Lotus knows a powerful integrated application platform

Chris Connor  26 January 2010 09:23:39 PM

Some thoughts and experience on a recent project

Recently I have been working on building a browser based time recording system that interfaces with an MS SQL driven clock in time and attendance HR application. My customer had spent many months picking a best of breed time and attendance system and now required to redevelop their time recording application to interface with this to streamline both billing and HR time and attendance processes.

So what do we do? Ask the vendor to extend their application in SQL / .net? Write a "module" in .net to integrate with the application?

Management knew that they had all the systems and information - they just did not talk together. This is where Domino as it stands today is really smart and is something we should be shouting from the rooftops!!

Using Lotus Domino Agents and simple SQL interrogation tools we as a small team working with the customer unpicked the application, understood the tables and logic and built a simple domino web interface to enforce business rules for allocating project time to the time captured by the clock in system

So all the customers consultants (who are required to submit weekly timesheets for billing etc) now do is allocate the projects they were working on for that period of time driven from the time and recording system. And if they were on holiday, off sick or whatever their time sheets entries are automatically done for them!

I know that this was achieved quickly due to the unique capabilities of Domino as a web application platform. Why?

Native security allowed us to quickly develop a multi faced application so that different people input and approve time sheets.
Simple Domino Forms allowed us to quickly develop a friendly user interface for the web.
Domino Agents provided reference information for time clocked and absences where appropriate.

Thing is this sort of architecture can be deployed on any platform (MS, Novell, UNIX whatever) - drop a Domino box into any environment and away we go! Maintenance wise it sort of looks after itself as the Domino Directory (could be any directory) and the "People" SQL tables talk together.

I think there is a real future with these sort of solutions for all sorts of businesses - and this is why I (as a business) must really start ramping up on Lotus Foundations. Now that we have xPages and offerings that extend to mobile clients we are really offering a simple proven architecture for quickly developing applications with a singe UI to all clients - even offline!!

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