Fold, Cut, Ship, Pick-up. We referred to the independent calendar entries as the Production Schedule or Journal.
Browsing the calendar allowed a user to see jobs by all the important dates used in the system.
Shopping Cart
It became apparent very quickly that we would need to be able to make changes in bulk. For example, if we wanted to close out a bunch of jobs, add them to a project, or put them on the calendar, we needed a simple mechanism that was easy, so we treated it like a shopping cart. Add your jobs, then figure out what you want to do with them later.
Search
The search ended up primarily being used for looking up job numbers, but it also performed a simple text search through all the comment and detail fields of all the main and sub-objects.
I-Frame
I called this thing an i-frame because that’s exactly what Internet Explorer called it. However, I may have referred to it as the “Info Frame” which made sense to everybody. It was just a little windows at the bottom left that could allow some limited browsing without navigating away from what you were viewing in the main window.
Edit Locking
We had a few instances where people were editing the same job and it created problems, so we implemented locking. If a user was on a “add” or “edit” page, they would lock the job with a timestamp that was good for some period of time. Any user could access it after the timestamp expired. We also gave them a button to unlock if they were finished.
Icons
I can’t remember which icons found and which ones I made in MS Paint, but I thought they were pretty awesome at the time.
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Projects
Calendar
Send mail
Status
Expanded menu
Collapsed menu
Job jacket
Job lock
Job Jackets
Around the shop, we used “job jackets” to hold everything for a particular job: email approvals, sample postcards, receipts, checks, postal paperwork, etc. A job jacket was a 9×12 envelope with the flap cut off and information sections printed on the front. Items would be added and info would be scribbled on the front as it moved through production.
With Hi-JACk I was able to take all the info that had been input and turn it into a pre-made template for the job jackets. Now we could use a blank 9×12 and save the print shop a little time.