Matthew S. Harris

Case History:

Confidentiality agreements prohibit a full Case History for this project.

Case History:

The New Haven Schools Foundation (NHSF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the New Haven School District by awarding/administering scholarship funds, giving grants to teachers or student groups to fund curricular and extra-curricular educational materials and events.

In an effort to enhance fundraising efforts, on a tight budget, and with special needs not met by off-the-shelf donor management software, NHSF contracted Matthew to develop a Donor Management System in MS Access. Matthew designed and programmed an application to meet the specific needs of the NHSF, with the following features:

• Secured/encrypted data via MS Access workgroup security.
• Application's user-interface provides simplified password and user management.
• Store contact information for donors, scholarship recipients, and grant applicants.
• Track and report on:
  • Donations related to specific fundraising activities.
  • Demographic data about grant and scholarship recipients.
  • Grant applications/awards, and scholarship awards.
• Automatically select records and generate mailing-lists for:
  • Tax-receipt letters to donors.
  • Congratulations/regrets letters to grant and scholarship recipients.
  • Fundraising campaign/event notification letters/cards by selecting groups of donors matching a variety of search criteria, including past participation in an event.
• When generating a mailing list, the application generates a mail-merge data file, then opens MS Word to complete the mailing.
• Retrieve donor records based on special notes, such as an interest in estate donation.
• Track and report on data related to the Board of Directors and its members, such as dates of service, committees and membership, meetings and attendance.

Case History:

Matthew completed a 6-month contract programming assignment at VISA USA. Because of Visa's corporate rules governing the hire of contract and consulting labor, Matthew was assigned to work at VISA through Partners In Business, a business-services firm based in Danville, CA (http://pibsinc.com).

In an ongoing effort to protect consumers from credit card fraud, VISA has developed a set of security guidelines for businesses handling credit card data, and maintains a certification program for businesses adhering to these security guidelines. This security certification program is known as Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP). (Interested parties may read about CISP at http://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/cisp.html).

At Visa's instigation, Matthew designed and programmed a process-tracking and reporting database system for in-house use by VISA staff responsible for auditing compliance with CISP requirements. This application is used by 7 different departments, and has these features:

• Utilizes user-entered data and data obtained from other corporate databases.
• Multi-user networked application serving multiple departments within the CISP administration.
• Enables real-time data sharing between departments, greatly streamlining operations (prior to this application, staff in one department would need to make an information request by memo to another department).
• Automatically update key items across multiple data-sets.
• Provide real-time reporting on areas of interest to top management.
• Significantly automate tasks previously accomplished by repeated manual data lookups from other corporate databases. For example, auditing a particular type of report submitted by banks doing business with VISA formerly required 6 to 7 days to process manually, now takes only 6 to 7 hours to process using the new application).

The completed application is a little over 80,000 lines of code. Confidentiality prohibits discussing the product in any more specific detail.

Case History:

Tri-CED is a nonprofit corporation contracted to perform curbside collection of organic and non-organic recyclables in the California cities of Union City and Hayward. Because of the success of an earlier project and an affordable bid, Tri-CED engaged Matthew to develop this product for them.

Tri-CED has two major needs: First, to adequately manage service for about 60,000 pickup locations, where a location receives different services depending on city, whether it is a single- or multi-family residence, a business, or is eligible for handicap service. Second, a contractual need to submit extremely detailed performance reports to the cities served and to labor unions. Tri-CED's existing customer database was insufficient to these needs.

The solution was to develop a new Tri-CED Customer Service System (TCSS) in MS Access and VBA. The TCSS system is a complete Customer Relations Management system customized precisely to fit Tri-CED's unique requirements and existing business practices. The TCSS system cost about 70% less than the closest-matching off-the-shelf CRM system, and (unlike the off-the-shelf CRM) used existing hardware, has unlimited users, and met Tri-CED's needs 100%.

Matthew designed & programmed the TCSS system from the ground up, giving it these features:

• Maintains a record of all service addresses and associated (multiple) customer contacts.
• Maintains records of driver hours and tonnage collected per material, per truck.
• Flexible searches to view addresses, contacts, service orders, and other information.
• Create and track service orders, maintaining a viewable history of all service orders at any address.
• Create and track driver tags (a driver's notification about problems at the pickup).
• Manage route-assignments - which pickup locations are serviced by which routes.
• Automate monthly, quarterly, and annual reporting for statistical and performance reports.
• High level of user configurability: users can add new containers, material types, service types, and other "lookup" items to update or expand the type of information tracked and reported on.
• User-level security (user-name + password) to control which activities a specific user may perform.
• Online HTML help manual and printed user manual.

As part of the delivery and deployment of the new system, Matthew also converted about 60,000 existing customer records into the new system. Tri-CED staff and management have expressed extreme satisfaction with this product, still in use on a daily basis since 2005 without significant problems.

Case History:

Tri-CED is a nonprofit company which purchases redemption containers and recyclable materials directly from the public through a "BuyBack" facility, and then resells them in bulk.

The Buyback facility had several needs. Foremost, as an authorized CA recycling facility, strict requirements must be met for receipts, record-keeping, and reporting. Because of the CA state requirements and the fact that the Buyback purchases items rather than selling them, a simple cash-register and/or off-the-shelf Point-of-Sale system is inadequate, resulting in large amounts of hand-written receipts and reports. Tri-CED management also had a strong desire to automate inventory monitoring and the creation of required shipping documents (Bills of Lading).

The solution was development of a custom Point-of-Transaction/Inventory system using MS Access and VBA. The resulting system consists of four modules: a Cashier module, an Inventory/Shipping module, a Management Console, and a Workstation module.

• All modules are programmed in MS Access/VBA.
• Each module is designed to run temporarily as a stand-alone application in the case of network failure.
• Each module interacts with the other modules to provide near real-time reporting on cashier and inventory activity.
• All modules employ user-level security (user-name + password) to control which activities a user may perform.

The Cashier module runs on a dedicated computer, and controls a cash drawer and receipt printer. The cashier enters the customer's materials as line-items - the material type, and the count or weight of each material. The Cashier system computes the subtotal for each line-item from current price-lists, computes the total to be paid to the customer, prints a receipt, and opens the cash drawer. The Cashier module also provides these features:

• Supervisor-authorized price overrides
• Void in-progress or completed transactions
• User lock-out after inactivity to ensure cash drawer security

The Inventory module was designed for stylus input on a tablet handheld computer for real-time data-entry of baled materials.

The Management Console provides these features:

• Centralized updating of price-lists and materials handled.
• Receipt summaries needed for daily accounting.
• Centralized user/password management.
• Scheduling of intervals at which various modules attempt to update each other.
• Database integrity checks.

The Workstation module provides these features:

• Statistical and summary reports on cash paid out.
• Statistical and summary reports on materials shipped (tonnage/material, value, purchasers).
• Near real-time reporting on inventory levels.
• Automatic reminder when inventory reaches minimum level for an outbound shipment.
• Automated generation of Bills of Lading for outbound shipments.

This system has been in use 6 days a week, serving 100 to 200 customers each business day, since it's installation in 2004 without significant problems.

Case History:

The UCSF Division of Infectious Disease was a research facility operated in conjunction with San Francisco General Hospital. Matthew was contracted on a repeating basis over several years to provide a variety of computer support functions. Duties & notable achievements included:

• Create scripts for word-processing and spreadsheet software to automate document production.
• Write applications to automate sending of e-mail through pre-WWW Internet mail systems.
• Convert data to and from dBASE, Paradox, CSV, SAS, Lotus, Quattro and other formats.
• Assist researchers with database and statistical analysis software.
• Install, maintain, upgrade and repair computers and printers.
• Install voice-mail system.

Case History:

Confidentiality agreements prohibit a full Case History for this project.

Case History:

Confidentiality agreements prohibit a full Case History for this project.

Case History:

The 6th International Conference on AIDS was hosted jointly by UC-San Francisco and the City of San Francisco. Like most conferences, the 1990 AIDS Conference began with a small core staff about 12 months in advance of the conference date. Matthew was contracted early in the conference process to act as the conference's technical advisor for database issues, especially regarding the practices of the sub-contractor handling advance registrations and submission of papers for presentation. Matthew's duties and responsibilities to the conference grew rapidly.

Matthew carried out these tasks on behalf of the conference:

• Perform quality assurance tests on databases compiled by subcontractors handling registrations and submissions of papers.
• Generate financial reports from databases compiled by subcontractors.
• Build databases and program data-entry for real-time entry and reporting of scores produced by Review Committee selecting papers for presentation.
• Generate mass-mailings of acceptance/rejection letters to persons submitting papers.
• Integrate registrations database with staff databases into a single database used to print ID badges.
• Maintain security of confidential information in conference databases, especially wiping disk drives of loaned/rented computers.
• Control authorized releases of database mailing lists to various private and public institutions.
• Generate special report files formatted with typesetting directives to automate electronic typesetting of conference books (Abstracts sections, indices to papers).
• Train/supervise other persons using conference databases.
• Arrange for donated and rental computing equipment needed for peak load times; supervised the setup, use, takedown, and return of all rented equipment.
• Advise conference staff on a variety of technical issues.

The 1990 AIDS Conference was an exciting and fast-paced project. During the critical stages of the conference - the Review Committee which meets the week before the conference to select papers for presentation, the creation of the typesetting files for the conference books, and the actual four days of the conference itself - Matthew remained accessible on-site 24 hours a day to ensure that all problems that arose within his area of responsibility were solved quickly.

Case History:

The Community Consortium was a group of public health outreach organizations working with research groups to support each other's activities. This one-time contract was to develop a data-entry program which would store data in a dBASEIII database format but using a stand-alone program that would be more robust than anything that could be developed in dBASE languages. The data-entry was for a double-blind clinical drug trial, therefore data-entry needed to be tightly screened to help ensure maximum accuracy, and also needed to be formatted for transcription from up to 3 paper source documents. After completing a bulletproof data-entry program, Matthew installed it at the client site, and trained all the data-entry operators.

Case History:

UC-Berkeley Extension Services primarily serves the ongoing education needs of adults.

Matthew was engaged repeatedly by the University to provide one-on-one tutoring for students in the Pascal language course, and was retained to teach the course during the final semester it was offered. (The course was dropped due to lack of enrollment; interest in the Pascal language throughout the computer industry had waned significantly.)

While working as instructor, Matthew was responsible for devising the course curricula.

Case History:

Confidentiality agreements prohibit providing a Case History for this project.

Case History:

Confidentiality agreements prohibit providing a Case History for this project.

Case History:

Kaiser Permanente Department of Research engages in ongoing medical research. Matthew performed a variety of consulting and programming services for this department. In particular, he created database designs and data-entry applications for research questionnaires sent to study participants, and for managing mass-mailing lists of patients and study participants.

Matthew also trained Department of Research staff on using the database applications, word processing programs and other computer-related operations.