An Object Based Approach Towards the Automation of Office Procedures Using Intelligent Messages

Office support systems are used to automate routine office tasks. Since office tasks often require the cooperation of several office workers who may be physically dispersed, it is important to develop advanced communication systems that better facilitate collaborative and cooperative office work among office workers. In this thesis, we propose an approach to the construction of advanced communication systems in which messages are represented as objects that are “intelligent” and “active” and can therefore perform certain activities (such as interacting with various entities to collect data) and decisions (such as dynamically deciding which user to go to next) on their own. The system is called Intelligent Message System IMS. The major components of IMS are as follows: Intelligent Message Objects (IMO). These objects represent the actual intelligent objects of the system. System Mail Manager (SMM) which provides the users an interface to create, send, receive, and maintain IMOs. Intelligent Message Script Language (IMSL) is a language used to program IMOs. Office workers can delegate the responsibility for certain routine office tasks to an IMO and can therefore spend their time on more important activities. Thus, in addition to its theoretical contributions, this thesis provides a framework for building an advanced computer-based message system that increases productivity in an office environment. Each component of the IMS is explained in detail in the thesis. A variation of BNF formalism is used to define the syntax of IMSL while VDM is used to formally define the semantics of major functions of intelligent message objects. A number of examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the IMS in automation of certain office tasks

A Hybrid voice/text electronic mail system: an application of the integrated services digital network

The objective of this thesis is to present a useful application for the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) that is expected to one day replace the analog phone system in use today. ISDN itself and its continuing evolution are detailed. The system developed as a part of this thesis involved the creation of an inexpensive phone terminal that can serve as an ISDN terminal and also as a bridge to a Local Area Network (LAN). The phone terminal provides a hybrid electronic mail system that allows the attachment of speech to text within a message. Messages created with this phone terminal could theoretically be sent locally using the LAN interface and globally using ISDN to other users with either phone terminals or multimedia personal computers. For this project, the two phone terminals created were interconnected via an Ethernet and using an 80486 PC to act as a Central Office System. This Central Office System provides speech/message storage for the phone terminals. It makes use of speech compression techniques to minimize the storage requirements. The speech compression techniques used as well as the field of speech coding in general are discussed

Determination of Nearest Emergency Service Office using Haversine Formula Based on Android Platform

Emergency Reporting Application is an android-based application that serves to help the community in reporting the emergency condition. This application allows users to choose and contact the emergency services office, without the need to notice their position and phone number. Selection of emergency services office is also automatically selected by the system by taking into account the distance between the complainant and the emergency services office. The selected emergency services office is the nearest emergency service office from the complainant so that the delay in coming assistance can be minimized. Therefore, this proposed application requires a GPS feature to recording, reporting and SMS positioning for message delivery of reports. The distance between the position of the complainant and the position of the emergency service office, in the form of latitude and longitude data, is requested using the Haversine formula taking into account the degree of curvature of the earth. Emergency service offices include police and hospital offices spread over 25 different districts. Furthermore, the reporter's position calculation results were compared with all selected emergency service offices and obtained 1 nearest emergency service office. Calculating the accuracy and delay value of the system will do system testing. Accuracy test results using the method of 100% Haversine and the average delay of the system is 4.5 seconds

Office automation

Bibliography: p. 100-104.Office automation systems have become an essential tool for the operation of the modern office. With the emphasis of a modern office being placed on efficiency and ease of communication, office automation systems have become the backbone of successful businesses. COSNET is a prototype office automation system designed and implemented at the Department of the University of Cape Town and runs on Personal Computers that are linked to a NCR UNIX TOWER, which acts as the host. This dissertation investigates the different facilities supported by some of the office automation systems compared in this thesis, and describes the COSNET features. This prototype office automation system supports many of the facilities that are supported by large office automation systems. COSNET allows the user to define any MS-DOS based editor or word processor, and uses a simple editor for the creation of mail. The electronic filing facility allows documents to be created, filed, retrieved and deleted, and thus provides the users with the necessary features for document exchange. A user may set access permissions to each of his documents and may grant other users either read or write access to a specific document. The mail facility lets the user read, file, forward, delete and print a message, and supports classification of mail. A calendar facility is used as an electronic diary and stores all the user's schedules. These schedules may be viewed in either daily, weekly and monthly display modes. Read and write access to the calendar can be set by the user, in order to allow other users to manipulate his schedules. Any MS-DOS based application software can be added to COSNET. This facility allows the COSNET user to configure the office automation system to simulate the office environment. COSNET thus supports most of the necessary features required by an office automation system

A SECURED GSM-BASED REMOTE CONTROLLED HOME AUTOMATION SYSTEM

Home automation systems are designated electronic systems in homes and residential buildings that makes it possible for the automation of household appliances. The challenges faced by home automation systems are high cost of ownership, inflexibility, poor manageability and difficulty in achieving security. In this work, a secured global system for mobile communication-based home automation system (GSM-HAS) was designed. The proposed system has a more improved technology that enhances flexibility by using GSM technology to interconnect its component to home automation system. The system comprises of five modules namely Mobile Phone, SIM900 GSM Module, Arduino Board, Relay Module and Peripheral Devices. The system used SIM900 Module which allows users to effectively control their house/office appliances simply by sending a short message service (SMS) to the device. ATMEGA328P microcontroller was used to communicate with SIM900 module and the relay module to carry out the basic ON/OFF operations received from the user android application.  The android application was implemented using Java programming language and MySql database.  The performance of the system shows that the user can control the home appliances through the android application, with an additional control for activating and deactivating the sensor system at home/office. The system helps turn-on and turn-off connected home appliances as well as detect intruders and send message to the user’s mobile phone. The system is designed to be highly secured, flexible, reliable and affordable. &nbsp

Preliminary Design of the APIARY for VLSI Support of Knowledge-Based Systems

This report describes research done at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for the laboratory's artificial intelligence research is provided in part by the Office of Naval Research of the Department of Defense under Contract N00014-75-C-0522.Knowledge-based applications will require vastly increased computational resources to achieve their goals. We are working on the development of a VLSI Message Passing Architecture to meet this need. As a first step we present the preliminary design of the APIARY system in this paper. The APIARY is currently in an early stage of implementation at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Department of Defense Office of Naval Researc

Helpdesk Support Alert System

The goal of this project was to implement the Helpdesk Support Alert System in the Data Center Services (DCS) of California State University, San Bernardino\u27s (CSUSB\u27s) Information Resource and Technology Division (IRT). DCS is responsible for ensuring uninterrupted operation of all CSUSB administrative computing systems. These responsibilities include user support, system maintenance, and system security. The DCS helpdesk cannot be staffed 24 hours a day; this application is designed to alert DCS technicians of emergencies when they are away from the helpdesk. The Helpdesk Support Alert System sends out an automated emergency alert in the form of a short text message to technicians\u27 mobile phones. Technicians respond back to their main office by using the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) capability of their mobile phones

A Software Agent System for Private Email

The primary concerns in existing Email and instant messaging systems are authentication processes, privacy and security issues. These messaging systems transfer the message content through servers using protocols like the Simple Message Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Post Office Protocol (POP), and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to allow users to communicate. During these processes, messages are being stored on the servers which can be easily accessed by the network administrator. Invasion of privacy, integrity of Email content, lack of authentication, and unprotected back-up of messages stored ? on servers could be common underlying problems in the existing architecture. The goal of this paper is to build? an Email messaging system which would offer better privacy and security of Email content to users. The application can be viewed as a source of communication for people in a private club. In this paper we propose three different designs for building an email messaging system using the Java Agent Development Environment (platform to provide communication between agents) framework. Our application mainly uses intelligent software agents. The three Designs primarily implement two kinds of software agents, a Facilitator Agent and P-Mail (PrivateMail) agent. Based on the Design and architecture these agents act accordingly to meet the user requirements and provide better security and privacy. Finally we conclude by evaluating the three designs by assessing their performance

The influence of organizational hierarchy and departmental structure on communication : the case of Kaplan and Norton's Balanced scorecard in a matrix organization

Thesis (S.M. in System Design and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 80-81).A large business requires efficient and effective internal communication among employees to achieve its goals. Dodds, Watts, and Sable (DWS) introduced a communication network model assessing information flow within a business by examining the relative influences of organizational structure, message volatility, and task decomposability on the probability of successful message transmission, but there is no research available that examines this or similar models in the context of a real business. The model predicts optimal message flow in a "Multi-scale" organizational network, a structure which in practice may most resemble a matrix organization. In this study a survey was designed to measure the influence of rank and department on message transfer - particularly the informational attributes of understanding, accuracy, importance, and influenceability - originating from the Balanced Scorecard in a large, matrix-managed aerospace business. The survey data indicated the following results: - Understanding (of the Balanced Scorecard metrics) was significantly influenced by employee rank and exhibited some effects of departmental expertise with certain metrics. - Belief in the accuracy of the metrics correlated highly with Understanding. - Importance rankings of the metric displayed high alignment across both rank and department, an encouraging result for company management. - Influenceability (people's belief they could affect the metric) was heavily influenced by rank and somewhat influenced by department. It also generally exhibited the lowest levels and highest variation when compared to the other attributes. - A deeper analysis comparing the Engineering and Program Office departments revealed consistently better vertical communication for Engineering, and better lateral communication within ranks for Program Office, which may indicate an additional influence of department culture on information flow. When subjected to a DWS interpretation, the survey results provided clues about relative influences of rank and department on message flow and relative values of other DWS model parameters - task decomposability and message traffic volume - could be gleaned from employee comments and post-survey interviews. The study falls short of making absolute characterizations of the DWS attributes, but is able to make inferences regarding the communication of the separate attributes relative to each other. Indeed, one important implication of the work done here to DWS theory is that for different business concerns and for different organizations within the overall company, there are apparently different mappings onto the DWS communication framework. Analysis of the study data for this organization indicates lateral communication may be better than vertical communication for Understanding and Influenceability; Accuracy does not exhibit dominance by either parameter; and Importance is well communicated laterally and vertically. More empirical data on measurable information traffic such as email is needed from different organizations, industries, and national cultures for DWS parameter values to converge upon more absolute values.by James Clayton Kopp.S.M.in System Design and Managemen