Customization

Although the Conference Manager was developed for a specific event, it has also been designed to be adaptable and expandable for the needs of a wide variety of conferences. This section describes some of the ways the Conference Manager can be further developed to meet the needs of specific organizations and conferences.

Options

The Options form, which can be opened from the Main Menu, provides an opportunity to customize several Conference Manager features and outputs. These include:

• options for emails drafted by the conference manager, including the subject line, body, whether or not to copy coauthors, and whether or not to append the abstract
• the folder where files for the HTML program will be saved
• the file name, header, and footer HTML code for the web pages that comprise the conference program: schedule, author list, abstract pages, and indices.

To open the Options form, select it from the bottom of the list on the Main Menu. To use the form, simply select the option you wish to edit from the drop-down box, and then edit the value in the large box below. Some parameters have descriptive text in the shaded box at the bottom that explains a little more what the option is used for, acceptable values, etc.

Table Structure

Because the Conference Manager is a regular MS Access database, you can easily add reports, queries and even new datasets (such as conference registration) to the database and put them on the Main Menu. When designing reports or queries, it is helpful to know the table structure and the relationships between the tables. The graphic below (click for a full-sized image) shows the main tables in the database and their relationships.

Future Work

Below are some of the features that may be added to the Conference Manager in the future. If you add features, or have additional suggestions or feedback, please send a message to the author at alyons@myrealbox.com.

• schedule page - add code to display icons
• need reports for program, room schedules, name tags
• develop a query for creating a program in MS Word using mail merge
• allow the user to specify the sort order of panels
• enhance submission page to support file transfers (PDF and Word)
• add support for authors who have double affiliations or multiple emails
• enhance schedule so it shows the time of individual papers (either make it automatic triggered by a parameter in the Panels table or add time field for individual papers)
• add a title field to authors table
• make an option to sort abstracts not alphabetically by first author, but according to the schedule
• add support for keeping track of all participant registration