Company-Oriented Product Development Projects Management Tool : designing, implementing, deploying, and reporting a web application structure and functionalities
Törmäkangas, Liisa (2024)
2024
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024121937701
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024121937701
Tiivistelmä
The subject of this thesis work was to design, start implementing and document an application that can be used by Information Technology students and teachers at Oulu University of Applied Sciences to handle and manage Company-Oriented Product Development Projects
Until now, there has not been a common platform where students could save and manage the basic information and related documents of the company-oriented projects they are performing. For the teachers’ point of view, it would be important to have all the projects supervised by different teachers collected in one platform to allow automated resources handling.
Thus, the two main requirements for the application were first to allow automated and centralised handling of teacher supervising resources combined with automated assignment of a super-vised project to a teacher. Secondly, the app should provide a common location where all students, regardless of the supervising teacher, could store their project-related data. In addition, there were prerequisites for the use of Microsoft Entra ID as an authentication system and for the application to be deployed and run in OpenShift container platform.
Designing the application architecture and selecting frameworks and tools used in the app were a central part of this thesis work. These decisions were based on the following facts: application requirements and prerequisites, available resources, and developers’ skills, estimated numbers and roles of app users, and the availability of documentation and community support of the selected tools. Another important aspect of the work was to document the application structure and tools used in this thesis report for the future developers of the app to get started with.
The application designed and developed is a client-server-based web application with single-page React frontend and Node.js Express server API handling database queries and automatic emailing system. Both the frontend and the server are created with TypeScript, and frontend includes language localization for Finnish and English. Users and projects data are stored in MySQL database, and the client, the server, and the database are all deployed in separate OpenShift containers. Microsoft Entra ID with distinct roles for students and teachers is used to authenticate the users.
Application basic functionalities are working, and the main requirements and prerequisites were met within the time frame of this thesis work. Still, there are some specific requirements that are not implemented yet, and more thorough application testing needs to be implemented in the future.
Until now, there has not been a common platform where students could save and manage the basic information and related documents of the company-oriented projects they are performing. For the teachers’ point of view, it would be important to have all the projects supervised by different teachers collected in one platform to allow automated resources handling.
Thus, the two main requirements for the application were first to allow automated and centralised handling of teacher supervising resources combined with automated assignment of a super-vised project to a teacher. Secondly, the app should provide a common location where all students, regardless of the supervising teacher, could store their project-related data. In addition, there were prerequisites for the use of Microsoft Entra ID as an authentication system and for the application to be deployed and run in OpenShift container platform.
Designing the application architecture and selecting frameworks and tools used in the app were a central part of this thesis work. These decisions were based on the following facts: application requirements and prerequisites, available resources, and developers’ skills, estimated numbers and roles of app users, and the availability of documentation and community support of the selected tools. Another important aspect of the work was to document the application structure and tools used in this thesis report for the future developers of the app to get started with.
The application designed and developed is a client-server-based web application with single-page React frontend and Node.js Express server API handling database queries and automatic emailing system. Both the frontend and the server are created with TypeScript, and frontend includes language localization for Finnish and English. Users and projects data are stored in MySQL database, and the client, the server, and the database are all deployed in separate OpenShift containers. Microsoft Entra ID with distinct roles for students and teachers is used to authenticate the users.
Application basic functionalities are working, and the main requirements and prerequisites were met within the time frame of this thesis work. Still, there are some specific requirements that are not implemented yet, and more thorough application testing needs to be implemented in the future.