Redat-Woreda Appointment Scheduler

Redat-Woreda: Revolutionizing Ethiopian Civic Appointments. As project lead and primary full-stack developer for Redat-Woreda, our senior capstone project, I spearheaded the creation of a digital appointment scheduling system designed to modernize a critical Ethiopian government service. This project addressed the real-world challenge of inefficient paper-based processes within a tight academic delivery timeline, demanding innovative solutions from our team. The Domain: Bridging the Digital Divide. A 'woreda' is an administrative district in Ethiopia, akin to a county or municipality. Woreda offices handle essential citizen services like ID processing and permit applications, traditionally managed through a cumbersome paper-based appointment system. A breakdown in this scheduling process, due to manual errors or lost paperwork, can cause significant delays and hardship for citizens needing these vital documents. Scheduling Core: Conflict-Aware Appointment Creation. At the heart of Redat-Woreda is a robust conflict-aware appointment creation mechanism. We leveraged MongoDB and Mongoose to define a data model that inherently prevents double-bookings. The Mongoose schema enforces uniqueness on a combination of the assigned staff member, start time, and end time, ensuring that no two appointments can occupy the same slot for a given staff member. const mongoose = require('mongoose');

Redat-Woreda Appointment Scheduler

The Context

Imagine spending hours in line at a Woreda office, a local administrative district in Ethiopia, only to find that the permit or ID you need requires another visit due to a disorganized paper-based scheduling system. This friction hinders access to essential government services. Redat-Woreda aimed to digitize this process, replacing cumbersome manual systems with an efficient online appointment scheduler.

The Leadership

As Project Lead, Full-Stack Developer, and Scrum Master, I navigated a complex set of responsibilities. The Project Lead role demanded strategic vision and stakeholder communication, while the Full-Stack Developer role required deep dives into implementation across the MERN stack. Simultaneously, as Scrum Master, I facilitated agile processes, removed impediments, and ensured team velocity. This tripartite role necessitated constant context switching; I personally owned the architectural decisions and the final deployment strategy, while delegating specific feature development and testing responsibilities to the team based on their strengths and our sprint goals.

Delivering a functional full-stack application within an academic semester's constraints required rigorous prioritization. We focused on core features: secure user authentication, appointment booking with real-time slot availability, and a basic administrative dashboard for managing schedules. Features such as advanced reporting, automated notifications, and granular permissioning were deferred to a potential Phase 2, ensuring we could deliver a polished MVP.

💡 Prioritization was key; we defined an MVP that addressed the core user need of appointment scheduling, deferring non-essential features to manage scope effectively within the academic timeline.

The Technical Core

Ensuring accurate appointment scheduling required robust conflict detection. While a unique index on resource and time slots could prevent duplicate saves at the database level, a proactive query-time check provides a superior user experience. This allows us to intercept potential conflicts and deliver clear feedback to the user *before* a database constraint violation occurs. The following function illustrates this check:

async function isSlotAvailable(resourceId, startTime, endTime) {
  const conflictingAppointment = await Appointment.findOne({
    resource: resourceId,
    $or: [
      { startTime: { $lt: endTime, $gt: startTime } },
      { endTime: { $gt: startTime, $lt: endTime } },
      { startTime: { $lte: startTime }, endTime: { $gte: endTime } }
    ]
  });
  return !conflictingAppointment;
}

For real-time updates on appointment availability and queue status, we implemented WebSockets. This approach offers persistent, bidirectional communication, minimizing latency and providing an immediate user experience as slots fill or become available. Rejecting polling was a strategic decision; constant client-side requests would have imposed a significant load on our Node.js server and introduced delays, negatively impacting the perceived responsiveness of the system, especially during peak demand.

💡 WebSockets were chosen over polling to ensure low-latency, real-time updates for appointment availability, enhancing the user experience and reducing server overhead.

What I'd Do Differently

With a production timeline, we would invest more heavily in comprehensive end-to-end testing and more sophisticated error handling strategies.

WoredaConnect represents a focused effort to apply modern web technologies to a tangible civic problem, demonstrating both leadership adaptability and core MERN stack proficiency within the defined scope of a senior capstone project.