One of the first, if not the very first, ASP.NET applications I built was for an employee recognition program that was run by the Corporate Communications Department. I didn’t know it at the time but it was the beginning of a long-lasting relationship with that department and some valued friendships.
The program was designed for employees to reward co-workers who impressed them with their accomplishments and dedication to making the company the best it could be. The only rules were that you could not nominate yourself and the act should truly be noteworthy – you weren’t going to be recognized for giving someone a piece of gum…. The program had already been in place when I was asked to build the web application for them. The requirements were fairly simple – validate the nominator, validate the nominee, get the reason for the nomination, store the nomination, nomination approval and print the certificate. The back-end was Microsoft Access and the certificates were done using Microsoft Word and mail merge. When a nomination was made the Program Administrator was notified and she reviewed the nomination. If it was legitimate, a certificate was printed and delivered through company mail. The employee’s manager was also notified of the award.
I added an “Admin” page so that nominations could easily be reviewed, approved or edited. There was also another component that had to be added – a monthly contest. This was different in that it was only open to managers and they could only choose from employees who were nominated for awards that month. The winner received the “Outstanding Employee of the Month” award. This part required another web page for the nominations, another section of the admin page and the ability to verify that the user was a manager.
The application was in production for about 7 months before the program was discontinued but it was a big success and it gave me the foundation upon which to build everything that came after it. I also got quite a bit of recognition for my efforts (I got a couple awards myself!) and I soon found myself with a lot of requests for applications from many different areas of the company. I even got a request for a project that came from the CEO but that’s for another article.
If you would like to know more about this project or have one you would like to discuss, please write to me at joe@joevalencia.site90.com.
Filed under: Access, ASP.NET, Excel, Microsoft Office, SQL Server, VB.NET, Web design, Web development Tagged: award, corporate communications department, employee recognition, employee recognition program, mail merge, monthly contest, nominator, program administrator, using microsoft word
