A brief progress report on Etcetera, the Educational Technology Center's system for equipment tracking and service reports.

2. PROJECT
DATE CLIENT
2009 / 12 / 2 MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY

3. EQUIPMENT INVENTORY
SEARCHABLE ACCESS TO EVERY PIECE OF EQUIPMENT OWNED OR INSTALLED BY ETC

4. EQUIPMENT INVENTORY
SEARCHABLE ACCESS TO EVERY PIECE OF EQUIPMENT OWNED OR INSTALLED BY ETC

5. EQUIPMENT SERVICE TICKETS & WORK ORDERS
FULL-DETAIL TICKETS ON PROBLEMS SUBMITTED BY ETC’S PATRONS, INCLUDING FACULTY AND STAFF OF MISSOURI STATE

6. EQUIPMENT SERVICE TICKETS & WORK ORDERS
FULL-DETAIL TICKETS ON PROBLEMS SUBMITTED BY ETC’S PATRONS, INCLUDING FACULTY AND STAFF OF MISSOURI STATE

7. EQUIPMENT SERVICE TICKETS & WORK ORDERS
FULL-DETAIL TICKETS ON PROBLEMS SUBMITTED BY ETC’S PATRONS, INCLUDING FACULTY AND STAFF OF MISSOURI STATE

8. EQUIPMENT CHECKOUT & DELIVERY TICKETS
PATRONS RESERVING EQUIPMENT CAN DO SO ONLINE AND VIEW THE STATUS AND EQUIPMENT ATTACHED ON THEIR DELIVERY

9. EQUIPMENT CHECKOUT & DELIVERY TICKETS
PATRONS RESERVING EQUIPMENT CAN DO SO ONLINE AND VIEW THE STATUS AND EQUIPMENT ATTACHED ON THEIR DELIVERY

10. EQUIPMENT CHECKOUT & DELIVERY TICKETS
PATRONS RESERVING EQUIPMENT CAN DO SO ONLINE AND VIEW THE STATUS AND EQUIPMENT ATTACHED ON THEIR DELIVERY

11. Coming soon: reporting
Completely customizable reports application
Generate reports per-department or per-building
How many people are checking out projectors? Cameras? PA
systems?
Which department submits the most work orders?
Which technician has the most open work orders? Closed?

12. Coming soon: mLab management
Easy-access room usage logging
Help Desk workers can log who goes in and out of multimedia lab
editing rooms with just two clicks
Problem ticket logging with lab computers
If a lab computer is malfunctioning, workers can log the issue and
the lab manager can investigate it

13. By the numbers
5563 equipment items 324 organizational units
373 equipment categories 91 locations on campus
197 equipment manufacturers
331 checkout tickets (FY)
956 work orders
17 users

14. Brief technicals
Written in Python using the Django web framework
Web page templates use HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript (with jQuery)
Hosted on our Mac OS X 10.5 Server with Apache
All data stored in a PostgreSQL database
Code version tracking and control through Git, hosted on Github
Built using all free and open-source tools (aside from the server OS)

15. What it all means
Python & Django: insanely easy to learn, quick to use, lots of control
Web standards-compliant languages: it works in more browsers
Rock-solid Mac OS X hosting with industry-standard server software
PostgreSQL database is built for speed and stability
Distributed code versioning allows me to update server remotely
Open-source tools keeps costs down during development