NeptuneAPI

Introduction

As hard as I try to describe Neptune, there is no better way for me to do so as to provide you with the official description from the Neptune site:

Ananke Neptune is a co-operative education information management tool designed to facilitate the exchange of information between the co-operative education institute, employers, students, academic directors, coordinators, and the university. It is an online system designed to streamline the co-op process for all parties involved, thus reducing redundancies and facilitating communication between the parties.

Nice, Right?

Far from it.

Neptune is plagued with problems, ranging from utterly foolish design and usability choices, to buggy functionalities, and a horrible user interface. The common topic of discussion for technically inclined coop students is Neptune. If there is anything so many students have in common, it is there unconditional hate for this system.

Granted everyone is relieved for not having to go to the coop office and hand in printed copies of resumes, ala old days. But, it is the bad implementation of the system that leaves many wondering, WHAT were the developers of this system thinking? HOW can you get something SO wrong?

After more than a year of complaining, here is what I propose: The NeptuneAPI. No, there is nothing we can do about Neptune, but we can try to enhance the overall user experience, make things less frustrating.

Note that the NeptuneAPI in no way circumvents Neptune's UI. It can be thought of as automatic form filling process, and user site navigation. In no way will this give you access to Neptune's database, or allow you to do otherwise prohibited actions.

The API

NeptuneAPI allows you to connect to Neptune using a valid user name and password, retrieve jobs, and make cover letters based on a template. This is the foundation of what can become a full fledged cleaned up version of Neptune. For more information on how to use it, and its various components, visit the API Reference page.

The Challenge

Having the API at your disposal, I highly encourage you to experiment with it and try to improve the Neptune Experience for fellow students. For starters I have included the code to connect to Neptune, retrieve a given job, and making template based cover letters for your jobs. Here are a few ideas you may want to pursue, be totally free to experiment, but please keep us updated.

Ideas:
• New job notifier
• Job status change notifier
• Interview notifier
• Company list retrieval based on fields the company posted for

So let’s have fun, and show some developers how things are really done.