Auction Management System

Rotary Club International
Edmonton, Alberta Canada

Rotary International is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 31,000 Rotary clubs located in 166 countries.

As a volunteer service organization, Rotary clubs throughout the world manage all kinds of fund-raising activities and events. One club in particular, the Edmonton Riverton Rotary in Alberta, Canada, sponsors a silent auction as part of this effort. Rotary members solicit donations from supporting businesses, and then auction them off to raise funds for their organization.

With traditional development approaches, applications like this one aren't feasible. Iron Speed Designer reduces the time and cost associated with these applications, and enables a whole new generation of web applications to be conceived, implemented, and deployed.

The Miles Gibson story

Miles Gibson is an active member of this club and is also the founder of Milestone Consulting. As a Microsoft Certified Partner since 1998, Milestone Consulting uses the latest Microsoft products to provide solutions that meet the growing demands of its customers.

When Miles discovered Iron Speed Designer, he thought he could use it to build an application to support his club's silent auction effort. After just a few days, Miles volunteer effort resulted in a custom application to support Rotary Club's annual silent auction. Miles explains, "I designed it as an alternative to the existing Microsoft Access/SQL Server application so that other members of the team could more easily interact and manage the data entry and reporting duties."

Miles divided the project into two phases. During the first phase, Miles implemented access control using Iron Speed Designer's role-based security features. Now complete, team members, and only team members, have access to the application. "I wanted team members to be able to easily access the database, enter and update information to a central database", Miles explains. Currently deployed, the Phase One system allows silent auction volunteers to manage the data in the system, locate specific records, update the data, and generate reports.

The second phase, to be completed later in 2004, will extend the system to include a public presentation for anonymous browsing of available silent auction items. Beyond this, Miles hopes to add even more features. "We would also like to allow Rotarian members to update donor and donation item information themselves."

Miles got the Phase One application working in a single day. "It took about a day initially to refine the Microsoft SQL Server database and to generate a working application. From there it was a matter of testing through and setting up a production environment."

What's next?

Looking ahead, Miles has big plans for the system. "I have every intention of using Iron Speed Designer again, this time with many more enhancements. These enhancements will include finishing the Crystal Reports extension, adding third-party tree-view and menu controls for ease of use, separating out administrative functionality, and creating a public viewing and informational section. We'll also allow users to create new silent auctions, manage tables, etc."

About the developer

Miles Gibson
Consultant and Principal of Milestone Consulting

Miles is the founder of Milestone Consulting and has been providing his clients with the right solutions for over 22 years. He has been a Microsoft Certified Partner since 1998, and was the first person to offer formal Iron Speed Designer training. Miles continues to contribute to the Iron Speed community as an Iron Speed MVP.