DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN INTRANET MAILING SYSTEM (A CASE STUDY OF COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT IN FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC NEKEDE OWERRI)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Mail is a system for physically transporting documents and other small packages, as well as a name for the postcards, and letters. Electronic mail, most commonly referred to as email or e-mail since, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the same time, in common with instant messaging. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-forward model. Email servers accept, forward, deliver, and store messages. Neither the users nor their computers are required to be online simultaneously; they need connect only briefly, typically to a mail server, for as long as it takes to send or receive messages. Historically, the term electronic mail was used generically for any electronic document transmission. For example, several writers in the early 1970s used the term to describe fax document transmission.
This Intranet Mailing System is to provide a communication system in an organization, which takes the chance of establishing channel for sending and receiving the information between the users. Thus it helps the organization to improve the performance of its teams in conducting the
organizational works the corporate sector. mailing system for sending the information organization.
The user can access this to other users of the same
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The present system is manually providing services to staff of the departments of the institution. Staffs have to go to the departments to know some particular information. Sometimes information is passed manually between staff’s in the department. This manual system will take time to pass the information and sometimes it causes loss of information and damage to files also. There by causing loss of staff time also. Thus the present system stated is time taking, insecure and costly.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objectives of this Intranet Mailing System of computer science department in Federal Polytechnic Nekede are:
i. Send scanned document to the email box of the staff
ii. Creating a system that will send notification to the department lecturers phone from the HOD’s desk, telling them they have message on their mailbox so as to make life’s easier by not coming to the department notice board to check for any information.
iii. Providing the staff – lecturer in computer science departmentthe means to send information to their HOD and other lecturers.
iv. Bridging the gap of communication between themselves in the department.
v. It keeps log of mail sent to each of the staff daily.
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this study is to design a mailing system that will run on web-browser for easy accessibility and connectivity using the internet. The system will be coded with PHP as the scripting language linking HTML interface to MySQL database.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The significance of this study when implemented will assist computer science department by:
i. Saving unnecessary time and energy of the lecturer in the department.
ii. Controlling mail sent and received within the department.
iii. Keeping track of mail sent and received.
iv. Making the means of communication in the department effective and efficient.
1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The process of developing this project work, different problems was encountered. These include:
i. Lack of Power Supply, the nature of power supply is discouraging, after a complete research, there is not enough power supply to compile the project work electronically and this lead to the delay of this work.
ii. Finance, the cost of producing this project material almost brought this project work to an end.
iii. Lack of material from the case study, the process of getting information from the staff in the computer science department was not encouraging, as the staff find it difficult to release or explain the process involve dispatching of mail.
1.7 CONTRIBUTION TO ICT
Completion and implementation of this intranet mailing system is an innovation in Information and Communication Technology –ICT. It will increase the accessibility of the internet by staff of the department. The system will also motivate lecturers in the computer science department that are not internet friendly to embrace internet and it will encourage other department in the school to adopt this system. This software really has a great impact in ICT and the society.
1.8 DEFINITION OF TECHNICAL TERMS
1. Automated: A system that is capable of operating without external control or intervention.
2. Database: A systematically arranged collection of computer data, structured so that it can be automatically retrieved or manipulated. It is also called databank.
3. Document: An original or official paper relied upon as the basis, proof or support of anything else, including any writing, book or other instrument conveying information pertinent to such proof or support.
4. Email: Is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients.
5. Fax: A machine or a document received and printed by one.
6. HTML – Hyper-Text Mark-up Language: Is a scripting language use in designing a website.
7. Internet: Any set of computer networks that communicate using the Global connection.
8. Message: any concept or information conveyed.
9. Mail: is a system for physically transporting documents and other small packages
10. Network: Any interconnected group or system
11. Online: Connected to a computer network or accessible by computer.
12. Protocol: Rules and regulation guiding transfer of file in the computer system
13. Web Brower: This is a special kind of software that processes hypertext make-up language – HTML document. In other words, a web browser is a computer program that interprets HTML command to collect, arranged and display the parts of a web page.
1.9 ORGANIZATION OF CHAPTERS
This project work is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction of the topic, background of the study, statement of problem, scope of the study, significance of the study, limitation of the study, contribution to ICT, definition of technical terms and organization of chapters. Chapter two talks about the literature review of the project. Chapter three explains the research methodology, the method adopted in doing the project work, analysis of the present system, the demographic variables, the organizational flowchart of the present system, the management structure of the present system, weakness of the present system, achievement of the expected system, data flow diagram of the expected system and high level model of the expected system. Chapter four talks about the system design and implementation, its include objectives of the design, control center, specification of software and
hardware requirements, output of the new system, algorithm of the propose system, overall data flow diagram of the system, the data dictionary and choice and justification of programming language. Chapter five is the summary, recommendation and conclusion of the work.
