Progress Report 2 136

King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals

College of Industrial Management
Department of Accounting & MIS

COOP PROGRAM
MIS 351

Progress Report 2

Dr. I.S. Khan

Tamim S. Al-Sulaiman
976495

May 15, 2002

Progress Report 2 137

Table of Contents
Page #

Introduction ……………………….…………………………… 1
1. Organizational Chart ....……..……………..…………….. 2
2. Tasks Performed…………….. …………….……………. 3
3. Weekly Progress …...……………………..……………… 4
§ 3.1 (Sat 23 March - Wed 27 March) ………..…………….. 4
§ 3.2 (Sat 30 March - Wed 3 April)…………..……………… 4
§ 3.3 (Sat 6 April - Wed 10 April) ………………..……..…... 5
§ 3.4 (Sat 13 April - Wed 17 April) ……………..….……….. 6
§ 3.5 (Sat 20 April - Wed 24 April) ………………..………... 6
§ 3.6 (Sat 27 April – Wed 1 May) …………………………… 7
§ 3.7 (Sat 4 May - Wed 8 May) …………………….….…….. 7
§ 3.8 (Sat 11 May - Wed 15 May) ….………………….…….. 8

Appendix A: CAD Online Service Request 1………..…….. 10

Appendix B: CAD Online Service Request 2………..…….. 12

References ……………………………………………………. 14
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Introduction:

As already mentioned in the 1st progress report and according to the Individual
Development Plan (IDP) given to me, most of the work and assignments in this
period was related to the development of e-forms as well as, the development of
Livelink workflows.

This 2nd progress report will begin with presenting the organizational chart. After
that, the tasks and activities assigned to me are briefly listed. This will be
followed by a detailed description of the tasks accomplished so far on weekly
basis.
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1. Organizational Chart:

As can be seen in (Figure1), the Computer Application Department (CAD) is

one of the departments belonging to the corporate Information Technology (IT)
department. The e-Doc division with whom I currently work is headed by CAD.

Figure1: Organizational Chart

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2. Tasks Performed:

The following points briefly describe the main accomplishments during the
period for which this progress report is intended. These tasks and assignments
include:

• Completed the development of several electronic forms that were requested

by different departments.

• Interacted directly with several proponents regarding their request

requirements.

• Worked and still working on the development of several Livelink workflows

requested by different departments.

• Attended a full day Livelink Workflow Training session.

• Developed several HTML as well as PDF forms that were required for the
inclusion in one particular Livelink workflow.

• Currently developing a workflow along side involving one of the users to be

trained on the use of such workflows.

• Presented a developed workflow to one of the proponents.

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3. Weekly Progress:

This part will mainly focus and describe the activities performed in the period
from March 23 to May 15. The activities are divided and described in more detail
according to the weekly progress.

3.1: (Sat 23 March - Wed 27 March):

This first week after the submission of the 1st progress report consisted
mainly of completing some activities that were already mentioned in the
previous report. One of those activities was the development of an electronic
form that was requested by the Finance department. This particular form
required the use of some java scripts in order to satisfy the needs of the
business process involved. For this purpose I had to interact directly with both
the requester of this form (proponent), as well as having to consult an e-forms
analyst to assist and guide me in the process of scripting or in some cases
choosing proper scripts that were already used in different forms that required
the same functionality. The direct interaction with the user helped me in
understanding the exact requirements as well as business process involved.
The form was then sent back and forth to the proponent to be evaluated until
it was finally approved from their side. After that, the form was included in the
Saudi Aramco e-form list on the Intranet, which includes many electronic
forms that are regularly being used by the employees in order to simplify their
daily activities.

After the completion of the earlier mentioned form, I was contacted by one
of the division’s employees to take over a Livelink workflow request that was
requested by the Contracting department.

On Tuesday of that same week, I attended our group’s weekly

communication meeting, which mainly consisted of discussing the progress
and status of each group member regarding their assigned tasks.

3.2: (Sat 30 March - Wed 3 April):

The second week referred to in this progress report consisted of three main
tasks. The first one was related to the workflow request assigned to me the
previous week for which I had to begin with gathering the requirements from
the proponent. The second task was completing a workflow design for
another party for whom I had already gathered the required information. On
the other hand, the third task came to me by mid week when I was contacted
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about a project requested that would involve using different kinds of forms
(PDF and HTML) as well as having to integrate them into a Livelink workflow.

For the first task I contacted the proponent to meet with them to get a
clearer picture regarding their requirements, which was done on the same
day. This meeting allowed me to get a clearer insight about how the process
was currently being conducted and how it could be automated into a
workflow.

The second task required a functionality which was not currently supported
by the Livelink options. Thus one of the Livelink analysts began looking into it
trying to find a way to customize some of the current available options in
order to be able to meet the proponent’s requirements.

On Monday of this particular week I was contacted and given some notes
regarding a workflow request by Vela International Marine (see Appendix B),
as well as being notified about a meeting with the proponent on the following
day. In that meeting, the main concern was gathering the required
information. Another concern was trying to find out if the requirements
demanded can be handled using Livelink, since the request involved certain
reporting procedures as outcomes of the workflow as well as demanding
automatic update of records in different circumstances.

3.3: (Sat 6 April - Wed 10 April):

Work on the Vela request began in this week. We started by creating some
dummy Forms as well as, using a prototype workflow to test the integration of
them. Once satisfied with the outcomes of this testing phase, I began the
design of the actual forms that would be needed in PDF format. Doing so, I
had to make sure that the naming convention of the form fields that should
reflect the same values in different forms are consistent through documenting
each field name. The naming convention was important since these names
would reflect the attribute values in the corresponding tables (records) that
will be used for the purpose of reporting as well as updating. In this week, 7 of
the 10 needed forms for the Vela request were developed.

The Contracting request involved the use of a form within the workflow.
Therefore, they provided me with the current form that they were using
manually for me to use as a template as to converting it to a PDF form. Some
adjustments needed to be done before the conversion. Once that was
completed, the form was converted and the process of adding the required
fields began. The form was finalized on Tuesday of this week and integrated
with a prototype workflow, which was developed along side the form creation.
After ens uring that the form’s functionality was intact, I began the actual
development of the corresponding workflow.
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By the end of the week, at the weekly communication meeting, various

issues were discussed as well as following up on each member’s progress in
his or her particular assignments.

3.4: (Sat 13 April - Wed 17 April):

This week was mainly a continuation of the previous week, since it included
mostly resuming and completing the tasks begun earlier. I started the week
with working on the PDF forms that were still to be developed for the Vela
request, which I finished on that same day. After that, I met with the other
group member involved in the same request to go over what was
accomplished and what was still needed. During this meeting we agreed to
develop additional forms, but this time in HTML format, which would give us
more flexibility in handling the request’s needs. The PDF forms would be
used to register the field names in the Livelink tables, while the HTML forms
will serve as the interface.

Work on the Contracting workflow was also resumed to be completed. After

initially completing the requested workflow, I began testing its functionality
according to what was required without attaching the designed form to it yet.
By the time this testing phase was completed, the form was included and
different views had to be developed. The proponent was contacted to set an
appointment for evaluating the workflows functionality and whether some
modifications had to be considered. Unfortunately, when I met with the
proponent he was facing some problems with his computer. Thus we agreed
to reschedule the demonstration for the next day. On the following day the
proponent added some new requirements to the ones already completed,
which meant having to postpone the demonstration further more.

In the group’s weekly meeting, the Supervisor told me that I will be

attending a Livelink workflow training session, which will be held on the 27th of
April. In that meeting the current status of the group members was also
discussed as well as other events that concern the division.

3.5: (Sat 20 April - Wed 24 April):

In regards to the Contracting workflow, still more requirements were

requested. Nevertheless, this time the additional requirements were related to
the PDF form not the workflow itself. Thus, I completed the addition and
modification of some features in the form. After that, the form had to be
uploaded again to the workflow as well as having to associate the form with a
table to enable the utilization of the reporting facility provided by Livelink. After
that, I began testing the whole workflow including the form and the report
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associated. The proponent was contacted to specify a location (Folder) in
Livelink where the developed workflow should be located. Permission was
granted to me that enables me to add a workflow to the specified folder,
which I did. The testing phase of this workflow by the users will determine
whether or not more workflows of similar needs will be requested by the same
proponent.

For the Vela request, I began the development of the HTML forms using the
same field names used in the PDF forms designed earlier. The process
started off a bit slow due to my inexperience in this kind of form development.
Nevertheless, after finishing the first few forms, the pace of the development
was gradually increased. Thus, by the end of this week, 6 out of the 10
required forms had already been finalized.

Also, on Tuesday of this week, me and all the other KFUPM students that
are currently undertaking their COOP program with Saudi Aramco met with
our departments’ COOP coordinators. In this meeting different issues were
brought up, although the focus of it was towards our progress in our current
jobs.

3.6: (Sat 27 April - Wed 1 May):

This week began with the Livelink workflow training session, which began
with some brief overview regarding the workflow design, as well as explaining
some of the concepts and terminologies used in the process. After that, a real
life example was chosen to be worked on. In this case the example was a
vacation request process, which would usually be handled manually to travel
from one approver to another until being finally approved. Each participant
had the chance to develop the workflow by himself while having the
assistance whenever needed. This training experience helped me personally
in getting to know some advanced features of Livelink workflows, which were
still unknown to me prior to this training session.

Also, the completion of the remaining HTML forms required for the Vela
request was accomplished during this week. After that was dealt with, the
next phase would mostly be testing the functionalities required when
uploading them to Livelink, as well as having to test the table record updates
that should correspond to each field entry.

3.7: (Sat 4 May - Wed 8 May):

This week began with working on the Vela requirements through testing
different approaches to choose the most efficient and effective one. The test
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involved the trial of different software to see which would be more appropriate
to use in this particular case.

A workflow request was assigned to me this week (see Appendix A), which
would include the development of several Livelink workflows for the Ras
Tanura Refinery (RTR), as well as training one of the users from the
requesting department. Thus, my supervisor, me, and two other group
members met with the proponent to get to know the exact requirements. After
that, the supervisor suggested that the user that required to be trained should
be given an overview by me regarding the development of workflows. After
that, the user should work with me regarding the development of a model
workflow where he will gain experience on workflow development and I would
in return get to know the business process for which the proponent has
requested a workflow. Thus, the user was assigned to stay with the division
for three days starting the following week in order to work with me in
developing a workflow model to be evaluated by their department
management once completed.

Also in this week, I attended another Livelink workflow training session that
was a completion to what has already been done the previous week. This
session began after the weekly communication meeting at 8:45am and ended
at 3:30pm.It covered various aspects concerning the workflow developed
earlier.

3.8: (Sat 11 May - Wed 15 May):

On Saturday of this week and as mentioned before the user from RTR and
me began the development cycle of their request. We began by going over
the requirements once again and started the development of the workflow
right after that. Since this particular workflow model that was being designed
was relatively small in scale, we began also to enhance the user interface
through including some HTML scripts to make its appearance a bit more user
friendly. After completing this model, we contacted the proponent to inform
them on the current status of the development where we were asked to
present this model to them on the following day. The presentation of the
designed workflow was given in a conference room and was attended by four
of the potential users. The proponent asked for some modifications that
needed to be encountered before they could make a decision in using this
developed model.

On Tuesday, I met with the other proponent (Contracting) after the weekly
communication meeting was concluded. During this meeting the y asked me
to prepare and write detailed instructions that should guide the users of the
workflow through this process.
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Thus, I will continue on working on the already started requests for the next
period. After that, and according to the IDP, I will be mentored on the use of
Documentum along side working on the received requests.

Mohamme d A. Al-Arfaj
e-Doc Application Development
Group Leader
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APPENDIX A:

CAD Online Service Request System Monday, May 06, 2002

[Vie w All Requests] | [View/Update This Request] | [View All Requests For Sulaiman, Tamim T]

A Service Request has been reassigned to you that requires your action.

Service Request Details:

Analyst Assigned: Sulaiman,, Tamim, T

Service Re quest for: 6163 - RIMS Workflow

Service Request Type: Work Flow

Submitted By: Safwan, Ahmad M

Reassigned By: arfajma

Reassigned On: 5/6/2002 3:40:31 PM

Reassign Notes:

Description:
Refinery Instruction Manuals (RIMS) are word documents, being sent for review by
different organizations, mainly within RTR. There are some cases when they are being
routed for approval by other organizations. We need to: ? Develop an application within
LiveLink to track and automate this manual process. We are for your suggestions on
ways to improve the current manual process. ? The application must utilize the outlook pre
-defined groups for notification. ? Generate summary type reports for different status:
being routed for approval, list of due for review and approval within a specified period
of time. ? Automate the PDF file generation when the RIM is approved, as part of this
application/work flow; for posting into the web.? Develop a page similar to the contents
of the following link http://rtrweb.rtn.aramco.com.sa/rptd/qa/RIMS/RIMS.htm.
RIM 1.000 is to be enhanced. ? RIM 1.001 will give you an input on this workflow procedure.
FYI, this is the second time I do submit this request. The first one seems to be lost.
Task History: Task Reassigned by: arfajma On: 5/6/2002 3:40:31 PM
Old Analyst: Kurdi Mamdouh;
New Analyst: Sulaiman, Tamem S;
Comments:

Last Updated : kurdimm On: 5/6/2002 11:43:30 AM

Percent Complete: 50%
Previous Recommendation: A second meeting was held with Naseem, Mustafa, M. Arfaj,
A. Mufti, Tamim, and myself to discuss the issues involved in creating a workflow. The
requirements were gathered and a prototype will be developed for client review.

Last Updated : kurdimm On: 4/8/2002 7:41:29 AM

Percent Complete: 25%
Previous Recommendation: Met with user and it was agreed that someone from their area
will come to e-Doc for workflow mentoring. User will call us when he is ready.
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Last Updated : kurdimm On: 4/1/2002 9:05:47 AM

Percent Complete: 10%
Previous Recommendation: User was contacted and a meeting was arranged for
Wednesday April 3 at 11:00 AM.

Task Assigned by: arfajma On: 3/30/2002 10:20:13 AM

Analyst(s):Kurdi, Mamdouh M;
Comments:

Approved by: aliya0b On: 3/27/2002 8:17:01 AM

Comments:

Submitted by: SAFWAM0D On: 3/26/2002 6:11:37 PM

Note: Please respond to the request within the next 24 hours.

Thank you for your attention and support!

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APPENDIX B:

CAD Online Service Request System Saturday, April 06, 2002

[View All Requests] | [View/Update This Request] | [View All Requests For Sulaiman, Tamim T;Dawd Nasif]

A Service Request has been reassigned to you that requires your action.

Service Request Details:

Analyst Assigned: Sulaiman,, Tamim, T;Dawd, Nasif

Service Request for: 4488 - Workflow Forms
Service Request Type: Work Flow
Submitted By: Ancheta, Rante V
Reassigned By: arfajma
Reassigned On: 4/6/2002 2:15:11 PM
Reassign Notes:
Description: Create a workflow map on the attached forms. These forms need to be converted to
livelink forms;and personal information should be picked up from the user profile;
workflow maps need to be created to automate the approval process of these forms
up to four authority levels; Create a template workflow map to automate the already
existing electronic forms; user training should be provided to one of the content managers
(RV Ancheta); and testing of the developed workflow maps should be before EID
(i.e. December 11, 2001); Request to procure the On Time Module(group scheduling)
for testing. Name of the forms: 1. Leave of Absence 2. Expense Report
3. Travel Service Request 4. Travel Service Request Ticket Refund 5. Cash Advance
6. Business Travel Service Request (for Seagoing) 7. Petty Cash 8. Course
Nomination ********* Forms attached to this will be emailed directly to John Docherty.

Task History: Task Reassigned by: arfajma On: 4/6/2002 2:15:11 PM

Old Analyst: Karerat Jamal;Sulaiman, Tamim T;
New Analyst: Dawd, Nasif ;Sulaiman, Tamem S;
Comments:

Task Reassigned by: arfajma On: 3/31/2002 2:31:57 PM

Old Analyst: Karerat Jamal;
New Analyst: Karerat, Jamal ;Sulaiman, Tamem S;
Comments:

Task Reassigned by: arfajma On: 2/3/2002 9:44:53 AM

Old Analyst: Mufti Aiman;
New Analyst: Karerat, Jamal ;
Comments:

Task Reassigned by: barahess On: 12/29/2001 7:39:53 AM

Old Analyst: Abulleif Majed;Fawaz Ghassan;Khurshid Rafiq;
New Analyst: Mufti, Aiman H;
Comments: Aiman, this the request from Vela that you completed one form on
Ramadan. They should approve and start use the first form before we start on the others.
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Task Assigned by: barahess On: 11/21/2001 3:34:29 PM

Analyst(s):Abulleif, Majed M;Fawaz, Ghassan I;Khurshid, Rafiq A;

Comments: Included Majed and Ghassan.

Approved by: horvatkd On: 11/19/2001 2:14:34 PM

These electronic forms are required to meet scheduled due dates for the MyVela project.

Submitted by: ANCHETFV On: 11/19/2001 1:39:31 PM

Approved by: horvatkd On: 11/19/2001 2:14:34 PM

These electronic forms are required to meet
s scheduled due dates for the MyVela project.

Submitted by: ANCHETFV On: 11/19/2001 1:39:31 PM

Note: Please respond to the request within the next 24 hours.

Thank you for your attention and support!

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References:
1- http://mgtg.aramco.com.sa/data/05-2.pdf