Office Administration Software for a Business Communication Company
The client’s initial request was to implement software for the fax viewing application developed by it. Itransition’s task was to develop an ActiveX control that is used in the fax viewer application. Annotation Control facilitates opening and screening faxes in different formats (Equisys’ special fax formats are supported as well as standard fax formats), saving and exporting faxes into other formats (from the list of supported formats), rotating or flipping pages in the fax, changing page order, adding and deleting pages and other functions. All operations can be performed either via COM interfaces or by user via GUI interface, so the Annotation Control can also be used in server environment for automatic annotating of incoming/outgoing fax messages.
The application was intended to facilitate viewing and annotating pages in fax messages. A typical user of Annotation Control application is a marketing department or fax bureau service, where faxing to a large number of customers is a regular activity.
Itransition’s task was to develop an ActiveX control that is used in the fax viewer application developed by Equisys. Design concepts were created in cooperation with the customer’s subject matter experts and Itransition business analysts.
Annotation Control facilitates opening and screening faxes in different formats (Equisys’ special fax formats are supported as well as standard fax formats), saving and exporting faxes into other formats (from the list of supported formats), rotating or flipping pages in the fax, changing page order, adding and deleting pages.
Also a number of annotation operations are supported by Annotation Control: straight line, freehand line, rectangle, highlight, text box. Highlight and text box annotations support transparency feature. After annotating the fax user is able to save or export fax in any of supported fax formats. All operations can be performed either via COM interfaces or by user via GUI interface, so the Annotation Control can also be used in server environment for automatic annotating of incoming/outgoing fax messages.
The system features as follows:
- Transparent Text Box and Highlight annotations;
- Freehand line annotation;
- Export into another fax formats;
- Full control from the third party applications (via COM calls);
- An ability to compose fax by adding/deleting/rotating pages in the original fax;
- User-friendly and light-weighted design;
- Multi-lingual support.
Annotation Control is a Windows ActiveX control application which works on all of the latest Windows operating systems. C++ programming language is used for application implementation. MFC C++ library is used for implementing application architecture. Windows GDI technology is used as fax and annotation drawing engine. C++ classes implement all business logic, special C++ API library is used open and export different fax formats.
Technologies used: MFC, Windows GDI, Unit Testing, C++, RUP; MS Project; IBM Clear Case; IBM Rational, Clear Quest.
Efforts: 6 man-months.
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