ENG 3773_Dinesh adhikari_Analytical Paper

OneStopCityTech

An Official mobile App for NYCCT

"App that can help to simplify students life at CityTech"

Team Members:

Dinesh Adhikari

Hanh Dang

Joseph Tran

Rinjin Lama

ENG 3773: Advanced Technical Writing

June 29, 2015

Proposal Letter

June 29, 2015 NYC App Developer Consultant New York, NY 10024

To The Vice President of Student Affairs,

New York City Tech 300 Jay St Brooklyn, NY 11201

Dear Marcela K. Armoza,

We are pleased to announce that our team is expert in developing mobile apps for large

group of business and organization. OneStopCityTech App is our next major project that we are

going to develop. The App that we are developing is beneficial for the CityTech College

students. Students can use the college resources like CUNYFirst, Event Calendar, Forum,

Library, Book-Store and E-mail on the palm of their hand. This App will help to simplify

student’s life at CityTech College.

By reviewing the list of features, time and labors to develop the App, it cost $35000.00.

The project will be completed within 3 months. The cost will incur service fees, developer fees,

and miscellaneous expenses. Our detail report with list of features is included with this proposal

letter. We anticipate to hear a good news from you. We hope to have a smooth working

relationship with you as a working partnership.

Thank you!

Best Regards,

NYC App Developer Team

New York, NY 10024

(212)- XXX - XXXX

Abstract

Welcome to the OneStopCityTech mobile Application program. This app is developed

for CityTech students and its faculty members. Only members with valid CityTech email ID can

use all of the features. Some of the features are limited to general users. Other users who are not

affiliated with CityTech can install and download for testing or research purposes only. All

rights, regulations, terms and conditions are reserved by the CityTech college. Users feedback

and reviews will be taken into consideration which will help us to improve this app for future

use.

Table of Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Structure of OneStopCityTech ........................................................................................................ 2 Newsfeed......................................................................................................................................... 3

News Posting ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Accessing News ..................................................................................................................................... 3

Sharing News......................................................................................................................................... 3

Events Calendar .............................................................................................................................. 4 Campus Map ................................................................................................................................... 4

OneStopCityTech: Book-Store ....................................................................................................... 5 Book Trade ............................................................................................................................................ 5

Communication ..................................................................................................................................... 6

Library and book store functionality ..................................................................................................... 6

Advanced search engine ....................................................................................................................... 7

FORUMS ........................................................................................................................................ 7 Questions and Tutorials ........................................................................................................................ 7

Bulletin Board ....................................................................................................................................... 8

Service and Tutoring ............................................................................................................................. 9

Job Opportunities .................................................................................................................................. 9

General Topics .................................................................................................................................... 10

Forum Filters and Security............................................................................................................ 10

Signing Up .................................................................................................................................... 11 Connectivity .................................................................................................................................. 11

OneStopCityTech-Blackboard ............................................................................................................. 11

OneStopCityTech-CUNYFirst ............................................................................................................... 11

CUNY portal ......................................................................................................................................... 12

CityTech Email ..................................................................................................................................... 12

Security ......................................................................................................................................... 12

Research ........................................................................................................................................ 14 Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 15

Students Reviews from Other Colleges .............................................................................................. 15

Student Review from CityTech Students ............................................................................................ 15

Our Survey .................................................................................................................................... 16 References ..................................................................................................................................... 17

O n e S t o p C i t y T e c h | 1

New York City College of Technology

Introduction

OneStopCityTech is a mobile Application program that is developed to target the

CityTech Students and its faculty members. OneStopCityTech app is available for both platforms

of mobile devices; Android and iOS. The main objective to build this app is to simplify students

life at CityTech College. After thoughtful research over few other college's apps and their actual

user reviews and feedbacks, OneStopCityTech has been developed for its CityTech users.

Likewise, other college mobile app, OneStopCityTech feature are Campus map, News feeds,

Events calendar, Job opportunities, Forum, Book-store, Library and E-mail. Only people with

Valid CityTech ID can access to CUNYFirst, Library, and Blackboard wherever they need

login. It is available to download for free in Google-

Play Store and Apple- AppStore.

OneStopCityTech feature are developed

targeting the students at CityTech College. The

concept of this app is how to simplify or convenience

student life at CityTech by just one log in and linked

you to all features. It is hard for all students to

remember their username and passwords for

Blackboard, CUNYFirst or college email. Through this

app, students can logged in just once, and it will save

your information forever. Anytime, students want to access the features of OneStopCityTech,

students can log in once and it is good to go until the App is live. The structure and list of

features that OneStopCityTech users can use are as listed below.

Forum

=====

=

Campus

Map News

feed

Library

Settings

Bb CUNY

First

Home Screen

Book

Store

@

email


Structure of OneStopCityTech

OneStopCityTech is with a structure anyone can use, as long as they can read and see.

The home page is entirely user friendly with graphical user interface icon. This means just click

and go. Most of our app is all user friendly unless you would like to make some searches through

the forum or looking for a particular course on CUNYFirst, then you would just need to enter in

a few words to speed up the search.

The structure if based off a tree network. One button leads to a few more, which can then

lead to even more buttons until you get to what you are looking for.

EXAMPLE 1: If you are trying to locate the English Department Office

1. Sign into app/ Sign up for app

2. From home page click School Map

3. Map appears with highlighted School buildings and a few buttons 4. Click Departments button

5. Search for English or scroll through list until you find English Department 6. Search result will show up with English Department Information

EXAMPLE 2: Adding credentials to user profile

1. Sign into app/ Sign up for app

2. Click Setting button from home page

3. Click Accounts

4. Select which account you would like to add(Blackboard, CUNYFirst,

CUNY portal, and CityTech Email) 5. Add credentials 6. Click Update and your good to go

So as you can see, most of this app only requires you to click unless you are providing

specific information you want to enter. But it is necessary to enter your credentials for

Blackboard, CUNYFirst, CUNY portal, and CityTech Email if you would like to use those

features through our app.


Newsfeed

Newsfeed is one of the great feature in OneStopCityTech App. Students can see latest

news from CityTech College, as well as CUNYNEWSWIRE. Students can know what's

happening in their College through the Newsfeed.

News Posting

As we know, Newsfeed is our main feature that lots of traffic is flowing on newsfeed. So,

we decided that Newsfeed must be restricted to all users. Newsfeed will be monitored and

controlled by our App expert. Students who wants to post news on Newsfeed can send their news

through email at [email protected]. Faculty members can post news

without any interruption.

Accessing News

Once user install an App, user can click on an App, you can see list of features as a icon.

Click on where it says Newsfeed to access to news for last 2 weeks. News that has been posted

two seeks earlier will be deleted permanently from our App.

Sharing News

Newsfeed can be easily shareable to social media site like Facebook , Twitter and

Google+ through our social share button. Sharing is caring. We do care our College where we

study. So, it will be helpful to our society to share our news to them. People can learn and know

about the progress and achievements happening in our College through OneStopCityTech app.


Events Calendar

Events Calendar is the another most important feature of OneStopCityTech App. Instead

of posting events on all the hallways of CityTech college, events can be easily viewed with one

click in the palm of your hand. Users can see list of upcoming events in 2 weeks of time. Since,

events can be added on event list calendar, there is no need of posters to be posted on the wall of

each and every floor in the college. It will save time, resources (paper & ink) and labor cost.

Events will be posted only after the approval by the OneStopCityTech administrator. In

General, events that is going to organized must be affiliated with the college will be posted as

requested. Otherwise, students might need to get approval from the affiliated department like

student clubs or related officials.

Campus Map

Campus map will help new and current students

who didn't have enough information on all the buildings

that CityTech College has. Our interactive college map will

show the list of departments including their phone number

and Office hours which will be easy for students to get the

information.

Once a user clicks on the Campus Map icon, it will

take you to the Interactive map where it shows the college

site map including the building name. When a user clicks on the building name, a list of

departments available on that building will shows up. User can also search the name of the

department through our advanced search box.


OneStopCityTech: Book-Store

One Stop app proudly has a features of trading books student to student. The app

manages a trading books in which student can buy and sell varieties of books in CUNY. Books

are always been expensive for students. They spend $100 - $200 for a single books. They used

their books only for one semester. then, they might throw them out. Expensive books are always

been issue for student. Due to advantage of technology, there are many website where people

can buy and sales used or new books. Most student use a EBay, Amazon, half-ebay.com, book

finder and many more. They disadvantage of this site, it’s impossible to do trade between

consumer.

Book Trade

There are some website exist to do a trade for a product such as Craigslist. Many people

claims about scam. People did not feel comfortable to do trade by website. it is not well

protective site to use for trade. So, OneStopCityTech is made for student. Student must have to

sign up app through their CUNY ID. They have to provide a basic information such as name,

major, CUNY ID and address.

One of the great advantages of using a OneStopCityTech, it can able to do trade between

two or more than two student. For instance in Fig below, Dinesh, Han, Rinjin wants to do trade

books, but the problem to do trade between two people is impossible. Dinesh wants a psychology

book which Han has it, but Han wants a Java book. Dinesh does not have. Java book belongs to

Rinjin, but he needs Math so Rinjin could not able to do a trade to Han. They can enter their

books to trade so they can do trade between three people.


The Figure below demonstrate a process of doing a three way trade between a student.

Beside selling and buying a books in CUNY, One stop app link to City tech bookstore and

library.

Communication

OneStopCityTech app includes a message exchange system, so student can able to

communicate with other student. They can save their message in their account. OneStopCityTech

also provides a McAfee Email Security which gives a guarantee for students to protect their

message.

Library and book store functionality

Student can able to search a book in library and bookstore. Student can also buy a books

of bookstore or lend a books in library from app, so they can save their time. They can just go

pick up their books. Furthermore, they can


Advanced search engine

When a student search their books in library or bookstore. They have bunch of option to

search which includes books categories, ISBN, condition, author and price. They Refine option

where they can Sort order which includes (best Match, lowest price, high price, Newly listed).

Moreover, they can also view a sold items. Cog tools in the image below is for choosing a

category include arts , cookbooks, computer books, Crafts, Engineering, Education, Teaching

and many more. One Stop provides a user for varieties of search option to give better flexibility.

Forums

In City Tech, students have many questions but do not know where to find the answers. It

may be difficult for new and returning students to meet other fellow students. They may want to

have a discussion about a class or their goals in their college career or share their thoughts and

ideas but do now know how to approach their peers. It may lead to frustration and leave the

student with a feeling of uncertainty. Other students may be want to sell their books for a better

price than what the bookstore is offering by posting flyers throughout the halls of City Tech only

for it to go unseen by passing students.

A solution OneStopCityTech offers is having built in forums. With these forums, students

can post their questions, book listings, and discuss many other topics with their peers and City

Tech faculty.

Questions and Tutorials

One of the forums OneStopCityTech will have is a Questions and Tutorial section. In this

forum, City Tech students can post any question whether it is a general question asking about

information of the school or a homework question. For the students who do not feel comfortable


asking others in person, this will be a great solution for them. The threads students create may

contain the same question that another student may have. Other students can easily do a quick

search through the forum and find the answer to their question if it has been previously asked.

City Tech students and faculty can post tutorials in this section. These threads will

provide guides that can help students with various tasks. As an example, a member of the faculty

can post a tutorial on “how to apply for financial aid.” This example will be very good for

incoming freshmen who may not know anything about the financial aid process.

Bulletin Board

The bulletin board forum can be used by students to create posts to sell their used

textbooks. For those who walk around the City Tech hallways are familiar with the walls being

decorated by textbook-for-sale flyers. Unfortunately, it is difficult for students to find the

textbook they need if the seller’s flyers are covered by other flyers. Another issue is that there are

too many flyers and the students may not want to look through every single one in hope of

finding a textbook that he or she needs.

Buy and Sell

With the bulletin board, there will be a section where students can sell their used books.

A student who is looking to buy that book can find it by running a search through the forum. If

the student cannot find the book in the for-sale forum, there will be another section for students

who can post about a book they are looking to buy. Students who own a textbook that is no

longer wanted but is needed by others can communicate with each other through this section of

the forum and set up meeting arrangements by sending each other personal messages (PM).


Students can post other items besides textbooks. They can sell small items such as pens or big

items such as their car. It will be a good alternative to EBay and other similar online sites.

Service and Tutoring

Another section the bulletin board offer is a service section. In this section, students or

professors can post about tutoring sessions. Students can offer other students free or paid tutoring

sessions. Professors can also use the forum to make announcements on when they will offer one-

on-one or group tutoring sessions. All the posts will be in one central location instead of flyers

being posted outside of each department.

Job Opportunities

There are many emails that are sent by City Tech offering job opportunities and

internships. However, they may be overlooked or aren’t read at all. In the job opportunity forum,

faculty and other authorized members can post about hiring staff for various positions in the

school, internships, job opportunities from outside companies, and upcoming job fairs. Students

will have the ability to see a section of the forum that fully concentrates on anything related to

jobs and internships.

Occasionally, natural disasters will occur. Students may want to volunteer to offer their

service to help areas affected by the disasters. This would be a good forum to check for students

who want to help but do not know where to go. Other volunteer services may be posted asking

for assistance in setting up City Tech bake sales or other City Tech events.

If City Tech is hosting a charity event, this would be a good place to find volunteers.

Events like a food drive or clothing donation can help the needy. Some City Tech students may


also be looking for help if they are in tough times. It would be a rewarding opportunity to be able

to help a fellow student and let them know that City Tech cares.

General Topics

In general topics, students and faculty members can post about anything that may or may

not be City Tech related. They can talk about their interests, their class experiences, parties and

other social events, funny or sad stories, and many other topics that can get a discussion going.

Students can talk about a common interest which may lead to the formation of City Tech clubs.

This will make students feel more a part of City Tech and boost City Tech pride. Students can

quickly jump into a conversion and add their thoughts to a discussion by adding a simple reply. It

would be a great tool to use to make new friends and find out what is happening in and around

City Tech.

Forum Filters and Security

Although we cannot control the thoughts of students, we can filter it in the forums.

Should there be any negative or offensive posts, there will be a filter in place to block the content

or remove the post completely. There will be a disclaimer informing students that negative or

offensive posts will not be tolerated and can lead to suspension or ban of the user account.

Student’s right to freedom of speech will be protected as long as it is not promoting hate

or terroristic activities. Should there be any posts with these discussions that is deemed a threat

to students and members of City Tech, the post will be deleted and law enforcement authority

may be notified. Students may receive a warning letter or can be expelled from City Tech.


Signing Up

OneStopCityTech app will require a user profile which you will need to register for.

But what makes this app so special, is the fact it is made specifically for CityTech students and

staff. We accomplished this through our verification process. To make a user profile you will

need a CityTech email. Once your account has been verified, you will have access to your user

profile to navigate and use the app.

Connectivity

In your user profile page you can attach your credentials to Blackboard, CUNYFirst,

CUNY portal, and your CityTech email. Once you have done so, you will be able to access any

of the three applications directly from our app and you will not need to log in from our app ever

again if you are logged in to your user profile. For security information look toward Security.

OneStopCityTech-Blackboard

Some of the inherited features from Blackboard site will be the Blackboard courses

which shows the active courses you are in and there feeds/ announcements, and Blackboard

course tools which allows you to contact fellow classmates/professor and checking grades. The

upgrade we have made to the Blackboard features is the connection to the CityTech forums

which is also provided separately in the app.

OneStopCityTech-CUNYFirst

From CUNYFirst, we inherited class schedule, course module, and pre class

registration. So if you were to use the CUNYFirst portion of our app you will be able to see your

current class schedule, look up course modules to know what classes you need to take if you

would like to look at specific course descriptions. But one of the great features mentioned is the


pre class registration. This lets you look for classes you would like to take and add them to your

shopping cart like you would do on CUNYFirst website. But as a safety precaution you can

register for the class but you will be able to save them in your cart. This is what the pre means in

pre class registration.

CUNY portal

The CUNY portal features we inherited are the e-sims viewer, and the student

advisement degree audit tool. The e-sims viewer lets you check on your e-sims registration

progress and the student advisement degree audit tools gives you a tree model of the courses you

need, taken and shows your degree completion status.

CityTech Email

The email portion of the app will be connected to Microsoft outlook365, where you will

be able to view and manage your mails on a newer, more user friendly layout created by

OneStopCityTech. You will be able to sort through your mail and organize by class which will

auto generate a folder with the specific class name if you choose to do so.

Security

We all know security is a big issue, especially when it comes down to sensitive

information. So we have taken many precautions. The first precaution is keeping the original

source of information provider security as a firewall. This means all information going in and out

of Blackboards, or outlook server will be screened by their own firewall. The second is our own

encrypted firewall which will run as the main firewall before going to the information

distributors firewall. The third precaution is keeping public access limited to only what is

needed. The last precaution is a failsafe in which if there is a security breach in our systems, all


connections from the app to the servers will be released and disconnect OneStopCityTech app.

Another reason why we know our code is safe, is because it will be self scripted from scratch.

This meaning no open source codes or no hidden backdoors we need to worry about.

The layout of our security is very straight forward yet very secure. As described we use

our own firewall which serves as a front end security to keep our user profiles as secure as can

be. But in case of an event in which a security breach has taken place, (Ex. A hacked profile.)

The server will disconnect the individual user profile or on a much larger scale (Ex. A server

breach) the entire server will be disconnected to prevent any leaked information. If this was to

happen, service to Blackboard, CUNYFirst, outlook emails, ... will all still run, and can still be

accessed through their individual domains which a link will also be available in our app if we

disconnect our servers. But you will need to log in through their domain. Also to ensure no

simultaneous logging, we have added session timers to user profiles which will auto logout a

user if they are left idle for a certain period of time, and a auto log off function if the user logs on

from a different location.


Research

Our many research which we based this app off was a poll of questions we have made

which asked the students what they would like in our app, and the results where outstanding.

With over 95% of the student body which took the pole all said they would love to have this app

and the features we have mentioned. But we have also done our research on similar apps which

other university has made based off their students review and actual use of their apps. We have

also done research through big named technology articles like Forbes and Business insider which

showed us the conveniences an app can bring to any environment.

Our research on forums came from the framework of forum sites, such as Reddit, Gaia

Online, 4Chan, and IGN. We have also added a specific filter to this forum, for educational

topics and topics on CityTech only. We have also incorporated the anonymous feature from

YikYak framework which allows students to post anonymously if they like. But also placed a

security feature also similar to YikYak framework which tracks users post even if it is

anonymous. This meaning you can be anonymous to the outside world, but we,

OneStopCityTech will still know who you are for security and safety purposes.

On our security department, we have also done extensive research on securing our app

and information flow through servers. We have taken information from app development

security experts and applied it to our app. We have gotten information from the International

Information System Security Certification, Inc (ISC), Denim Group (Application Security

Company), and Keith Katz of Kony Tech Company.


Appendices

Students Reviews from Other Colleges

By analyzing the reviews and student ratings to their prospective college and universities,

the proposal has been made that OneStopCityTech app is possible to launch.

Student Review from CityTech Students

After doing survey at City Tech College students, the result shows that majority of

students wants app with features like email, campus map, book trade, and newsfeed.

0

50

100

150

200

250

Hardvard University

MIT Yale University

Queens College

LAGCC

*****

****

***

**

*

0

5

10

15

20

Yes No

Email

Campus Map

Book Trade

Newsfeed


Our Survey


References

Campus Map :http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/aboutus/dictions/mapDoc.pdf

Kony Security : http://www.kony.com/resources/blog/eight-security-issues-prepare-mobile-app-

development

International Information System Security Certification:

https://www.isc2.org/uploadedfiles/%28isc%292_public_content/certification_programs/csslp/is

c2_wpiv.pdf

Denim Group: http://www.denimgroup.com/application-development.html

IGN Forum: http://www.ign.com/boards/

Reddit Forum: http://www.reddit.com/

4Chan Forum: http://www.4chan.org/

Gaia Forum: http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/

http://www.denimgroup.com/application-development.html

http://www.ign.com/boards/

ENG 3773_Dinesh adhikari_Analytical Paper

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