The developer cringes as he learns about this process. He recites his mantra: "Every time paper is used to distribute database data, another tree dies”.
It is Monday morning and we find the developer on his way back to his desk. Cup of coffee in hand to fight off the mid morning slump, he suddenly realized he was not alone. With a glance to his left, he finds his boss flanking him. “You always claim that where there is double entry, you can find a better way. Well I think our shipping team has a challenge for you.” announced his boss.
The developer didn’t know much about the shipping process. He knew that shipping transmittals had been created in Virtual Ticket. These documents included all the details about the shipment: Recipient, address, shipping method, priority, contents, tracking number, and all was manually entered. The transmittal is filled out by the project manager and a printout routed with the package contents to the shipping department. But now it was time he learned about the rest of the process. He decided to spend the day in the shipping department to get some first hand experience.
In his company, FedEx is the preferred parcel courier. They use FedEx Ship Manager, an online shipping solution, for creating the shipment transactions. At the close of each business day, one of the office clerical staff exports a list of packages that shipped through the FedEx online account. That list is then photocopied and distribute to each project manager and production manager. This provides the project managers with the tracking numbers of all of their packages, just in case they get a call from a client.
The developer cringes as he learns about this process. He recites his mantra: "Every time paper is used to distribute database data, another tree dies”. In someway he feels his neglect is responsible for this. As the day goes on, he learns more about shipping software applications and he identifies many opportunities for integration to his Virtual Ticket system.
The next day the developer got to work and by noon had developed some solutions that he was anxious to show his boss. After lunch they had a quick meeting: “The daily export of data from the FedEx online account can be easily imported into Virtual Ticket. Using this Virtual Ticket import form I created, the FedEx Tracking number is imported right into the tracking number field on the Virtual Ticket shipping transmittal. And, since we have our client’s email addresses in Virtual Ticket, I have also included script to automatically send the clients an email of the shipment information. The clients get confirmation that their package has shipped, the contents of the package and the tracking number.”
At first his boss looked pleased but that look soon passed. “Looks like that should take care of their current needs but I was expecting to be more amazed.”
“Well, I have also added some other functionality.” the developer responded. “The project managers had been going to FedEx.com where they would manually enter their tracking numbers. Now, with the new MetaScript OpenWebPage() function available in Workgroups R2, I was able to add a button that will open the FedEx tracking web page right in Virtual Ticket with the tracking number already entered. The project managers can now get up-to-the-minute tracking results with one button click, and never leave Virtual Ticket.”
His boss smiled with satisfaction “That is more like it. Good job.”
The developer continued, “You know, most parcel shipping applications allow for importing and exporting data but I also found that most can support a live connection to other databases. We could setup a connection between Virtual Ticket and our shipping application to share common data. The shipping application could then access Virtual Ticket for current Customer contact and address information. Then the tracking numbers could be written back to Virtual Ticket without human intervention. I think I will look into developing that functionality next.”
With the ability in Virtual Ticket's SQL database to establish live connections to other databases, there are endless possibilities to eliminate double entry, stop printing database data and save another tree.