AlphaMeet - the

Board Meeting
Website
By Raj Shekhar Kumar (141100053)
Computer Science and Engineering
NIT Delhi
Why?
The Executive Board of the IRCTC (Indian
Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation) has
some directors who do not reside in Delhi. This
makes the Quarterly Board meeting a hassle and
sometimes, the directors are visiting the country
for work or leisure. For these reasons, there is a
need to have the Quarterly Board Meeting
Process of IRCTC online.
Abstact
A Board Meeting is Formal Meeting of the Board of Directors of an Organization which held at
definite intervals to formulate policy issues and tackle any major problems. Presided over by a
chairperson of the organization or his or her appointee, it must meet the quorum requirements and
its deliberations must be recorded in the minutes. Under the doctrine of collective responsibility, all
directors (even if absent) are bound by its resolutions.
Every Board Meeting takes a lot of manpower and paperwork to be undertaken. For this reason, the
Joint General Manager of IT Department of IRCTC gave the task me and my fellow interns to take
whole process online. It will be a step towards e-governance and automation of a major process in the
Third Largest Railways Network of the World.
Alphameet - the Board Meeting Website is going to be the site that will be used for all Executive
Board Meetings of IRCTC. The site was made on LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). As
interns, we had to develop the Database and the Front End Development of the site (done primarily
by me) for which HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap was used.
Through this idea, we tried to digitalize the pre-meeting tasks and post-meeting tasks that will lead to
e-governance through automation.
Audience poll!
How many sheets of paper
do you think would be
involved in one Board
Meeting Process?
 Roughly 6,500*
(*This is a number that my co-interns and I came up when
we were learning about the Board Meeting process.)
The number of sheets of
papers AlphaMeet - the
Board Meeting Website
would end up consuming.
This is clearly the right path
200*
(* - at max)
to take in terms of
efficiency, productivity and
e-governance.
Software Development Life Cycle
There are five steps in the Software Development Life Cycle:
1. Requirements gathering and Analysis
2. Designing
3. Coding
4. Testing
5. Maintenance
Analysis
Board of Directors
The IRCTC has 9 Board of Directors of
which one is the Chairman and
Managing Director, three are
Functional Directors, two are
Government Directors and three
Independent Directors who have equal
voting powers in the Board Meeting
Process of IRCTC.
Board Meeting Process
Drawbacks of the current Board Meeting Process

The current process is tedious and a large pile of papers and files are
circulated multiple times through the office to be formalized and confirmed for
the Board Meeting. This wastes paper and time.
Some people are hired for the sole purpose of typing up the agenda (from the
handwritten version) and formalizing it to be passed around the office for
signatures.
Data Security is always a concern as the stock of papers make multiple
rounds through the office and are exchanged by multiple hands.

There is requirement of manpower at all times throughout the process and it is

something that can and should be eliminated immediately.
Benefits of AlphaMeet
A lot of paper will be saved.
The amount of manpower taken in the conventional process can be put to a
better use.
Data is secured.
Data Flow will be monitored and organized.
Directors who are out-of-state at the time of the meeting can attend the
meeting virtually and become a part of the meeting, comment or suggest
amendments and vote on agendas.

AlphaMeet is clearly a better option in the long run and needs to be implemented
at IRCTC to save manpower and paper.
Software
Requirements
Specification
The Software Requirement
Specification for this project
included:
Introduction
Overall Description
External Interface
Requirements
Security Requirements
Procedure
Internal Architecture
 Internal Architecture
Initial request will be generated from
Laptop (through internet) and it will
directly hit to firewall (Network
layer).
The request should initiate with
Secured Sockets Layer (Port 443 ).
And the devices, users will be
identified with unique id, username
and password. From firewall
(Network layer) the subsequently
request will be route to IRCTC
server (Web) which is located in LAN
(Port 80).
From web server to web app server
communication will happen with port
80.
Designing
In this phase, the logical design produced during the
Analysis phase was needed to be converted into physical
design which can be used for the implementation of the
project.

We will now go through the Website that was designed

and approved by the Joint General Manager of IRCTC.
 LOGIN PAGE OF ALPHAMEET
This is the common
login page with
different viewing
models for different
designations.
As there are four
designations (Group
General Managers,
Directors, Company
Secretary and the
Charmain and
Managing Director), the
selected one with the
correct Employee ID
and password will lead
to a successful login.
 AGENDA SUBMISSION PAGE
Group General
Managers and
Directors of IRCTC
submit agendas for the
Board Meeting which
happens quarterly.
This is the mode that
the Group General
Managers will use for
the Agenda
Submission.
If multiple items need
to be added to the
Agenda, the user can
choose Add More
Items to add more
items to the Agenda.
 AGENDA APPROVAL PAGE

Directors of IRCTC
have the authority to
approve or disapprove
an Agenda that is
submitted by the
Group General
Managers.
They will be able to
see the Agenda title,
description, supporting
document(s) and
submission
information.
 APPROVED AGENDAS PAGE
The approved Agendas
when selected
showcase the fact that
they have been
Approved.
The Approved
annotation on the page
suggests that a
particular agenda has
been approved.
 REJECTED AGENDAS PAGE
The
Rejected/Disproved
Agendas when
selected are also
showcased as
Rejected.
The Rejected
annotation on the
page suggests that a
particular agenda has
been rejected.
 PENDING AGENDAS PAGE
If an Agenda has not
been decided on
until the time of
viewing, it
showcases that the
Agenda is still
Pending approval.
The Pending
annotation on the
page suggests that a
particular agenda
has been pending for
approval.
 DIRECTOR AGENDA SUBMISSION PAGE
In the case of a
Director submitting
an Agenda, it does
not need to be
approved as the
Director is himself
authority enough. It
is automatically
approved.
 CHAIRMAN AND MANAGING DIRECTOR AGENDA APPROVAL PAGE

Now - for the last

step of the Agenda
Submission, the
Agenda goes to the
Chairman and
Managing Director of
IRCTC. The
Chairman and
Managing Director
can put an Agenda
ON HOLD or
FINALIZE the
Agenda for the
meeting.
 FINALIZED AGENDA PAGE
When a particular
Agenda is
Finalized by the
Chairman and
Managing
Director, the
Agenda showcases
Done which
means that the
highest authority
of IRCTC has
decided whether the
Agenda will be
there for the Board
Meeting or not.
 APPROVED AGENDAS BY CHAIRMAN AND MANAGING DIRECTOR PAGE

When the
Chairman and
Managing
Director
approves a
particular
Agenda, it is
viewed to the
Company
Secretary for
Compilation.
She then
compiles all the
Approved
Agendas for the
Board Meeting.
 AGENDA COMPILATION PAGE
The Company
Secretary then
compiles all the
Agendas into
one main
Agenda that will
be used
for the Board
Meeting
process.
 BOARD MEETING PAGE

When the meeting is in process, this is what every member will see on their laptops, tablets
or the device they are using. The Executive Board and the Company Secretary will be able to
view the Agenda during the meeting on this page. The Executive Board can vote on every
single Agenda as Yes, No or Abstain from voting on any particular Agenda item. The
status of the voting count will be viewed to everyone but it will also carry anonymity. An
Executive Board Member, if not available, will be able to comment or suggest their opinions
whenever they want to using the Chat box below and they will be there for everyone to see.
 BOARD MEETING PAGE

Video Conferencing:
As a part of the project, we will also integrate a Video Conferencing Option to the website
but as all the Video Conferencing Options are not available for free, the Board needs to
approve the budget to pay for a Subscription after which we will be integration the Video
Conferencing to this page.
 MEETING SCHEDULER PAGE

The Company
Secretary, with
the approval of
the Directors, sets
a Date on which
the meeting will
take place with
the Meeting ID,
Meeting Date
and Meeting
Location.
Date supported by
the majority of the
Directors will be
chosen.
 Database Designing
The following tables were made to handle the workflow of the project:

MST_Pers_Info DT_Agenda
MST_Minutes DT_AgendaAnnexure
MST_Items DT_MinApprove
MST_Dept DT_MeetVote
MST_Agenda DT_Items
MST_Meet DT_Login1
MST_Permission DT_Login2
MST_Role DT_Meet

HD_Role_Permission
Key:
HD_User_Account_Role MST - Master (tables that have the most
HD_Meet fundamental information)
HD_Agenda HD - Header (tables are head the transaction
HD_Items once before the Details takes over)
HD_Comment DT - Detail (transactions are undertaken using
these tables)
Coding
In this phase, we used programming languages to have
the design of the website ready using the following
languages:
Hypertext Markup Language - for creating web pages.
Cascading Style Sheets - for styling of the web page.
JavaScript - for providing dynamic interactivity.
jQuery - for event handling.
MySQL - for database consistency and form submission.
PHP - for backend server scripting.
 Client and Server Side Specifications
Client Side:
On the client side, data will reside locally in memory and will be organized based on the classes
defined later in this document. Since the AlphaMeet program may be considered data-centric,
the classes that handle the data will be isolated and will be accessed by way of a Model-View
Controller system. The data on the locally hosted website will be requested from the server at
application initialization and refreshed as necessary based on user actions.

Server Side:
The server will be implemented using PHP. Permanent storage of user information will be
accomplished using a MySQL database.

The server and front end will exchange data using the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
format. JSON is a lightweight object description language that is similar to XML. JSON is being
used due to its versatility and because of the fact that an implementation is available for both
PHP and JAVA.
Testing and
Maintenance
As apparent, this is a big project and needs to be dealt with by
industry professionals who have experience in this area. By
the time my internship got over, the Joint General Manager of
IRCTC, my superviser, understood the seriousness and scope
of this project because of which he hired two IT associates for
his department to complete this project and bring it to
fruition. As we had written clean code and documented every
step of the way, we were able to hand over the project in a
very efficient manner.
Conclusion
This internship was a life-altering experience for me where I
not only learned web technologies and how a Website is
made, but I also learned how important it is to understand
and work in a team. The collaboration, communication and
accountability is vital for an any project to be a success. I
learned how to be a leader in a group of people who had less
and more knowledge than me in certain areas and how to
motivate a group when things are not going in the right
direction. Finally, the most important thing was learning how
the industry works and how to adapt to changes and
demands of the industry and still come out as a success.
Thank you!