N
neauxway
Hi all,
I have taken on an unofficial project at work. I work for a service company
where the techs (I) write tickets and get them signed by the customer onsite.
Over time the techs have designed electronic tickets and timesheets in excel.
Now the company has given us printers and want all tickets electronic and
printed onsite. They also want these tickets to fill in the timesheets
automatically. We apparently do not have an official dept for doing these
things.
My capabilities: I have had classes and done some programming in Ada and
basic. Pretty much can get around designing mid range difficulty databases
and spreadsheets. Pretty much can solve most problems that can be done with
formulas on my own. Can somewhat follow a VB program and edit it for my
purpose if it is already close.
What I am having difficulties right now with is deciding how to approach this,
because the spreadsheets are for the most part done. We do not always have
access to the company intranet from the customer’s site and when we do it is
mostly over satellite. So one issue would be to update the main database when
at the shop or on high-speed connection.
One option I was thinking about would to use excel on the techs computers and
have a button or someway to upload the data from the spreadsheet to the main
database. And be able to retrieve data. The timesheets would be retrieve data
mostly except for entering sick, holiday or vacation time which would not be
on a ticket. This would keep the techs from having to have a copy of the
database on their laptop, also hopefully would keep bandwidth usage down. I
have no real idea how to approach this but it would make things simple for
the tech because they could use excel sheet to calculate their pay like they
currently do and they would use the same forms.
Another is to do everything in Access and have copies of the database on all
the computers. But we may only want the techs to have access to tickets they
create and only their timesheets. Is there a way to have only the techs own
data on his laptop and upload changes to the main database? Without syncing
the entire database.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks
Rick.
I have taken on an unofficial project at work. I work for a service company
where the techs (I) write tickets and get them signed by the customer onsite.
Over time the techs have designed electronic tickets and timesheets in excel.
Now the company has given us printers and want all tickets electronic and
printed onsite. They also want these tickets to fill in the timesheets
automatically. We apparently do not have an official dept for doing these
things.
My capabilities: I have had classes and done some programming in Ada and
basic. Pretty much can get around designing mid range difficulty databases
and spreadsheets. Pretty much can solve most problems that can be done with
formulas on my own. Can somewhat follow a VB program and edit it for my
purpose if it is already close.
What I am having difficulties right now with is deciding how to approach this,
because the spreadsheets are for the most part done. We do not always have
access to the company intranet from the customer’s site and when we do it is
mostly over satellite. So one issue would be to update the main database when
at the shop or on high-speed connection.
One option I was thinking about would to use excel on the techs computers and
have a button or someway to upload the data from the spreadsheet to the main
database. And be able to retrieve data. The timesheets would be retrieve data
mostly except for entering sick, holiday or vacation time which would not be
on a ticket. This would keep the techs from having to have a copy of the
database on their laptop, also hopefully would keep bandwidth usage down. I
have no real idea how to approach this but it would make things simple for
the tech because they could use excel sheet to calculate their pay like they
currently do and they would use the same forms.
Another is to do everything in Access and have copies of the database on all
the computers. But we may only want the techs to have access to tickets they
create and only their timesheets. Is there a way to have only the techs own
data on his laptop and upload changes to the main database? Without syncing
the entire database.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks
Rick.