Aaron’s Event Manager

In the beginning of January 2010, John Trainor (CTO) approached me with a dilemma. Every year they have a National Managers Meeting around the end of March and there’s a massive amount of emails & faxes going back and forth with an unfathomable amount of paperwork. Previously, a manager would go to a website to fill out a single form which would then be emailed to the unfortunate individual handling the event. The unlucky associate would then have to fax additional paperwork to the manager to receive additional information such as how many people they’re bringing, shirt sizes, transportation needs, etc.

The solution was a rather complex application that would allow a manager to submit all this information on one form. Logic was put in place if the manager wanted to add additional associates without having to retype lots of information already submitted. Managers were allowed to specify which airline they were taking (if they were flying) by entering just a few letters and then selecting which one through an auto-suggest feature. After a couple of months of development, the application hit it off: over 1,700 managers submitted their data through the website without a hitch and Aaron’s was a little bit greener.

When an associate first logs in, the application grabs as much information as possible from the Aaron's database. However, they're asked to review their information to make sure that's it's correct. All required fields use the .NET AJAX ValidatorCallout so that the page doesn't refresh if a field isn't filled in.