Karey Patterson, Director, NTech Media, Lismore, NSW, Australia, 2480 . Email: karey@ntechmedia.com
This paper describes the process of development of the distributed printing software system known as RapidPrint(TM). In mid 2004 representatives of Southern Cross University Printery, a commercial arm of the university, outlined their needs for a distributed printing and resource management system, and compiled a detailed project brief. There are useful lessons from the software development experience that will prove useful insight to other Web application development projects and the teams involved.
Southern Cross University was concerned that large amounts of wastage of hard copy study guides and print resources, was unsure if students wanted or needed all of the materials bundled in hard copy study materials and wanted to implement a system that would enable significant cost savings in printing costs to students, cost centres and the university as well as a massive reduction in wastage (returned or unused hard copy study guides are destroyed at the end of a semester or trimester). The proposed system would enable students to select and print off as they wished the specific materials as individual items or make up a custom print bundle for their study materials. All of the existing materials that made up a hard copy study guide would be made available as individual components that students could search and select as they wished.
This paper outlines the key issues and details the process for developing the system from initial brief to complete commercial product, which is now in use at a variety of campuses and by many thousands of users.
Over recent years, there has been considerable increase in the growth and development of efforts directed towards richer Web application development [HREF 1] as opposed to simple Web site development (known as Web 1.0). The evolution and development of a richer and diverse Web is commonly known as Web 2.0 [HREF 2] where Web-based services, such as rich search, blogging and Web sites such as Wikipedia are a platform for users to access, interact and manipulate rich data as opposed to information only delivery.
Australian universities have a strong background in the adoption of the Web as a medium and as a delivery vehicle, a publishing vehicle, a tool for displaying corporate image and a marketing communication tool (Axelson 2000; Barbian 2002; Deans 2003; Yates 2003) . However most implementations and services to date can be categorised as Web 1.0. During the recent movement towards Web 2.0 there has been a corresponding increase in the pressures for Australian higher education providers to adopt and evolve to provide similar "rich" services to users, reduce costs and wastage and to do so with less resources in an increasingly busy work environment (Patterson & Ellis 2003) .
The process outlined in the RapidPrint project specification and brief detailed the need for lecturers, administrative staff and authorised users to upload PDF files to a student intranet. Students would then browse the university intranet at terminals located around the campus and select the documents they want to print. Once an order was completed the system would generate an on-screen summary for the student showing what has been ordered and the total cost. The system was then to retrieve the files from a central electronic repository and sends those files to the print queue of a printer also located on campus.
Before project developers, NTech Media [HREF 3] could commence development there were issues regarding the control of the electronic repository, copyright management and compliance that needed resolution and many diverse stakeholder groups were involved in the refining of the application flow and process. Decision making processes were sometimes slower than expected due to the cyclical nature of university staff workloads and semester students intakes.
At the commencement of the project the brief for the entire application was quite simple and it was initially described as a system for managing PDF resources and enabling the resources to be searched and viewed online. As soon as discussion and development of a more detailed project specification was underway it was apparent that there was potential to extend the system to a more comprehensive, enterprise level and institution wide application. Several new stakeholders (the copyright team from the university library), which would be intimately involved in the data management and copyright management, were identified and while the initial project was for a print on demand system the resource management processes required the development of an "eReserve" component (an electronic reserve similar to traditional library reserves containing study and supplemental materials).
eReserve would become the input component of the system when PDF resources were to be uploaded and inserted into the system a series of checks and mechanisms on the eReserve interface were created to ensure that all of the document or resource copyright information was associated and bound to the resources and that the institution could be completely compliant during copyright audit periods. eReserve would have the same data repository as the RapidPrint(TM)[HREF 3] system but essentially was another interface orientated to input and copyright compliance and management as opposed to distributed printing.
Though the first iteration of the RapidPrint(TM)system was not going to include a fully developed eReserve area, development of a copyright compliant system at the start of the project was deemed extremely important and advantageous and would ensure that the data in the system was inserted using the compliance process from the start.
An agile project management methodology (Highsmith, 2004) was partially adopted to ensure client needs were accommodated and that the project features were continuously evolving. The project has evolved quickly and is now up to version 5.1 after less than two years of use. User stories were collected to identify and assist in the project role development but due to staff scheduling and very high workloads, an ongoing Agile project management approach, that included significant university staff involvement during the development, was not able to be accommodated. However regular scheduled meetings and demonstrations of the working application enabled input and feedback from Southern Cross University [HREF 4] staff members and enabled highly efficient development and project rollout.
To enable cost effective delivery of printed materials and a price reduction to students, provision had to be made for the print jobs to avoid the 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) liability that covers almost all transactions in Australia. The split between eReserve and RapidPrint(TM) enabled the system to deliver the same content two different ways. To keep GST costs out of RapidPrint(TM) pricing, students must be prevented from viewing the file or materials to be printed. They were able to search and locate the material, send it to the RapidPrint(TM) print que for payment but cannot view it. Using eReserve a student could do exactly the same search as a user using RapidPrint(TM) but instead of sending the selected material to a printer they can download and immediately view the PDF of the resource.
As RapidPrint(TM) functionality was part of the first release of the system and to prevent major reworking of the project and potential non copyright compliance the technical team had to design and accommodate the needs of eReserve and copyright compliance from the start without actually releasing its functionality publicly.
eReserve had a particular feature orientation for copyright compliance and while not being released as part of the version one RapidPrint(TM) release all parties were supportive of the idea that any and all materials inserted in to the RapidPrint(TM) system conform with the eReserve copyright compliance procedures even though the compliance procedures were not yet "live".
The Copyright Act permits educational institutions to utilise certain amounts of copyright material in certain ways, including making available online. Material can only be made available to staff and students of the institution, the 'one chapter/10%' rule must be adhered to, and digital copies must contain warning notices. In addition, only one part of a book may be online at one time, regardless of intended audience.
During a copyright audit, very specific records of all items copied and/or communicated electronically by the university (not students) are required to be kept. The eReserve system was developed with these controls and reporting features built in.
Before any of the PDFs and digital items can be made available online, either to view or print, they go through a copyright clearance process within eReserver. This involves ensuring that amount limits are not exceeded and the prescribed form warning notices are attached to items. The Library's role in the Printery's RapidPrint(TM) project is to manage the copyright, and provide alternative form of access to the items via the eReserve pages. The Library is required under the University rules to provide access to material such as readings, where the only other alternatives are to purchase the material.
Figure 1 details how the two systems access the same data source and backend but deliver the content differently depending on the way it is being accessed.
Figure 1: Diagram showing how users from different entry points access the same data source and how content is delivered to them differently dependent on the access point.
All of the PDF files and materials used in the RapidPrint(TM) and eReserve systems were compilations of study materials, readings and other approved resources provided by the printery. The copyright team in the university library broke the collected materials by course, unit then into individual items or readinfs, ensuring copyright compliance, and populating the database from which both eReserve and Printery's RapidPrint(TM) service draw.
Figures 2 and 3 show the screen and interface a student user is displayed once they have logged on to the RapidPrint(TM) and eReserve systems. The branding of the various areas, while similar is quite different (RapidPrint(TM) is managed by the university Printery while eReserve is managed by the Library and copyright officers) though both connect to the same management backend. Figure 3 shows the architectural structure of the system enabling similar content to be centrally managed but accessed in different ways.
Figure 2: The RapidPrint(TM) entry page once user authentication has been successful.
Figure 3: The eReserve entry page once user authentication has been successful - fundamentally structured the same as the RapidPrint(TM) login.
In addition to copyright compliance reports that detail the degree of compliance, identify duplicate documents and enable the management of the competing resources, RapidPrint(TM) enables administrators to review and specify document availability over time--such as semester-specific--or reconfigure settings to suit copyright or other needs. RapidPrint(TM) reports detail the most/least viewed, printed, and accessed materials to enable more efficient management of study resources and to improve effectiveness of learning strategies (shown in Figure 4 below).
Figure 4: The RapidPrint(TM) reports page showing user activity for a series of the resources in use by the system and can be broken down to show usage and cost savings by school, students, semester, trimester etc.
The reports also show authorised administrators the total cost savings resulting from the use of RapidPrint(TM), and assist with internal audit and review processes. Custom reports can easily be added as required but the ones outlined above are currently ones the most used.
On campus students can access the RapidPrint(TM) system by either logging on at any of the computer labs or by walking into the RapidPrint(TM) terminal areas located on campus. Several PCs with flatscreen monitors were setup at the Co-op bookshop where students could walk in, logon, review and compile a print job, walk to the front counter of the Co-op and pay for the materials. Upon receipt of monies Co-op staff release the print job to a pool of printers for pickup, optional binding and handover to the student.
The PCs and terminals are kept off the internal university network and operate on a separate network as they reside in the Co-op bookshop which was not part of the internal university network. There were some issues in negotiating the setup and placement of university property within the physical space and external network of a separate entity but these were quickly resolved to the satisfaction of all parties.
In the current implementation of the system we specify the tray/paper settings in the printer driver on each workstation - Tray 1 yellow (for a cover sheet with student name, price and date) the rest of the print job printed on white paper. The application then specifies that the various study materials within the job be printed on white paper while cover page is on yellow paper from a separate tray on the printer.
From initial project commencement the RapidPrint(TM) system was design to be modular and accommodate the various authentication, network, printer, terminal types and procedural options and frameworks that may be in use among other universities and institutions.
The current project team are building in card integration (several different card systems will be accommodated) to enable students to use a kiosk terminal for selecting the materials for print and to swipe a card for payment. Secure payment system integration is also supported so that users can pay for their job with a credit card if required - though these options are usually dependent on the policy and systems in use at a given institution.
To create a highly flexible printer system where the RapidPrint(TM) software would interface and work with a variety of printer types, used in a variety of locations, the application was developed to accommodate printers that specify printing to tray numbers (some models such as Xerox) as well as printers that specify tray colours and paper types. The RapidPrint(TM) system has been tested extensively with Océ, Xerox printers and has been designed to work seamlessly with others not used within the production environment of Southern Cross University.
On occasion the printing of some PDF materials was slow or problematic (not all pages would print). This was due to the structure and creation of the PDF files. PDF files made from scanning a document needed to undergo certain processing as mostly by default scanned documents turned to PDF were difficult for the printer to process. PDF files created by Acrobat Distiller [HREF 5] were fine as were those made on Apple's [HREF 6] Macintosh by printing to PDF. A recommendation was that no scans should be used and if they were they were to be supplied to the university printery beforehand for optimising for use on postscript printer.
To provide maximum security and to conform with the Southern Cross Network security policies a separate polling server was setup so that the database content (containing PDF resources etc) and materials were behind the universities secure firewall but the application data was polled to the less secure server in an external network area (see schema below).
Figure 5: The RapidPrint(TM) system network schema showing polling server and database server for network security policy compliance at Southern Cross University.
The RapidPrint(TM) system has evolved quickly and its uptake among the university cost centre and student population has been very successful. New printer types, print queues and features have been regularly added to the system to enable its rapid growth.
While a "pure" agile project methodology was not used throughout the project, the regular project meetings, client and stakeholder involvement has been critical to ensuring fast development, accurate needs assessment, policy compliance, cost savings (both over traditional print and alternative systems) and high levels of user satisfaction.
In 2005 the RapidPrint(TM) system was awarded the Southern Cross University Vice-chancellors award for excellence.
The RapidPrint(TM) and eReserve systems were developed to operate on a Unix server environment (but will work on Microsoft IIS as well) and NTech Media [HREF 7] recommend:
Depending on the use of the system some optional components needed also include:
An inclusive application development model with high levels of client and stakeholder involvement have proven to be very important factors for the successful application development of the RapidPrint(TM) and eReserve systems.
The system has enabled significant cost savings in printing costs to students, cost centres and the university as well as a massive reduction in wastage (returned or unused hard copy study guides are destroyed at the end of a semester or trimester) has seen the system expand and grow as more stakeholder groups found its features useful and efficient. The university is prepared for full copyright auditing and can easily manage compliance issues, conflicting ISBN's and other issues with ease. Reports identify phenomena related to the use of the system by cost centre, schools/colleges, users and materials.
The system has been expanding into a more comprehensive digital repository including e-prints and tagging on to digital theses for future iterations of the project
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HREF 2
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
HREF 3
http://www.ntechmedia.com
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http://www.RapidPrint.com.au
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http://www.adobe.com
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