The Client

Microsoft Corporation – Redmond, Washington

The Business Challenge

Microsoft needed an On-line commitments tool to manage all its employees' performance.

The Solution

MS Online Commitments tool allows for the work flow of the employee and manager interaction during all the three stages of the commitment setting process – Drafting, submitting, and approving.

The various parts of this solution are

Data Tier: Where all the commitment data is stored
Middle Tier: Which consists of the web service to return the commitment data and a web based dashboard where the user can view their commitments and find out status of their direct report's commitments
Client Tier: The InfoPath forms where the commitments can be edited and Reporting Services reports the On-line commitments tool will be used by all of MS employees to create their commitments, get them approved and then later on do check-in and transition reviews for these commitments

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The various features of this solution are

Provided an on-line commitment setting experience where employees and managers are able to establish set up and manage commitments
Employees are able to set up new and edit commitments anytime during the year and managers can review and/or approve these commitments
Employees are able to align commitments with their direct manager
Employees and managers have summary lists with statuses to indicate if any action needs to be done to finalize commitments
Provide commitment visibility to all levels of the organizations
Employees are able to view all organizational commitments within the company
Employees are able to view commitments up the Reports to organizational hierarchy
Managers are able to view commitments down the Reports to organizational hierarchy
Implement a commitments tool that is stable, reliable and dependable
Participate in privacy and security reviews

As part of this release GGK was involved in developing Client and Middle Tiers in the earlier versions of the software. GGK is developing end-to-end solution for the next version of this tool.

The Results

Streamlined method of entering and reviewing commitments
Improved over all process and procedures for the various kinds of reviews done
Compatibility with latest Microsoft Technology (includes Windows Vista, IE 7.0 and Office 12)

GGK worked along with partner Qdabra Software on this project.

Technologies Involved

.NET Framework, C#, ASP.NET, Web Services, Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, SQL Server 2005 and Reporting Services