Article 3: Building a Team Assignment Application with Grid Formatting and Shuffling

Introduction

Now that we’ve built the GridFormatter and Shuffler utilities, it’s time to put them together in a real-world application. In this article, we’ll create a Team Assignment Application that:

1. Randomizes a list of employees into teams.
2. Displays the employee list and team assignments in a clean, grid-based format.

By the end of this article, you’ll:

• Understand how to integrate reusable utilities.
• Build a practical application with dynamic features.

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Key Concepts

1. Integration of Utilities:

   • Combine the GridFormatter and Shuffler to solve a real-world problem.

2. Dynamic Team Assignment:

   • Randomize a list of employees and split them into teams of a specified size.

3. Modularity:

   • Leverage reusable components (GridFormatter and Shuffler) for clean and maintainable code.

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Step-by-Step Implementation

Step 1: Setup the Application

Start by setting up the project and referencing the Utilities namespace, which includes the GridFormatter and Shuffler utilities created in the previous articles.

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Step 2: Implement the Team Assignment Application

Here’s the full implementation:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Utilities;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        // Step 1: Input employee names
        var employees = new List<string>
        {
            "Alice", "Bob", "Charlie", "Diana", "Eve", "Frank", "Grace", "Hank", "Ivy", "Jack"
        };

        Console.WriteLine("Original Employee List:");
        PrintGrid(employees, 40, 4);

        // Step 2: Shuffle employees for random team assignments
        var shuffledEmployees = employees.Shuffle().ToList();

        Console.WriteLine("\nShuffled Employee List:");
        PrintGrid(shuffledEmployees, 40, 4);

        // Step 3: Assign teams and display them
        Console.WriteLine("\nTeam Assignments:");
        AssignTeams(shuffledEmployees, 3);
    }

    static void PrintGrid(IEnumerable<string> data, int totalWidth, int gapWidth)
    {
        // Use the GridFormatter to display the data in a grid format
        var formatter = new GridFormatter<string>(data);
        foreach (var row in formatter.FormatGrid(totalWidth, gapWidth))
        {
            Console.WriteLine(row);
        }
    }

    static void AssignTeams(List<string> employees, int teamSize)
    {
        int teamCount = (int)Math.Ceiling((double)employees.Count / teamSize);

        for (int i = 0; i < teamCount; i++)
        {
            // Take the next batch of employees for the current team
            var team = employees.Skip(i * teamSize).Take(teamSize);
            Console.WriteLine($"Team {i + 1}: {string.Join(", ", team)}");
        }
    }
}

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Step 3: Run the Application

Input:

Employees: Alice, Bob, Charlie, Diana, Eve, Frank, Grace, Hank, Ivy, Jack
Team Size: 3

Output:

Original Employee List:
Alice      Bob        Charlie    Diana     
Eve        Frank      Grace      Hank      
Ivy        Jack                           

Shuffled Employee List:
Frank      Diana      Eve        Hank      
Grace      Jack       Charlie    Alice     
Ivy        Bob                           

Team Assignments:
Team 1: Frank, Diana, Eve
Team 2: Hank, Grace, Jack
Team 3: Charlie, Alice, Ivy
Team 4: Bob

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How It Works

1. Randomizing Employee List:

   • The Shuffler utility randomizes the employee list, ensuring fair and unbiased team assignments.

2. Formatting with GridFormatter:

   • The GridFormatter displays the original and shuffled lists in a neat grid for better readability.

3. Dynamic Team Assignment:

   • Employees are split into teams based on the specified team size, with the remaining employees assigned to the last team.

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Takeaways

1. Integration of Reusable Utilities:

   • By combining the GridFormatter and Shuffler, we’ve built a modular and dynamic solution.

2. Real-World Application:

   • This example demonstrates how to use reusable components to solve practical problems.

3. Flexibility:

   • The solution is adaptable to different datasets, widths, and team sizes.

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What’s Next?

Now that you’ve built the Team Assignment Application, here are some ideas to extend the project:

1. Export Team Assignments:
   • Save the results to a CSV or text file.
2. Add Validation:
   • Handle edge cases, such as empty employee lists or invalid team sizes.
3. Interactive Input:
   • Allow users to input employee names and team sizes dynamically.