Fit 2 Win
The Challenge
Keeping physically fit is an important component of our armed forces ability to maintain national security. Which is why The Pacific Air Forces' (PACAF) Fit to Win program was developed. An incentive program, it rewards participants for reaching various levels of fitness in a number of different activities. Participants record distance or time they spent running, swimming of lifting weights on worksheets distributed at the gym and turn in these worksheets for prizes when they reached certain fitness milestones. Several months after the program's inception, the PACAF Services directorate, who manages the program, decided it needed a better way for recording the enormous number of participants in the program and the wide variety of data being gathered about them for tracking and award distribution.
The Solution
Borrowing from the name of the program itself, CTA Development adopted the name Fit 2 Win for its application. CTA Development realized early on that by enhancing accessibility and manageability, the appeal of the program would improve for participants and administrators alike. To address this, CTA Development, Microsoft Consulting Services and the PACAF Systems Development Flight team decided upon a dynamic web-based system. The web based system would add portability to the program for participants and trainers who could now enter their activity data from the gym, office or home via the Internet.
To ensure the safety and security of the information data was stored in a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database where it could be retrieved by the program's directors and used to approve awards and issue prizes. Taking advantage of ASP.NET's support for object-oriented programming, CTA Development created a number of base classes for the application that could be easily changed or expanded as the customer refined their requirements for the application.
To compensate for users web browser preferences, it was important that Fit 2 Win be able to run different versions on different browsers while maintaining the same functionality and appearance. CTA Development's use of Visual Studio .NET Web Controls extensively throughout the application made problem easily accommodated. Fit 2 Win was able to identify a user's web browser and render itself based on the browser's limitations. This saved the developers the significant time and effort associated with coding an application to support multiple browsers.
Thanks to Visual Studio .NET's object-oriented support and native Web Controls, CTA Development was able to deliver a deployable solution in three weeks. They were able to increase the functionality, the accessibility and the manageability of the program and do so on a tight schedule.
Solution Profile
Fit 2 Win is a web-based application The Pacific Air Force Command (PACAF) that allows the participants of a fitness incentive program to record their activity via the Web.
Line of Business
The challenge was to develop a system that allowed multiple users to track and maintain.
Solution Benefits
- Automation of the program's data entry process
- On-line storage of the program's data
- Rapid application development
Software and Services
Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Microsoft Visual Studio.NET
Microsoft Consulting Services
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