CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION:

In today’s fast-paced corporate environment, the efficient management of time is crucial for

directors and senior executives. The traditional methods of scheduling appointments, often

relying on manual coordination through administrative staff, can be cumbersome and prone

to errors. To address these challenges, organizations increasingly turn to digital solutions that

automate and streamline the appointment booking process.

According to a study by McKinsey & Company, effective time management among

executives can significantly enhance organizational productivity and decision-making

processes (McKinsey, 2021). This underscores the importance of implementing robust

systems that not only facilitate seamless appointment scheduling but also integrate with

existing organizational workflows.

The Director Appointment Booking System (DABS) proposed in this study aims to

revolutionize how appointments are managed within [Organization Name]. By leveraging

modern technologies and best practices in software development, DABS seeks to optimize

director availability, improve communication between stakeholders, and enhance overall

operational efficiency.

According to Zozi, online booking systems bring tour and activity business owners into the

21stcentury and it is defined as making a reservation or appointment for a service via the

Internet. When you pair the technology with old-school customer service, your business gets

an exciting edge for selling services and filling activities. With it, customers can book for

show tickets online and pay via the Internet before hand using debit/credit or master cards,

etc. After an online payment, customer will receive a booking code orserial number which is

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unique for entry and also a form or ticket with the code on it will be printed by thecustomer.

The ticket will include the passport of the customer for security against theft. In case of loss

ofticket, the customer can go online to request for another one; and this differs a lot from the

traditional booking, which involves long hours queuing for tickets. Some major areas of

application include;

o Hotel for booking rooms

o Cinema houses

o Airport for booking tickets

o Event Organizations for football shows and concert seat reservations

o Bus and train bookings

o Used in making reservations in healthcare

1.2 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Appointment scheduling systems are used by primary and specialty care clinics to manage

access to service providers, as well as by hospitals to schedule elective surgeries. Many

factors affect the performance of appointment systems including arrival and service time

variability, patient and provider preferences, available information technology and the

experience level of the scheduling staff. In addition, a critical bottleneck lays in the

application of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IE/OR) techniques. The most

common types of health care delivery systems are described in this article with particular

attention on the factors that make appointment scheduling challenging. For each environment

relevant decisions ranging from a set of rules that guide schedulers to real-time responses to

deviations from plans are described. A road map of the state of the art in the design of

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appointment management systems is provided and future opportunities for novel applications

of IE/OR models are identified.

Appointment Management system is a desktop application that is designed to help fix

schedule and appointment from the management of organization and the customers, send

messages to customers either by phone or email. With this computerized system there will be

no loss of record or member record which generally happens when a non - computerized

system is used. It is designed in Visual Studio and the database used is Microsoft SQL Server

2005.

In contemporary organizational settings, effective management of director appointments

plays a pivotal role in ensuring smooth operations, strategic decision-making, and efficient

resource utilization. Directors, being key decision-makers, often have damanding schedules

that require precise coordination to mazimize their availability and effectiveness.

Traditional Methods of Appointment Scheduling, such as Manual booking or basic Calendar

tools, frequently fail short in meeting the complexities and demands of modern organizational

structures.

The need for a dedicated Director Appointment Booking System arises from these challenges

and demands. Such a system aims to dtreamline the process of scheduling appoitments,

enhance communication among stakeholders, and optimize the use of director’s time.

1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS

In a dynamic corporate environment, directors and other senior executives often have tight

schedules that necessitate efficient management of their time. Currently, the process of

scheduling appointments with directors involves manual coordination via administrative staff,

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which can be time-consuming and prone to errors. To streamline this process and enhance

productivity, there is a need to develop a Director Appointment Booking System.

There are problems found in appointment which include:

o An increase in the waiting time for appointments

o Frustration for Students, and staff

o A waste of valuable resources

1.4 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The objective of this project is to design and implement a web-based Director Appointment

Booking System that automates and simplifies the process of scheduling appointments with

directors. The system aims to provide a user-friendly interface for both directors and users

(employees, clients, etc.) to view director availability, request appointments, and receive

confirmation or rescheduling notifications by the following features:

1. User Roles:

o Directors: Should be able to manage their availability, view appointment

requests, and confirm or reschedule appointments.

o Administrators: Should have access to manage director schedules, view

appointment logs, and generate reports.

o Users (Employees/Clients): Should be able to view director availability,

request appointments, and receive notifications.

2. Appointment Management:

o Allow directors to set their availability (regular hours, exceptions, vacations).

o Enable users to view available time slots, request appointments, and receive

immediate confirmation or rejection based on director availability.

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3. Notifications:

o Automatic notifications via email or SMS to confirm appointment requests,

reminders before appointments, and notifications for any changes

(cancellations or reschedules).

4. Integration:

o Integration with calendar services (e.g., Google Calendar, Outlook) to

synchronize director schedules and avoid conflicts.

o Single sign-on (SSO) integration for seamless authentication with existing

corporate systems.

5. Security:

o Secure user authentication and authorization mechanisms.

o Data encryption for sensitive information (e.g., appointment details).

6. Reporting:

o Generate reports on appointment statistics (e.g., number of appointments per

director, average response times).

7. Usability:

o Intuitive and responsive user interface that is easy to navigate for all user

roles.

o Accessibility features to accommodate users with disabilities.

it also aim to design and implement N.V.R.I Director Appointment Booking System that can

resolve issue such as:

o To resolve Contact issue.

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o To Request column for creating new appointment.

o To view appointment list.

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The significance of this study is to help and give benefits to students, staff and school

management of knowing what appointment booking system is all about and the potential to

address several critical needs and challenges within an organization

the Director Appointment Booking System significantly enhances organizational efficiency,

productivity, and user experience by automating and optimizing the scheduling process. It

fosters better communication, improves resource utilization, and provides valuable insights

for strategic decision-making, thereby contributing to overall organizational effectiveness and

success.

1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

When developing a Director Appointment Booking System, several limitations and

challenges should be acknowledged to ensure realistic expectations and effective

management throughout the project. DABS promises significant benefits, it is important to

acknowledge potential challenges such as integration complexities with existing IT

infrastructure, user adoption issues requiring adequate training and support, and the need for

robust security measures to protect sensitive data. Addressing these limitations will be critical

to the successful implementation and adoption of Director Appoitment Booking System

within Federal college of Animal Health Production Technology, Vom.

o Unavailability of academic materials.

o Transport problem

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o Lack of financial support

o Lack of Time

1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study will focus on defining the functional and non-functional requirements of DABS,

including appointment scheduling, user roles and permissions, notification systems,

integration with calendar services, security measures, and usability considerations. It will

encompass the design, development, testing, and deployment phases, ensuring alignment with

organizational goals and regulatory compliance. It will also concentrate on creating new

appointment, and Allow directors to manage their availability, view pending appointment

requests, and confirm or reschedule appointments also other details will be viewed for entry

by staff and the student as the case may be, with a case study of UNITECH HOSPITAL.

1.8 ASSUMPTION OF THE STUDY

Users (administrative staff, directors, and other stakeholders) have regular access to internet-

connected devices to use the system effectively. During the process of data collection,

information relating to Appointment Booking System was obtained from the Internet

(www.wikipedia.com/appointment). The information was collected during the course of my

research. Hence, it is assumed that all the data collected are correct and contains no false

information.

1.9 DEFINITION OF TERMS

o UNITECH: Is an abbreviation which stands for University of Technology.

o Appointment:an arrangement to meet someone at a particular time and place. E.g.:

"she made an appointment with my receptionist".

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o Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an Organization through

the process of planning, Organization, directing and controlling

o System: Physical component of a computer that is used to perform certain task.

o Data: Numbers, Text or image which is in the form suitable forStorage in or

processing by a computer, or incomplete information.

o Information: A meaning full material derived from computer data by organizing it and

interpreting it in a specified way.

o Input: Data entered into a computer for storage or processing.An emergency is a

situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment.

o Output: Information produced from a computer after processing.

o Information System: A set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve),

process, store and distribute information to support decision making and control in an

organization.

o COMPUTER:-Computer is an electronic device that accepts data as Input, processes

data and gives out information as output to the user.

o SOFWARE:-Software is set of related programs that are designed by the

manufacturer to control the hardware and to enable the computer perform a given

task.

o HARDWARE: - Hardware is a physical part of a computer that can be touched, seen,

feel which are been control by the software to perform a given task.

o DATABASE: - Database is the collection of related data in an organized form.

o PROGRAMMING: - programmingisa set of coded instruction which the computers

understands and obey.

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o TECHNOLOGY: -Technology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation

and use technical and their interrelation with life, society and the environment,

drawing upon such as industrial art, engineering, applied science and pure science.

o Algorithm: A set of logic rules determined during the design phase of a data matching

application. The ‘blueprint’ used to turn logic rules into computer instructions that

detail what step to perform in what order.

o Application: The final combination of software and hardware which performs the

data matching.

o Data matching database: A structured collection of records or data that is stored in a

computer system.

o Data cleansing: The proactive identification and correction of data quality issues

which affect an agency’s ability to effectively use its data.

o Data integrity: The quality of correctness, completeness and complain with the

intention of the creators of the data i.e ‘fit for purpose’.

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CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

Naomi et al., [6] developed an automated Ticket Reservation System for the Millennium

Forum. The work incorporated features that aided the process of online booking for visually

impaired customers. Though, the application was designed for customers to reserve theatre

tickets for various shows, but customers may become distracted or tired having to listen

carefully to a long spoken dialogue. In addition, is the difficulties in understanding accents,

for example, Irish accents. Alex, developed a user-friendly online hotel booking web

interface. The work analyzed the primary user interface and usability aspects of the booking

process within hotel websites and also suggested improvements that can be made to many

commonly used business to customers (B2C) booking-process designs. However, the

research was limited in that it has the same level of occupancy in each room. This is a

problem because, in numerous hotels, the rate per room is different depending upon the status

of the room.

Ainin, et al., [8] analyzed e-Ticketing as a new way of making purchase. In their work, they

identified e-ticketing trends among urban communities particularly in Kuala Lumpur, its

usefulness, reliability, security, conveniences and efficiency. They later developed an

application that allows customers to pay for ticketonline. The limitation encountered in this

work however was that the majority of the respondents were highly-educated and have high

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income status. These characteristics created a bias and constrain to the ability to extrapolate

from the findings.

Maike, et al., [9] developed an integrated urban e-ticketing for public transport and touristic

sites with the aim of combining several modes of transport (e.g. train, bus, car, bike-sharing,

etc) on a single ticket. However, the implementation required great efforts, since many

stakeholders need to agree on standards, overall arrangements, interfaces designs, overall

purpose, and revenue sharing, which is difficult tasks in multi-actor contexts, including

stakeholders in an environment that is already very difficult to govern. Ljubica, et al.,

[10] analyzed online hotel sales strategies with emphasis on web booking. The work was a

detailed study of world achievements in the context of Information Technology (IT)

development in online hotel sales matching empirical findings which consist of the entire

process of designing and setting up rates and sales strategies. It also focused on the sales

strategy needed to boost the web presence of the hotel for their web booking. However, it was

limited in that it was difficult to adjust to today’s world standards, because of outdated

technology, which is due to the economic situation of that time. Stanitov, implemented a

conceptual marketing framework for Online Hotel Reservation System (OHRS) which was a

theoretical framework of online hotel reservation systems’ (OHRS) design. The work

introduced the value model of an OHRS as a central concept in the OHRS’s design process

and elaborates some of the critical marketing decisions in the design process including

orientation of the system (to agents or direct customers), net or commissionable rates, room

inventory, booking additional services, booking limitations, issuing travel and booking

related documents, online payments, market intelligence, customer feedback capabilities and

additional onsite resources. However, the limitation was that though it was a technically

perfect website design it could be catastrophic from a marketing perspective if it does not

provide excellent online customer experience and stimulates bookings. Canada Health,

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Infowaydeveloped a friendly web application where customers can book appointments with

doctors analyzed consumer health solutions as a way of exploring the value, benefits and

common concerns of e-booking. It discovered that Canadians regularly book vacations

online, use ATMs and conduct a wide variety of tasks over the Internet which previously

required telephone or in-person contact. The work was limited in that it is possible for the

patients to book up the whole schedule of the doctor whereas the doctor has appointment

schedule that he does not want the patients to book online.

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

System analysis and design

2.1. Technological design of the system

In designing and implementing this secured system, the design architecture are into three

phases (i.e. The front-end, middle-tier and back-end). These also form the components that

was used in designing the system and these design components include; Web browsers

HTML, CSS and JavaScript for the front end design Web Server (Apache) PHP (A scripting

language) Relational Database System (MySQL) The System is designed to run specifically

on the web apache’s server and all other operating systems that make use of this technology.

The System is platform independent (i.e. it can work on all web browsers) with the use of

XAMP server which is the combination of Apache, PHP and the MySQL database.

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Figure 2. A technological design of the system

Among the various components of the desired system is the figure 2 above and sketching the

above figure is also represented below The back-end components: It consists of a MySQL

database. This stores all the necessary information about the administrator and users of the

system. The application also allows multiple ticket purchases and as such tables were

designed to have a space for it. All the information concerning the users is stored in the users

table. In this case, the administrator can view the purchases and also validate such purchases.

All the available films and their information are stored in the admin panel table. In this way,

the administrator can add movies, time, day, and banners and so on to the system. In addition,

the movie news table stores up news related to entertainment on the website, this action is

done by the administrator. The available seats are stored up in the available seat table which

makes it possible to indicate when a seat is booked. This (backend) is hidden from view of

regular website visitors because it is the brain of the website that is built with the server side

language (PHP) and database. The front-end components: It interacts with a customer in real

time while back-end code interacts with a server to return customer ready results. Whatever is

displayed on the website is mainly as a result of the query performed on the server and

returned data to the front-end. Hypertext preprocessor (PHP): It is a server side scripting

language (code) in the backend that connects with a database (MySQL) to lookup, save or

change data and return it back to the customer in form of frontend code Code igniter: It is a

PHP Mode View Controller (MVC) Framework that allows developers code up his/her web

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application with little effort while achieving much simultaneously. The framework is

designed such that the developer can easily configure and manage his/her application files

from a central point.

2.2. Architectural design of the system

Component Architecture: The proposed system is a web application built on client-server

architecture that allows user to get all the relevant information by accessing the site

anywhere, anytime via web browser. The system also consists of two layers, client and server

layers. As shown in figure 3, server interacts with several clients, ranging from from t = 1, 2,

3……..n, at the same time (see figure 3).

Process Architecture As shown in figure 4, the proposed e-booking system has three tiers

which are the front-end, middle tier and back-end. The customer interacts with the system

through the front-end by making requests which is processed through the PHP, which is the

middle tier. The system is executed on a central server and all clients communicate with it. A

client handles customer interface while server handles function and operations of relevant

component. All data are resident on the system server, which has the ability to interact with

several clients at the same time by running several processes concurrently. Some of the

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processing undertaken includes verification, validations, manipulations, request processing,

etc. Figure 5 also show the system architecture of the proposed system.

Use cases description as shown in figure 6.

Login: After registration, the customer goes through the process of logging in else, access

would be denied. The user logs in with a username and password. The system will verify the

username and password to check its validity before the customer is granted entry upon the

validity of the information provided, else the user is denied access to the system. Search

movies: The customer can search the movies available for viewing in the system. The system

will also display the information of the selected movie by the user. Booking: the system
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offers a seat reservation system for the user where the user can choose the particular section

or seat where he wants to sit after logging in. Payment for booking: in other to preserve

reservation after booking, the customer pays. Ticket print: the customer prints ticket after

payment. Register: If a customer is new, he is mandated to register. If he wants to gain access

to the system. The customer supplies some basic information in the registration page. This is

mainly to know the number of customers using the system. Session editing: the administrator

can edit the session any time of the day. Cinema editing: the administrator can also edit the

cinema any time of the day,

4. Conclusion

This project implements an online booking system for cinema houses mainly in Nigeria. It

can be said

with full assurance that if the system is fully implemented, all the advantages of an online

booking system,

such as, time saving, 24-hour working service, access to the service from anywhere in the

world, availability

check and instant, collecting all guest payments (i.e. using your own merchant

account/payment gateway),

and much more will be achieved.

Furthermore, the full implementation of this project will further improve the booking system

of

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Nigerian cinemas, even in other areas of life where reservations or bookings are done, and

could also revive

the dying movie watching in cinemas, while also helping to cut down cost of servicing extra

manpower

needed to run report sorting.

Constraints:

 Timeframe: The system should be developed and deployed within a specified

timeframe to meet organizational needs.

 Budget: Develop within allocated budgetary constraints, considering costs for

development, integration, and maintenance.

Reference:

McKinsey & Company. (2021). Time management: A key to effective leadership. Retrieved

from https://www.mckinsey.com

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