Designing My Web App

I’ve found a gap in the market. This is going to earn me billions. I’ve already chosen my Ferrari. All I have to do now is actually make the damn thing.

What is it?

It’s an employee training tracker. Yes, we can use Excel spreadsheets, Access databases, and pen and paper, but it doesn’t do all the fun stuff I want it to do.

What fun stuff?

Glad you asked.

• It’ll list trainings, summaries, time taken, prerequisites, whether they’re part of on-boarding or in-service training regimes (or both), and links to any resources needed to complete the training.
• It’ll list trainees, the trainings they’ve completed, the trainings they haven’t yet completed, trainings they haven’t completed but they have completed all the prerequisites for, whether they’re a full employee or being on-boarded, how long it will take for them to enter service.
• It’ll list trainers, and how many trainings have been completed in a particular week, along with what the training was and how long it took.
• It’ll have fancy interfaces for setting new trainings, adding trainers and trainees, and dashboard views.

Who’s going to use it?

The application will be used by three distinct groups, but realistically, it is mostly a compliance and reporting tool. Trainees are unlikely to ever actually bother checking. The three groups are:

• Trainees themselves — to check their progress.
• Trainers — to access resources and log trainings delivered
• Compliance officers and on-boarding managers — to check status dashboards and provide lists of trainings delivered for ISO9000/ISO9001 compliance

Why am I going to do this?

Well, put simply, it fills a gap. I am currently training new joiners at work, and find that our programme is not logically constructed, resources are all over the place, and reporting that a training has been completed is done via email. Hardly ideal, reliable, or thorough.

How am I going to do this?

Now for the fun question. The How. It will be a web application that interfaces with a backend API. The backend API will be simple, ArrestDB looks fine for my needs to begin with. The database it sits in front of will have three tables:

1. Trainees
2. List of trainings
3. Completed trainings

It will have to provide lists and individual objects in JSON format. Each of these tables will have specific columns, to be defined definitely later.

The front-end will handle putting data into the databases. There will be forms to add a new trainee/trainer, a new training, and to record a training that was delivered. The form to add a new training will allow you to set any of the existing trainings as prerequisites. The form to record a training will ask whether this is an in-service training or on-boarding training, and allow the trainer to select from a list of trainees appropriately. The form to add a new trainee/trainer will capture the email address, name, and hire date.

There will also be a few reporting views. One will list all available trainings, and be filterable. One will list all registered users, also filterable. One will listed all completed trainings recently in two modes — sensible mode (i.e.: one row per training session, regardless of the number of attendees) and stupid mode (i.e.: one row per training session per attendee). One will be an employee overview, showing what trainings they have completed, and what they are eligible for.

I have decided to use React to implement the front-end JavaScript, although I’m more familiar with Angular. I will slap a Bootstrap front-end on it to begin with it, and worry about theming it later.

What about version 2.0?

Version 2.0 will feature passwordless logins, securing the front-end and the API using authentication tokens sent to the user’s registered email, and then stored locally on the browser. As hotdesking is common in my environment, 10 tokens will be valid at the same time, with the user able to revoke any token at any time, or all of them. Exporting to CSV will have been implemented. Theming will be implemented, as will branding.

There will be a “training planner”, where multiple employees can be selected, and a list of trainings for which they are all eligible calculated. There may be some exciting calendar integration, but no promises.

Wow, that sounds awesome, can I help?

Sure! I will publish the GitHub repository alongside a “first commit” post in the coming days. If you steal my idea and run with it on your own though, I’ll hunt you down.

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Footnote: I know that “trainings” is not the correct English term. I’m from England, and spent two years teaching English. But I don’t live in the UK, and here in Budapest, “trainings” is perfectly fine — and it beats typing “training courses” every time.