In this chapter you will work through the process of creating a solution that enables users to register for training courses. The solution displays a list of the courses that are being offered, and then users can register for the courses they want to take. This solution addresses a common scenario across many organizations, and the techniques and methods that you learn in this chapter will apply to many other common scenarios in which user registration is required. The solution in this chapter relies heavily on the enterprise features in SharePoint, particularly those for Microsoft InfoPath Form services.
To solve any problem using SharePoint, you must first look at and work through the business problem. When it comes to registering for training classes, every organization will likely take a slightly different approach. In this section we are going to identify the key business problems that this chapter addresses. You will want to review these items and then adjust them as needed to fit your specific scenario. The scenario in this chapter has three major areas of concern, which are discussed in detail in the following sections.
Currently, information about classes is being sent by email whenever a new class is scheduled. In many cases this means that users who do not immediately register for the class forget about it, and this results in poor attendance in many classes.
Class registrations are processed by the Human Resources office and recorded in an attendee’s file. Attendance is currently managed by the trainers as a manual process. In many cases a sign-in sheet is passed around the class, and the teacher uses it to compile a report that is sent to the HR office.
Once a class has been completed, attendance is recorded manually by HR based on the reports generated by the trainers. If a trainer needs to access attendance reports from a previous course, he is required to contact HR, which has access to the data. Because the reports have to be generated in HR, creating reports often takes several days once they are requested.
We have briefly covered three different problems that impact the success of the training program within the organization:
Ability to find and register for classes
Ability to record class attendance
Ability to generate reports on past classes
Using SharePoint, we can build a solution that addresses each of these issues and provides an automated approach for the given problems. The first step in building the solution is to understand the key issues that we have identified. The next step is to gather information that is required to build the solution.