Kim’s Flowers – A Project to Teach Data Modeling, Access and Great Plains

This page was created to distribute information about Kim’s Flowers, an integrated project that I use in my AIS course. The project includes data modeling, Access and information process design and transaction processing in Great Plains. Any faculty member who wants to use these materials is free to do so if they:

  1. distribute them free to students.
  2. do not attempt to publish all or part of them in their original, or a modified form and
  3. let me know how you used them and send me a copy of any expanded/modified projects you created. My e-mail address is skovar@ksu.edu.

This project was published as part of the American Accounting Association Information Systems Section Compendium of Classroom Cases, Volume 1, Issue 1.  To see the published version, go to the C3 Web page or get the Word version here.  I also presented an earlier paper describing the project at the AIS Educator Conference in August 2001.

The items linked below are the most recent versions of the individual components of the project, including the introduction paper (from the C3 publication and AIS Educator Conference), handouts and assignments.  Section letters correspond to sections in the original C3 publication.

Solutions can be found on a separate page.  You must e-mail me to obtain the user ID and password necessary to obtain the solutions files.

Also linked below are (1) another version of the Great Plains Kim’s Flowers project that I am currently using in my own classes to better cover systems integration, as well as a version of this used by Marianne Bradford in her AIS class, (2) an integrated data modeling assignment that was not in the C3 publication, (3) several other handouts, (4) data files and instructions for using the Great Plains portion of the project and (5) links to zipped files containing all of the materials and solutions.

There are lots more assignments, projects and handouts related to my approach to database modeling on my course Web page.

These projects were designed to be used independently.  Therefore, if you are interested in only the Access or Great Plains portion, you can use them separately.  The only thing you may want to do is print the company descriptions for the Revenue and Expenditure processes from the data modeling assignments for students.  In particular, you can omit the Conversion and Integration/Reengineering data modeling assignments without any lost coverage – neither Access nor Great Plains touches on these two cycles.

Introduction to the Project (from the C3 publication)
Entire C3 publication in Word format (except for solutions)
Introduction to the Project (from AIS Educator Conference)

Section A               Instructions for Logical Modeling of Data and Information Processes

Section B               Instructions for Converting the Logical Data Model to a Physical Model

Section C               Instructions for Database Normalization

Section D               Kim’s Flowers Revenue Cycle Assignment

Section E                Kim’s Flowers Revenue Cycle Solution (see solutions page)

Section F                Kim’s Flowers Expenditure Cycle Assignment

Section G               Kim’s Flowers Expenditure Cycle Solution (see solutions page)

Section H               Kim’s Flowers Conversion Cycle Assignment

Section I                 Kim’s Flowers Conversion Cycle Solution (see solutions page)
                              Kim’s Flowers Integration and Reengineering Assignment

                              Kim’s Flowers Integrated Solution (see solutions page)

Section J                Implementing the Physical Database Model with Microsoft Access:  Practice

Section K               Implementing the Physical Database Model with Microsoft Access:  Graded Project

Section L                Implementing the Physical Database Model with Microsoft Access:  Solution (see solutions page)

                              Access FAQ

                              Information for Obtaining and Using the Great Plains Software

Section M              Great Plains Information Process Design Project

Section N               Great Plains Information Process Design Project Solution (see solutions page)

Section O               Great Plains Transaction Processing Assignment

Section P                Great Plains Transaction Processing Assignment Solution (see solutions page)

Section Q               Introduction to Microsoft Great Plains  
                              Introduction to Microsoft Great Plains Solution (see solutions page)

Section R               Installing Microsoft Great Plains

Section S                Tips for Using GreatPlains
                              Zipped Data file for Great Plains Version 7.5 (c-tree database)

                              Great Plains Shortened Assignment (contains more information process integration; shorter)
                              Great Plains Shortened Assignment Answer Sheet
                              Marianne Bradford’s version of the Shortened Assignment (close to mine, but uses different questions)
                              Marianne Bradford’s version of the Shortened Assignment Answer Sheet (this was designed more for an introductory AIS course)

                              Zipped Data file for the Shortened Assignment for Great Plains Version 7.5 (c-tree database)

 

Zipped file containing all of the documents listed above and this index.htm file
Zipped file containing all of the solutions  (see solutions page)

Great Plains Information

To use the Great Plains portion of this project, the first thing you must do is join the Microsoft Business Solutions Academic Alliance.  The Alliance furnishes you with the software and an exceptional tech support plan free of charge.  Read more about the Alliance at http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/Educators/default.mspx

Next, if you want to use the project in a lab, do a single-user install of Great Plains standard version 7.5 with the c-tree database on all of the machines.  To make the software work, students must have read/write access to the Dynamics directory on the hard drive of the computers.  You can give the network administrator the Installing Microsoft Great Plains instructions and your registration keys (received with the software) and tell them to complete the section starting on page 1 titled “Installing Great Plains on Your Home Computer” through the top of page 3 where they create a company (they do not need to create user ID’s, unless you want to create a separate one on the lab computers for each of your students, which is a lot of work, but does help with cheating, instructions are provided at the end of this discussion).  You can also give your network administrator the zipped data file and have them put a copy on the computers using the steps that start on page 3 under the heading “Initializing Data: Do this the First Time You Work with the Project”.  However, I just have students complete this step.  Having students create their own data makes sure that the student definitely gets a blank copy, rather than someone else’s partially completed one.

Then, all you will have to do to make these instructions work for you is make sure machines have WinZip and change the link to the zipped data file in the instructions so that you link to wherever you have stored the file.  If you want students to be able to install the software at home, you must make copies of the CD for students and give students your registration keys.

NOTE:  This project uses the EAN account framework for its data files.  This means that when Great Plains is set up, a maximum account length of 15 and 3 equal length account segments are used (everything else is defaulted).  If you have already set up Great Plains with a different account framework, you will have to reinstall Great Plains using my directions to use this project.

USER IDs:  I am a bit lazy.  I just have students use the default LESSONUSER1 login ID when working in the lab.  However, if you would like for all student printouts to have their names or a unique user ID, you can create users for each student (some people use generic ones like USER1 etc. and assign them to students) on the lab machines.  The instructions for creating a user and giving the user access to a company are on page 3 of the installation instructions as part of the section “Installing Great Plains on Your Home Computer”.  If you install on one machine and then use a ghosting software to install on the remaining machines, this is not that time consuming.  This gets a little tricky if students work at home and in the lab – they must create the user ID at home, and changes to user information in one place (i.e. changing a password) do not carry over with their data to the other location (all the user and password information is stored as part of the systems files, not the company data and is not transferred when students use the instructions to transfer their data).