Of this, I am proud

[lokheed]

So our air department has a data entry reduncancy issue.  They have to enter the same information in multiple unconnected systems in order to do their job.  It's not just a pain in the butt, it dramatically reduces the number of transactions they can complete in a day.  One part of this involves the printing of either the FedEx label or the USPS envelope.  FedEx has made available a web service for performing all kinds of transactions with them, including printing your own shipping labels.  To be able to use their system, however, you have to pass a certification process which understandably involves your printing a variety of test labels and sending them to FedEx to verify, so they are sure that they will be able to properly scan the barcodes.

I completed a piece early this week is basically wired so that the user just enters the record locator for the ticket request.  Once they have selected that record they just have to hit a "Generate Label / Envelope" button, which pulls up a form pre-populated with the Sending and Destination addresses and with the FedEx account number already entered.  From that form they can make any changes if necessary (almost always not), and click one button to create the FedEx ship request which gives them the tracking number and creates the shipping label to be printed.  Or, if the tickets are being sent by mail they can click one button to print the envelope.  Assuming the data was entered correctly into Sabre to begin with, the user never needs to enter any of that information again - the label or the envelope just pick up the existing data from the other system and print them out.

Now, actually getting the binary data for that FedEx label was a chore in and of itself.  It comes back from the web service as a string, which needs to be parsed through and then written one bit at a time to the final image file.  While parsing through that data you have to watch for an escape character, and if you hit that you have to read the next two characters to find the high bit and low bit in order to correctly write the escaped bit into the image.  Once you have the final image, then there is the challenge of sending it to the printer properly sized.  If the image gets distorted at all then the barcodes will not be able to be scanned.  It was a fun and interesting challenge.

The end result so far is that the users are very, very happy with the interface.  And just a few minutes ago I found out that we passed the FedEx certification on our first try.  This makes me very, very happy.  I have happy end users, I have happy team members, and that makes me a happy boy.

Comments

Automation boy

[ncontrol.livejournal.com]

Congrats. Great job!
In addition to the negative impact on productivity, every time a human does data entry - even if it is cut and paste - you introduce another possibility for error.
This is an awesome step forward.
Keep up the great work. But you always were awesome.