October 2012 - Informatics

E-Gov Products & Servicesmeaning of collaboration from adifferent point of view. Instead ofhaving users work jointly, it’s themodules that will help users tocollaborate upon identical operation.Few of the services have beenidentified which are being used bydifferent modules of Intranet likesharing, alerts, notifying users,updating with new features etc. Theidentified services answers the WHATquestion. The approach was to haveapplication(s) over the existing intranetapplications. Two applications namelyeTalk and eAlerts were identified.Basic version of eTalk includes Chatand eAlerts notifies users about anychanges on documents / appointments/ events / files from already existingmodules (i.e. KMS, appointments etc.)from eOffice.The functionality of eTalk andeAlerts actually answers HOW. Theapplication is developed independentof all the intranet applications. In orderto have chatting facility anywhere, thedesign of eTalk was developed in sucha way that it was independent of allother applications. For which purposeall the end points (frontend, backendand information exchange) fromwhere these features are accessible aremade independent. eTalk wasdeveloped as an independent modulewith basic functionality of Chatting(simple text messages). A JavaScriptAPI (Application ProgrammingInterface) was developed and madeopenly available to be used by all theintranet applications. Currently eTalkcan be seen accessible from all thepages of intranet (“Active Users” atbottom right corner of every page).HOW IT WORKS?All the most common functionalities(i.e. Chatting, Send IM, Add Contact,eTalk status, Availability etc) wereidentified and made as a page (frontend HTML) in eTalk. In order to havethese accessible from all applications,an API is written which is madeopenly accessible to be used by allother applications. Sample templatealong with JavaScript code wasprovided to all the modules to beincluded in their applications. TheJavaScript code handled all thefunctionality from the frontend.Fig 2. eTalk feature setIn order to have all these features tobe called from frontend, the featureswere inherited in the backend (on theserver) and were being called fromfrontend.ADVANTAGESl Active participation of Users -facilitates the users to activelyparticipate to use these resources.l One stop access point to alldisintegrated application and servicesl Direct manipulation - users can work& update their contact details fromanywherel Ease of use - intuitive design andeasy to use web interfacel Interoperability - combining ofdifferent applications and their data asone instance.l Flexibility - The application isflexible in nature as new features canbe inherited and called upon.l Reusability of the alert mechanismby other department applications.IS THAT ALL, THAT CAN BECOLLABORATED?The obvious answer is NO. So farwe have collaborated eOfficeFig 1: Architecture Diagram of e-OfficeCAMSapplications and its services. If theseservices are extended to other servicesof departments., like eGranthalaya willnotify users about list of new booksthat are being taken or remind specificusers about the last date of the booksissued (through alerts). SimilarlyAccounts Division can send alerts tousers about their payments or tour billclearances.SCOPEThis section defines the scope ofthese applications. Use of theseapplications is not limited to either e-Office or other departments. Due tothe independent nature of theapplication it can also be inherited orcalled using the API from otherministries which have e-Office and thedivisions of these ministries.CONCLUSIONContinuous integration of newfeatures from eOffice applications isstill going on. Updating API functionsand development of new APIfunctions are being developed to beused by eOffice applications and otherdepartment applications. This topic isnot just restricted to collaboratingusers, but rather the data and thedocuments, which can be called asMASHUP (is a web page orapplication that combines data,functionality from two or more sourceto create a new service).Happy Collaborating!!!October 2012 | informatics.nic.in | 13