| John Yoder |
| The University of Texas Health Center at Tyler |
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"We estimate the Direct Deposit System saved the hospital about $30,000 dollars this year alone."
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| The Direct Deposit System |
The University of Texas Health Center at Tyler
Tyler, TX USA
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The Direct Deposit System allows employees to retrieve their direct deposit statements on-line. The
primary goal of this project was to save money as the result of a hospital-wide mandate to cut costs.
The application’s 1,000+ users LOVE it and wish we had gone this route years ago!
Users access the Direct Deposit system via a link on our intranet server. Once on the site, the user
enters an ID and Password. The log in process retrieves their employee number so we can accurately
identify who they are and make sure they do not access the wrong checks.
Once logged-in, the user has the ability to update their password and email address. The user then
navigates to the advice/direct deposit selection page and selects the advice statement they want.
(We keep the most recent 12 months’ advice statements available). Once the advice statement is
selected, a PDF copy of the statement is emailed to their email address.
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| Application Size and Scope |
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The application utilizes two databases, one linked directly to our online application and one holding
administrative information. I wrote an interface program to load data to the web page database. Since
we are not on the Enterprise Edition of Iron Speed Designer, we were not able to achieve our desired
results using views and joining multiple tables from multiple databases out of the box.
The application uses 7 web pages and 10 database tables. By the end of the first rolling 12 month
period, each table will have 20,000 or more rows.
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| The Project |
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The initial part of the project included building the base pages and only took a couple of days. Adding
custom business logic took about 3 weeks.
I was sole developer on this project. My background is programming and database management, including
13 years of client server, database, and user interfacing development experience. However, I have very
little experience in web development. This was my first “production” web application using Iron Speed
Designer.
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| Code Extensions and Customizations |
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We wrote about 200 lines of custom code in about 10 different areas.
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| Page Layout Customizations |
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We changed some of the search capabilities and customized the look and feel of the application by
changing some of the fonts and type faces. This application also required many enable/disable
modifications.
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| Metrics for Success |
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We estimate the Direct Deposit System saved the hospital about $30,000 dollars this year alone.
This saving is derived from calculating the cost per statement printed on a "check printer" vs cost per
statement printed on a "normal printer".
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| Iron Speed Designer Impact |
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The project would have taken 6 months or more if I had not used Iron Speed Designer. Iron Speed
Designer allowed us to get this project into production in less than two months.
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| About the Developer |
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John graduated from Texas A&M University with a BBA in Business Analysis. He has been in the IT
Industry since 1994, focusing on database management, programming, interfacing, and financial
application support. John is new to the .NET world, with less than 1 year experience.
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| Next Steps |
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We are going to integrate our application with an Active Directory service which will retrieve user
information, such as name, employee number, email address, etc. We currently don’t store employee
number on an Active Directory, but we are only a project or two away from making this a reality here at
the health center. We are also going to expand the service of the application to include W2 forms.
Talks of an employee portal for total HR, Benefits, and Payroll access are already surfacing.
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| Your Turn |
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Got database applications you need developed efficiently, yet still require full customization? Try Iron Speed Designer. Download your free evaluation now.
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