Jason Corriveau
Bucknell Appointment Hub
Background
Currently at Bucknell University, there is a system in place to reserve rooms on campus (EMS). Separately, to schedule appointments with specific people, you have to contact them, which can be done through many different ways. It can be easy to lose track of some appointments with people on campus, considering that they are likely made through emails, text-messages, and in-person conversations. Just as bad, it could be easy to lose or confuse information regarding the agreed upon meeting room! As such, there is a need for an integrated system which can allow both students and faculty to seamlessly coordinate meetings on campus. Further, done well, this appointment hub can shed light on an all-purposes appointment maker app that could be used in all facets of life (in an ideal world).
Executive Summary
One idea that comes to mind is fully integrating Google Calendar and the EMS system together. Through EMS, students or faculty will be able to identify the most optimal time to schedule meetings, and also offer a selection of open rooms to meet in (assuming that such a meeting room will be necessary). Then, through EMS, there will be an option that will allow you to send Google Calendar invitations, which include the attendees and the room where the meeting will be held. Once the appointment is in Google Calendar, both students are faculty will be able to have all of their appointments in one centralized location. A goal for this system is to improve upon the mobile functionality of EMS. This is important, given that meetings can be discussed in a setting without laptops, such as immediately following a class. A student or faculty should be able to quickly pull up an app, which can connect to EMS and find the best time to meet with another person. With such a system in place, students and faculty should be able to schedule appointments quickly and have all appointments in one centralized location. Further, this can avoid conflicts, such as if a professor welcomes two students to the same office hours for two separate problems. WIth the new system, all appointments can be scheduled quickly, such that these conflicts are avoided and appointments are remembered.
Viability Analysis
While a great idea, there could be a few challenges with this project. First, we would need to find a way for Bucknell’s system to quickly and effectively communicate with data from Google Calendar. Second, we would need to implement Bucknell’s EMS system into a mobile app, which is also able to sync with the web client. Lastly, I am not currently sure who created Bucknell’s EMS system, and whether or not this is a system that we would be allowed to modify.Assuming we are given access to the development side of EMS, we could look into seeing if connecting to Google Calendar and creating a mobile app is feasible.
Risks and Rewards
The largest reward in creating this system is that Bucknell fully adopts our new version of EMS, thus improving the convenience of scheduling appointments. One risk to this project is, given that I have not developed for this system, it could be a great deal of work to implement a mobile app. If the mobile app subsequently does not gain popularity, the work would not have much overall benefit for the community.
Closing
Overall, it is quite obvious that there is a need for appointments to be easier to make and keep track of, here on campus and overall in life. A great solution to this problem would be to integrate EMS, a system that allows users to schedule “events”, with Google Calendar. Utilizing EMS is helpful, as it already has access to a list of available rooms. Then, integrating with Google Calendar will allow users to find times and rooms where all attendees to an appointment are available. Finally, creating a mobile app for scheduling events and appointments through EMS would allow such appointments to be made quickly, without the need of a computer. Overall, Bucknell is in need to a more centralized way to schedule appointments, and the best way to do so is building on a pre-existing solution, EMS, and integrating Google Calendars to keep track of both events and appointments.