CourseAid 4 - Manage your business with Kohera support

Over the last two years, Kohera has invested a considerable amount of time in developing a business data management tool we call CourseAid, now at major version 4. It has seen deployments into a large training firm (for administrative purposes), a taxi firm (for sending marketing SMS messages to customer mobiles) and latterly an IT recruitment consultancy as well as smaller, more basic installations, including high-volume takeaway ordering. CourseAid mainly serves as an excellent labour-saving platform on which to build custom databases for medium-sized businesses. A few key points:

• Our “Metadata Schematic Concept” approach goes much further than a normal database user interface, in that every field in every table of the database is described within the database itself. Metadata records are comprehensive, instructing CourseAid which records a particular field should offer as values and what should link to that field. More essential data includes what help message should be displayed for a field, and what name should be shown next to it when a user is entering a record or in the column of a table. All of this can be configured within the system itself, and where metadata is missing the system assists the user or developer to assign it properly. Currently, the metadata types supported are:

  • sys: the system's ID for a record – assigned and not editable by the user

  • num: a numerical value

  • curr: a price (in Stirling, but could easily be extended to other currencies)

  • state: a colour symbol to indicate the condition of a record – red, blue, yellow, green)

  • truefalse: a positive or negative value

  • text: an normal text value displayed in a standard text box

  • bigtext: a larger text area for longer tracts of text

  • date: a date field in DD/MM/YYYY format

  • records: a drop-down list of any other records elsewhere in the database. This is a very powerful feature as it allows records to be linked together, abolishing the flat file mess.

  • option: a choice of a number of pre-determined values.

  • url: a link to a page on the internet, or in your own website

  • minitemplate: powerful customised link or text generator

  • intlink: a link within CourseAid, again, allowing records to be joined across the system

  • intlinkcheckbox: internal linking extended with a tick box: a number of records can be selected, maybe for deletion or to send a custom e-mail or text message.

  • email: a validated e-mail address which can also be clicked when displayed to open Outlook directly.

  • password a field which requires confirmation if it is changed, and which is hidden from view.

• As the database is changed and improved, CourseAid automatically adjusts the table views and data entry forms around the site, with minimal intervention.

• Unlike many web-based business systems, forms are generated and processed automatically based on the database structure. That can be changed as often as desired so the system can be deployed, put to use and still improved on an on-going basis.

• Processes that would normally take a developer a lot of additional thought are simplified: he need only change the database schema and metadata and suddenly a list of Account Managers can be made a available to select from when editing a client record, for example.

• Other features:

  • Full authentication and access control is programmed in so that users of various levels can have access to different areas of the site. A client or external login is possible – they see reduced datasets or only their own data.

  • Dashboard view: different users or user groups and security levels can have dashboard views which show them records and record counts from around the system. They can request them from us and we create the display they find most useful.

  • Filtering of a table view, allowing for quick report generation by the user.

  • Comprehensive notes system: every field in the whole database can have dated notes made against it by users – this functions well as a message-sending system should users wish to discuss a particular record. New notes can be shown on dashboards.

  • Searching is possible across all records stored, even if the actual database structure changes frequently: no changes of code are necessary to achieve this.

  • Intuitive menu structure means that pages relating to a particular entity in the database appear in a drop-down list. This is much like the accounts packages that administrative users are already familiar with, making learning CourseAid easy.

  • System-wide SQL logging - every change to a record can be reverted and all user interactions with the system are monitored

  • Attractive, modern design, which is easy on the eye

  • Export to CSV for any view, allowing easy manipulation in a spreadsheet

Benefits to using CourseAid 4, and not starting from scratch

• Mature: CourseAid 4 represents hundreds of hours of design, development and testing. Bugs are few and fixed quickly when found. The system has demonstrated how robust it is.

• Reliable: Improvements gained through talking to clients and observing the system in use mean that the incidences of bugs within the core of the platform is vanishingly low. Most companies have a number of active users all through the working day. We rarely hear bad news from them.

• Customisable: Most off-the shelf packages are closed, and their features stay broadly the same, regardless of what you actually require. It is up to the user to avoid the bits that are not needed and find the components that are. That is tiresome and wastes hours of user time in training and working around the system. CourseAid is adjusted to suit your business.

• Best of both worlds: Starting with CourseAid is almost as flexible as having your own system built from scratch but massively cheaper. CourseAid development time now stands at nearly thousand developer hours. You get the whole base system for less than the cost of 30 hours. We then charge you for the on-going development to customise it to your needs.