The Problem
Entering data into a national database is regular requirement for our program. Unfortunately, the database requires field-by-field entry for each active student, which results in hours upon hours of data entry.
The Solution
A Google chrome extension that can input multiple fields for dozens of students at a time.
The Process
Student data is stored in master spreadsheets, used for internal record-keeping through the year. Each time a reporting deadline approaches, the required function is selected from the Chrome extension, and the subset of data is copied from the master spreadsheet into the Chrome extension interface. With the click of a button, the extension iterates over the data and enters it into the appropriate fields in the website. AJAX is used to click submission buttons online, wait for key elements to re-appear on the page, and then enter the next student’s data.
The administrator can go grab a new cup of coffee, and upon their return, hundreds of copy-paste -> click sequences have completed automatically.
Focus on Agile
There are at least a dozen different processes that require data sets to be entered through the website. Each one requires a painstaking process of identifying the elements within the HTML for submitting data and sensing when the page has been reloaded.
Similar to a spike, a significant amount of effort had to be invested in order to determine exactly how Chrome extensions could be used with this site.
It was also necessary to prioritize functionalities based on a combination of their technical simplicity and resulting “business value.” For example, by far the most time-saving process is assigning students to courses. The manual process for completing this task involves multiple phases of clicking, searching, pasting, clicking, waiting for page loads, etc. At the same time, coding for page loads is far more time-consuming than any other automation process. It proved more strategic, from an agile perspective, to start instead with a simpler task that still provided a significant time-saving benefit: entering student funding amounts.
The student funding page required no page loads. It was nothing more than a huge table with hundreds of data entry fields. There were as many rows as students, each with and about 10 columns for potential funding categories. Copy-pasting data for each students’ funding would often take so long that the site security would log out the administrator before they were able to hit save or submit. This, of course, would mean that they would have to start all over, re-pasting each field one-by-one.
This smaller, but still highly valuable time-saver resulted in an immediate appreciation for the Chrome extension project and excitement for future increments.
Each new functionality was released individually so that it could begin being used immediately and so feedback could be collected and future plans refined.