DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

University Management System (UMS) deals with the maintenance of university, faculty, and student information within the university. UMS is an automation system, which is used to store the faculty, student, courses and information of a university. Starting from registration of a new student in the university, it maintains all the details regarding the attendance and marks of the students. The project deals with retrieval of information through an INTRANET based campus wide portal with an integration of document management system which helps to facilitate a smooth workflow of document transfer and management within the organization. It collects related information from all the departments of an organization and maintains files, which are used to generate reports in various forms to measure individual and overall performance of the students.

Integrated systems directed at university management are increasingly more common in the university sector. Their primary objective is to improve services provided to the internal community (professors, students and employees). By using these systems students have direct and rapid contact with the different university departments, facilitating communication between members, allowing files to be exchanged, enrolments to be made, projects to be registered, debate forums to be created. This type of management allows for simultaneous monitoring of student performance and relationships between university members, resulting in a faster and more simplified flow of operational information.

Document Management System is a robust solution for various formats, addressing document entry, processing, approval, and storage in secure electronic archives. The purpose of DMS is to manage and control all electronic documentation - whether word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics or e-mail messages through their life cycle. It enables an organization to ensure the availability of information wherever it is needed. It also ensures the security of electronic documents through version control, audit trails for each document, and by controlling access to documents via various security levels.

DMS manage and control all unstructured information – that is, information in for example word processing documents, presentation packages, spreadsheets, e-mail, graphics – in one single database accessible through a single interface. It gives companies the ability to ensure the availability of information whenever it is needed and ensures document integrity. It further avoids or limits duplication of effort already undertaken. Just as there are standard procedures to manage and control paper documents and records, suitable procedures should be implemented to manage electronic documents throughout their life cycle. The control offered by a DMS also ensures document integrity. Document integrity includes the ability to identify and access records over time, as well as ensuring that the document is the authentic master copy/authoritative version. 

A document has integrity when it can be shown that the document has not changed, without going through the proper channels. This is very difficult to do where electronic files are concerned. It is easy to open a file and change it without anyone knowing. With a DMS, document integrity will be ensured, since audit trails can be used as proof that a document is still the authorized copy; security will ensure that no unauthorized access can take place; and version control will ensure that the latest, most current or approved version will be easy to identify. Without document management, it will be difficult to prove the integrity of an electronic document, should a legal need arise. If the actual electronic document is controlled and can be shown to be controlled, document integrity can be ensured more easily. Development process of the system starts with System analysis. System analysis involves creating a formal model of the problem to be solved by understanding requirements.

1.2   Statement of the Problem

There are courses which do not provide option for revaluation, but at the time of valuation it is done on two stages i.e. by two staff members. But there are course which provides the facility for revaluation, but initially the paper is valued once. The software should be designed and developed in such a way that it accommodates all needs in dynamic fashion. It should be a general purpose one. The first problem is that there are loads of hard copied documents are being generated. Keeping the information in the form of hard copied documents lead to many problems.

All the process done manually at the centers and all the records are maintained on the papers. So the maintenance of the record is very difficult in the departments as well as it is very difficult for the staff to check the record. The existing system is monotonous, time consuming, less flexible and provides a very hectic working schedule. The chance of loss of record is very high and also record searching is very difficult. Maintenance of the system is also very difficult and takes a lot of time. Result processing is slow due to paper work and requirement of staff.