Deliverable C: Technical Requirements
Purpose
The purpose of this document is to define the technical requirements for the proposed Web Site.
1.1 Objectives
AFHealthyEating.com will market and showcase the existing consulting and seminar services of AF Healthy Eating, LLC as well as publish the company’s existing newsletter and magazine online, orderable and viewable via the web. Our goal is to provide existing and future customers with online access to the information and resources they elicit from AF Healthy Eating while becoming the de facto informational site for Nutritionists, Institutional Food Service providers, and Meal Planners. Some of the features to be provided are an organized, categorized presentation of the consulting topics and seminars available, online personal order history, a newsletter to be emailed to subscribers based on topics the user has indicated interest plus an online magazine.
Goals and Message
AFHealthyEating.com is the de facto site for any information needed on institutional food menus. Our goal is to stay connected to existing customers with ongoing access (via the web) to the company’s services, keeping them current by making future information (follow-up consulting, tips, quality control, refreshed or updated seminars, targeted magazine articles) available to them based on the topics on which they’ve traditionally focused.
New customers can also use this site by accessing everything they need to start an institutional food program, nutritional support services, or personal food programs. They can also enjoy the existing services of AF Healthy Eating, LLC.
Content
AFHealthyEating.com will be have (in web portal style) links to their company’s mission statement, what services are available based on customer type (i.e. Nutritionist, Food Service Manager for a company, Procurement Manager, etc.).
Magazine and newsletter subscriptions are available for purchase in a storefront setting. The site will have 4-5 categories (or titles) of available Newsletters. These would typically be a one-pager that is emailed to the user based on what categories has chosen in their subscription profile and would be free of charge. The Magazine is available in hardcopy or online (text) format for a fee.
Sources of revenue will be:
- Consulting Fees
- Seminar Fees
- Magazine Subscriptions
- Advertising
Other content will include:
- Company information
- FAQ’s
- Institutional Food industry news
- Members will be asked to register to be on the Newsletter mailing list for topics they’re interested in or Magazine subscriptions.
- Information and instructions for obtaining Consulting or Seminar Services
Structure & Interpretation
- Customers will be presented with a tabular page where they indicate what type of customer they are OR what type of service they’re interested in
- User may also log-in with an existing username or have the option of creating a new username, based on email address as identification
- If content chosen requires registration and/or purchase, it will be plain to the user this is so.
- Customers will have the option to edit their subscription profile.
- To purchase, the consumer would need to be logged in properly and provide their credit card information
- If user queries for a given service, site will show picture (if applicable), price, description, in the results
- Customers and users who register for the Newsletter can choose from the specific categories available. They are then emailed those chosen newsletters via a direct link.
- The Magazine’s article titles and a short sentence of content will be shown in its own region. The articles are clicked to reveal the full content of the article, if the user has registered and subscribed.
- Links to recommended sites for additional information on topics will be provided
- Also included will be a Site Map, biographies of company owners, legal information including memberships in associations, customer testimonials and contact Information
- In Phase Two of this site, the user may access information via search box where a keyword search will be performed based on topic or word entered.
Sensorial Design
- The page design will be consistent throughout the site.
- Navigation will include drop down menu-list
Marketing Testing
We found 3 main potential competitors for our site:
Sysco Services’ eNutrition site (http://www.sysco.com/customer/eNutrition.html)
Strengths:
- Sysco is a household name (i.e. brand awareness)
- Nutritionists automatically have a book of business where their information can be marketed
Weaknesses:
- The site offers very little useable or free content
- The site is not friendly for new users
- Perusing for needed information showed information wasn’t ‘ready yet’ or ‘Under Construction’
Sodexho Food Services’ Education Site (https://www.sodexhoeducation.com/)
Strengths:
- Sodexho advertises heavily in several media (i.e. brand awareness)
- Typically associated with schools, this firm can leverage in best practices for that segment
Weaknesses:
- The site offers very little nutritional information for school’s meal schedule
The content offers contact
- contact information instead of information for the user on the site itself
- Only markets to schools, and certain schools at that
US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps http://www.usphs.gov/default.aspx
Strengths:
- Obvious point of presence for all Federal Government Agencies,
- Services are Insourced.
Weaknesses:
- Content of Nutritional Information available on the web is not available to general public
- Only markets to Federal Level Government Agencies and Services
AFHealthyEating.com
Strengths:
- Existing customer base on which to market
- Customers are typically incented by their company to focus on nutrition
- We leverage the scope of addressing ALL institutional meal topics, not just the public sector, schools, etc.
- Health and nutrition is consistently a hot topic in society
- Gift Certificates and Cards (planned for Phase Two)
Weaknesses:
- Library of information of previous seminars and consulting engagements needs to be created
- Training of qualified individuals to consult or hold seminars to increased customer base may fall short
- Institutional Menu Managers may not have enough time online
AFHealthyEating.com also performed some market analysis with these findings:
Three existing customers were polled as to their:
- Interest in the portal itself
- Use of any AFHealthyEating.com’s competitors’ web services
- Comfort with putting customer profile online (security concerns, data sensitivity, etc.)
- Interest in receiving follow-up information from their topics of interest
- Interest in either version (online/hardcopy) of the magazine
Results:
- Two of the three customers said they would appreciate being current on nutritional topics
Additionally, a focus group was conducted of three Nutritionists, three School Cafeteria Administrators and three Nursing Home Kitchen Managers. All were interested in the services, but only half of those in the group used the internet regularly.
Opportunities
- Leverage testimonials of existing clients
- Economies of Scale (Making information available to many instead of one engagement-by-engagement)
- Somewhat untapped market
Target demographic
- Public Service/Food Managers and Nutritionists are typically 35-54 year olds
- Average income of $30,000 - $50,000
1.3 Critical Success Factors
- Configuration and Upload of newsletters and magazine content to site as static HTML. (Note: Site is planning in Phase Two to utilize the Documentum System (Document Management Tool) and/or in the database itself.
- Ongoing upload of new material must be seamless, automatic and performed off-hours
- Knowledge of talent pool of consultants to accommodate increased customer base must be realized via a separate Resource Plan or work with an appropriate staffing agency.
- Response Times to serve up large data need to be rigorously tested given Document Management Systems’ history
- Resource Plan should include keeping support available from Silver (on an as-needed basis) while AF Healthy Eating, LLC can ramp-up their own support
- Silver must perform training to existing and new employees
- Billing Data downloaded from AFHealthyEating.com must be transferred to AF Healthy Eating’s CPA in .csv format
3. Implementation Strategy <<back to top
The genre of our site is a valuable company site. However there is also an Element of personal commerce as users will be able to subscribe to newsletters. In Phase two we would be adding elements of a grassroots information site as the knowledge base would be developed. We have decided to use an iterative approach so that we can accommodate changes, and have the opportunity to tweak requirements in later phases. This is especially necessary as we will plan on having someone of a second implementation with the knowledge base.
Analysis
- Site use and purpose
- Database needs
- Primary users
- Process definition
- Security needs
- Define team and major roles
Design
- Logo/Brand adaptation for website
- Functional prototypes and story boards
- Focus on catering to primary users
- Content/page flow and navigation
- Consider ease of use and other best practices
- Page specifications for coding phase
- Database design
- Information hierarchy design
- Site map
- Integration considerations will be documented
- Use cases developed
- Test plans will be completed in this phase and checked with analysis needs
Content Gathering
- Company goals, values, mission statement
- Content organization
- Editing content for the web
- Restructuring the magazine layout for the web
- Revisit analysis and design and update test plans if necessary
Coding
- Convention strategy
- Code reuse considerations, query reuse considerations
- Incremental development and testing of core pieces
- Database will be developed and tested,
- Site will be coded
- Revisit analysis and design and update test plans if necessary
Testing
- Test plans developed from tech requirements and process flow definition stage will be used
- Integration of database and site will be tested
- Structured user acceptance testing with use cases (UAT)
- Consistency though out site and commerce processes
- Capacity/load testing
- Browser Compatibility
Revision
- Results from UAT and test plans will be assessed
- Make final revisions and updates
- Sign off on testing and any known issues
- Create work around for known issues
Production
- Code freeze
- Post final content and code
- Provide technical support
- Track and asses issues for future resolution
TR 4.1.1 User can browse company informational content freely
TR 4.1.2 Links to other resource sites will open in new window
TR 4.1.3 User can become a member through registration process for individuals and companies
TR 4.1.4 Non subscribers will have a select viewing of articles on the site
TR 4.1.5 All users can browse newsletters
TR 4.1.6 Article viewing will be limited to subscription length if it is an online subscription
TR 4.1.7 Apply discount to first time subscribers
TR 4.1.8 Show magazine pricing and duration on the subscription page
TR 4.1.9 User should be alerted when subscription will expire
TR 4.1.10 User can renew their current subscription without reentering credit information
This site will have a portal, which will be Flash-based, utilizing ActionScript in order to display content that is relative to the user section (corporate or individual). Both areas have a members' site, which allows them access to purchased content.
6.1.2 Navigation
Outside the portal, the user interface has a standard graphic-based top banner (486 x 104px). Layout is controlled by a combination of CSS and a 3-column table. The left column houses the navigational links, 2nd contains content, and 3rd column is for member login information/advertising in order to keep it separate from content without distracting the user.
6.1.3 ActionScript Specifications (sample)
6.1.4 CSS Specifications (sample)
6.1.5 Screen shot of portal
- Microsoft SQL Server will be utilized in the site to store the customer and product information
- ASP.NET framework will be utilized in the site in order to authenticate users and set membership roles on the subscribers
- The web site will communicate with a secure socket layer in order to protect the integrity of the customers credit card information,
6.3 Software Interfaces
- Site will utilize ASP.NET, C# using SQL Server driver with the mySQL RDBMS.
- Checkout procedure will use Paypal.com interface for ease of use.
- Content will occasionally have smartlinks to other entities, like Government agencies such as http://www.fda.gov/
- Documentum (Doc Mgt System) to store content (Phase Two)
6.4 Communications Interfaces
SMTP will be used to send e-mail notification to the customer 1) to thank them for subscribing to the site, 2) to provide them with advertising information, 3) to provide the customer with information on upcoming events, and 4) to forward the customer their newsletters.
- C# will be used to connect to mySQL RDBMS
- A secure socket layer will be used to protect the integrity of customers’ credit card information. (if Paypal is deemed unviable)
- Figure 6.4
7.1.1 Tables for AFHealthy Eating
7.1.1.1 MEM_PASSWORD (Contains members’ login information)
7.1.1.2 MEM_CREDIT (contains the members’ credit card information) (if Paypal is deemed unviable)
7.1.1.3 MEMBER (contains the members’ general information)
7.1.1.4 MEMBER_ADDRESS (contains the member mailing information)
7.1.1.5 SUBSCRIPTION (contains the subscription information)
7.1.1.6 CODE_TYPE (Contain the code for the magazines)
Predefined Internal tables for
7.1.1.7 CODE_DESCRIPTION (Contain detail information on the subscription)
7.1.1.8 CODE_TITLES
7.1.1.9 CODE VALUES
7.2 Entity Relationship Diagram
- System will be available 24 x 6.75, 365 days. Back-Ups and Maintenance will be run Sunday Evenings from 9pm to 3am (pst)
- EDI calls to Documentum will be disabled from Sunday 6am to 12noon (Phase Two)
- Email daemon will run on separate server which queues support calls and subscription requests. This server will run nightly backups from 10pm (pst) to 2am (pst) due to log file build-up.
- Support Calls of High priority will be routed to SMS server which will text devices of support staff and management.
8.1.2 Capacity Requirements
- Approximately 100-250 concurrent users will use the system during peak times from 6:00am (pst) to 3pm (pst), 7 days a week
- Approximately 50-75 users will use the system during off-peak times which are M-Sa: 3pm – 6am (pst); Su: 3am-6am
- If > 50 concurrent users execute Docs I/O with Documentum, there will be 40% degradation in performance.
8.1.3 Maintenance and Production Support
- Recall of password information will be sent out 24-7 via automated email to facilitate customer support
- Customer Service lines will run concurrently with peak times for operation (6:00am (pst) to 3pm (pst), 7 days a week)
- Database maintenance will be performed on Sunday 9pm-10:00pm (pst) to allow ample time for testing without interrupting peak usage time
- Website maintenance will be performed Sunday 10pm-12a (pst) to allow ample time for testing without interrupting peak usage time
- FAQ will be regularly updated with questions to decrease call/email volume for frequent issues
- Customer Service will provide support during any outage and will respond within 30 minutes.
- Emails sent to customer service will receive an automated message after receipt. All emails will be issued a case ID number, and answered in order received. Max turnaround time: 48 hours.
The web site will have numerous security features:
- All user information will be validated for accuracy.
- Subscribers will be provided with login information for future subscriptions. Customer login information will be authenticated through asp.net security tools
- Members must provide password to access certain information on the page
- SSL will be used in order to process credit card information over the web server (if Paypal is deemed unviable)
Participant |
Role |
Approval Date |
Adelaide Anderson |
Analyst |
30-Sep-07 |
Mark Grondy |
Project Lead |
30-Sep-07 |
Salena Burke |
Programmer |
30-Sep-07 |
Danyell Jones Muhammad |
Graphic Designer |
30-Sep-07 |
Contributions<<back to top
- Addy: 3, 4, 5, 7.2
- Danyell: 6.1.x, 8.1.3, posted to website
- Mark: 1.1, 1.3, 2, 6.3, 8.1.1, 8.1.2
- Selena: 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 8.2
- Although each had 'lead' role in producing their sections, all gave their oral and written input to each section during full document walk-throughs
