The NEDS Software
The first version of the NEDS software provided the ability to easily create deployment charts using a collection of task force members. The software could properly create both type I and type III charts, but even with that functionality, the usefulness was fairly limited because it could not populate its roster list from a central availability database. We have added this ability, as well as a few other key requests from Lt. Lofland. These new features are highlighted on this page.
When the program is run, it downloads the availability list for the specified
date (the current date by default). This status bar along the bottom edge of
the window informs the user if the program was successfully able to connect to the database.
If the program could not connect, the status bar will indicate that the program
is in "offline mode", and the availability list will be pulled from a personnel
cache that was created on the hard drive the last time the program was run in
online mode.
This is the main window of NEDS. The roster list is conveniently placed to the right of the chart, so that the user can easily drag names from the list onto their position in the chart. Each person's current status is indicated by a colored square; the color key is shown directly below the roster.
The roster view can now be filtered by status, and the people can be grouped within the roster by either their skills or their status. The panel corresponding to the skill of the selected person is conveniently highlighted to aid the user in quickly locating where to place the person on the chart.
To the right is the file menu for the program. We decided with this revision of the program to split up the creation of type I and type III charts so that only one can be edited at a time.
The saving and opening of both types of charts is now supported, as is the printing of both types of charts. The Lt. specially requested that we add the ability to print out a text only representation of the currently open chart, which is now achieved by clicking "Print Chart Roster".
The status of a person can be changed by simply right clicking on their name and choosing thier new status. Unfortunately last semesters version of NEDS status was changed locally on the computer, with the user clicking a 'sync' button in order to propagate the changes back to the server (as well as download changes to availability and status that may have occurred in the database since the last sync). This semester however, the database and the software automatically synchronized when status changed.
