This paper describes the development of an online ticket reservation application that integrates and automates current business processes throughout multiple branches of a bus transportation service provider operating across the border of neighboring countries. Utilizing the versatility of the current web technology, the application also adds new values to the company’s business process; enabling it to provide customers with services that is not limited to physical boundaries such as location and time. The web application is developed using PHP and utilizes MySQL

Astrid, Callista, MSc

Juwita, Ratna Sari, S.SI

English

EEPIS Repository

The 13th Industrial Electronics Seminar 2011 (IES 2011)  Electronic Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Surabaya (EEPIS), Indonesia, October 26, 2011    ISBN: 978-979-8689-14-7  305    Developing A Bus Ticket Reservation Web Application At PT. Setia Jiwana Sakti     Astrid Callista, MSc., Juwita Ratna Sari, S.SI Universitas Pelita Harapan astrid.callista@uph.edu, vinc.juwita@gmail.com   Abstract  This paper describes the development of an online ticket reservation  application  that  integrates  and  automates current  business  processes  throughout  multiple branches  of  a  bus  transportation  service  provider operating  across  the  border of neighboring countries. Utilizing the versatility of the current web technology, the application also adds new values to the company’s business process; enabling it to provide customers with services that is not limited to physical boundaries such as location and time. The web application is developed using PHP and utilizes MySQL.   1. Introduction PT Setia Jiwana Sakti (SJS) is a bus transportation service  provider  that  operates  routes  between  the neighboring  countries  of  Indonesia,  Malaysia  and Brunei.  It  has  multiple  branches  in  several  cities  in Indonesia,  enabling  customers to make reservations at the nearest branch. However,  since  the  current  reservation  system  is still conducted manually and separately at each branch, contact must be made by each branch’s front-officer to the head office for each customer’s enquiry in order to get the latest update on schedule, seat availability and other reservation-related information; as well as to avoid duplicate  bookings  or  over-capacity.  There  is  also  a physical  limit  to  the  reservation  availability  as  each branch  only  operates  during  certain  hours  and reservations  can  only  be  made  on-the-spot  or  via telephone. Travelers from Malaysia who would like to use the bus service to travel to Indonesia must be willing to make an international call to one of the branches to be able to get information and reserve a seat. These  limitations  are  not  the  only  issues  the company  is  currently  facing.  Other  factors  that  create problems include human errors (e.g. miscalculations in ticket price, mistakes in noting passenger data, etc.), the fluctuation of passengers during certain periods of time that causes a bottleneck in the check-in process because of the inability of the front-officer to multitask and the lack  of  overview  or  report  of  the  on-going  business; making it difficult for the company to judge past/current performance or plan future improvements. Looking  at  these  problems  and  limitations,  it  is clear that both the company and the customers require an integrated reservation system that is more efficient in information  update  and  reservation  handling  and  also easy to use.  2. Analysis and Design The application is developed using the prototyping method and utilizes UML (Unified Modeling Language) as the modeling language [1].   2.1. Requirements Determination  The  application  will  be used by different types of user with different levels of access. Identified major user groups  are  owner  (who  will  function  as  the administrator of the system and thus gain full access to the  whole  application),  employees  (supervisor,  front-officer/ticketing and cashier: each role is given different access  levels  according  to  their  tasks)  and  customers (who will use the application to create and manage their reservation). Requirements  for  the  web  application  that  are gathered  through  interview  and  observations  of  the current system include: 1)  Access Levels: permissions and privileges Administrator  (owner)  has  full  access  to  the system  including  user  management,  report generation and viewing user log. Supervisor  has  the  ability  to  edit  bus  and employee  status,  create  bus  schedules  and manage bus leasing. Front-officer/ticketing  is  given  access  to reservation  management  activities  i.e.  create, edit  and  cancel  reservation  and/or  activated tickets  (i.e.  payment  has  been  made),  view reservation  data,  print  tickets  and  conduct check-in. Computer Science and Engineering, Information Systems Technologies and Applications 306 Customers can create and manage reservation, check-in  (after  login).  All  visitors  to  the website  can  view  bus  schedules,  tour information and send enquiry for bus leasing. 2)  Reservation Create  new  reservation  starts  with  searching and displaying available schedule based on user input,  i.e.  city  name  (to  and  from),  dates (departure  and  return  date  for  two-way  ticket reservation)  and  number  of  passengers.  The system will also display the capacity status of the  busses  in  the  search  result,  disabling selection of fully-booked busses. Customers can also  manage (edit or cancel) their reservation through this system. Seat  availability  is  displayed,  enabling passengers  to  select  seats  according  to  their preference  and  to  prevent  multiple  seat bookings. Passenger  data  including  full  name, nationality, and passport number are stored in the system. Reservation  and  ticket  status  will  be  updated accordingly.  By  default,  once  a  reservation  is made  it  will  be  regarded  as  pending.  After payment  has  been  made  and  confirmed,  the cashier  will  update  the  reservation  status  to active. Cancellations can be made either to the entire  reservation  or  just  the  tickets  (e.g. cancelling  the  return  trip  in  a  two-way reservation).  The  system  will  automatically cancel  all  pending  reservations  that  surpass their  payment  due  dates.  Should  a  passenger wishes  to  reschedule  a  trip  to  a  yet-to-be-decided date, the ticket status can be updated to extend,  giving  the  passenger  three  months  to decide  on  a  travel  date  before  automatically setting the ticket status to cancelled. Note that ticket  management  can  only  be  done  by  the ticketing officer and not by the passengers. 3)  Ticket Activation Status update for all paid reservations will be done by the cashier. Automatic  ticket  number  generation  by  the system  will  be  followed by sending the ticket through  email  to  the  user  and  the  ability  to view and print the ticket online by entering the reservation or ticket number. 4)  Check-in Self  check-in  is  available  for  users  before departure  by  logging  in  to  the  system  and entering their reservation number on the day of departure. The ticketing officer is given access to view the number of checked-in passengers. 5)  Route  Management  and  Scheduling  of Busses, Drivers and Co-Drivers Create and manage routes are accessible only for the administrator. Route management also includes assigning available busses with proper capacity  besides  the  default  required information such as cities, date and time, and ticket price.  Managing  available  busses,  drivers  and  co-drivers can be done by both administrator and supervisor. Busses, drivers and co-drivers that are unavailable (e.g. bus is undergoing repairs or maintenance, sick drivers, etc.) will not be available  for  scheduling.  Should  the administrator/supervisor change the status of a scheduled  bus/driver/co-driver  to  unavailable, the  system  will  alert  the  administrator  or supervisor of this matter. 6)  Leasing and Tourist Information The  system  enables  the  company  to  add  new services  for  customers  such  as  the  ability  to lease busses based on online enquiries sent by customers  and  the  ability  to  provide information  about  the  destination  cities including tourist spots and hotels.  Non-functional requirements of the system include Windows  platform  operability  and  multiple  browsers compatibility,  authentication,  encryption  and  24/7 system availability.  A  notable  change  in  the  business  process  is  the division  of  front  officer  tasks  into  the  new  roles  of Cashier and Ticketing Officer.  2.2. Functional Modeling  The  use  case  diagram  in  figure  1  depicts  the interaction between users and the system while figure 2 shows the activity diagram of making new reservations. Figure 3 depicts the flow of activity to manage (edit or cancel)  reservations  while  figure  4  shows  the  flow  of activity  to  manage  (edit  or  cancel)  ticket(s)  within  a reservation. The flow of activity to conduct self check-in by passengers is depicted in figure 5 below.  2.3. Interface Design  In  order  to  create  an  application  that  is  not  only functional but also easy to use, i.e. has a user-friendly interface, the following principles of website design are taken into account [3]: Computer Science and Engineering, Information Systems Technologies and Applications 307 1)  Designing for the computer medium. Making sure that users are comfortable with the look-and-feel  and  are  able  to  load  the  website  on various  browsers  and  with  non-broadband internet connection.   Figure 1. Use case diagram of web application.   Figure 2. Activity diagram of making new reservation.  Figure 3. Activity diagram of managing reservation.    Figure 4. Activity diagram of managing ticket.  2)  Creating a unified site design. To avoid user confusion, the wholeness of the website is made apparent through its unified design theme. 3)  Putting the user first: designing for the user. Making sure that users’ attention is guided to the information they are looking for by proper placement based on importance and by keeping a  flat  hierarchy  in  the  content  structure: reducing user clicks as much as possible. The information  must  also  be  designed  for  screen Computer Science and Engineering, Information Systems Technologies and Applications 308 reading since reading text on screen is different than on paper and may take a toll on users.   Figure 5. Activity diagram of customer self check-in.  The result is the main page of the website as shown in figure 6 below.  Figure 6. Interface of the website (main page).  3. Prototype Development Development  of  the  web  application  prototype utilizes PHP and MySQL. The booking process flow can be  seen  below  in  figures  7  to  11.  After  entering  the selected travel date(s) and destination plus the number of  passengers,  the  customers  will  be  presented  with  a search  result  of  the  available  schedules  as  shown  in figure 7. The system will check the travel dates validity, preventing conditions such as departure date that is later than return date and travel dates that are less than one day away from today’s date. The application displays how many steps there are  in the booking process and which step the customer is currently  at  besides  the  main  menus  that  are  always displayed on top (in the header) to ease access.   Figure 7. Selecting from available schedules.  When the preferred schedules have been chosen, the next step in the booking process is selecting seats for the entered  number  of  passengers  (figure  8)  by  simply clicking the rows and seat numbers accordingly. Should the  number  of  chosen  seats  total  less  than  the  given number  of  passengers,  the  system  will  alert  the customers of this condition. The  next  step  is  the  completion  of  personal information  for  each  passenger  as  shown  in  figure  9 below. The system will again check whether the data for each given passenger has been provided completely and alert  the  user  should  there  be  any  lack  of  required information.  After  all  data  have  been  entered,  the customer will be provided with a final overview of the booking details before confirming the reservation (figure 10). A successful reservation will be indicated with the generation and display of the booking number, payment procedure and other ticket activation related information (figure 11). Self check-in can be done by entering the booking code after user login. The system will display all  tickets  related  to  that  booking  and  the  user  can choose  which  ticket  to  check-in  (figure  12).  Another way to book tickets is to first view and search available schedules based on day of departure or destination city and choose the preferred schedule as shown in figure 13 below. Computer Science and Engineering, Information Systems Technologies and Applications 309  Figure 8. Select seats.   Figure 9. Enter all passengers’ personal information.   Figure 10. Confirm reservation.  Figure 11. Successful booking notification page.   Figure 12. Self check-in form.  Figure 13. View available bus schedules.  Features  for  administrator  employees  such  as managing (adding and editing) bus and route data or assigning  bus,  drivers  and  co-drivers  to  scheduled routes are depicted in figures 14 to 17 below.  Regarding  security  of  this  application,  user passwords are encrypted and even administrators will not have access to view or alter this password. When Computer Science and Engineering, Information Systems Technologies and Applications 310 customers  or  users  forget  their  password,  their passwords will be reset and the new automatically and randomly  generated  password  will  be  sent  to  user’s email.  Figure 14. Manage bus data.  Figure 15. Manage route.  Figure 16. Generate ticket sales report form.  4. Conclusion By using this application, the company can provide reservation  services  and information to their customers without the limitation of office hours or manpower. Not only  does  it  let  customers  book  trips  around  the  clock from any location with an internet connection but it is also  designed  for  use  by  the  company  to  internally manage  their  business  processes;  minimizing  human errors  and  overcoming  difficulties  and  problems  that arose in the previous system.   Figure 17. Assigning bus, drivers and co-drivers to a scheduled trip.   Figure 18. The issued electronic ticket (to print out).  In  the  future,  should  the  e-commerce  payment system  and  policies  in  the  countries  of  operations improve;  the  system  can  be  integrated  with  an  online payment  system  to  further  assist  the  customer  in completing  reservations.  Also,  additional  security features such as digital signature and/or digital certificate will  be  reinforced  during  deployment  of  the  system  to ascertain the authenticity of the website and secure data communications.  References [1]  A. Dennis, B. H. Wixom, & D. Tegarden, System Analysis and Design with UML Version 2.0, John Wiley & Sons,Inc., 2005. [2]  R. S. Pressman & D. Lowe, Web Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach, McGraw-Hill, 2009. [3]  J. Sklar, Principles of Web Design (4th ed.), Cengage Learning, 2009. [4]  G. R. Stair, Principles of Information Systems (7th ed.),Thomson Course Technology, 2006  

Developing A Bus Ticket Reservation Web Application At PT. Setia Jiwana Sakti

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