On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Roy Britten <roy.brit...@gmail.com> wrote:
> TL;DR: looking for recommendations for Open Source software that fills > a specific gap and/or someone to help implement a paid desktop > database / data management project. > > A Papanui-based organisation runs (among other things) school holiday > programmes for kids. Currently the relevant info is kept in (you > guessed it) spreadsheets. They estimate that they're spending ~$6k-$8k > annually in staff time keeping their data up to date. (Every term > parents fill out an info form, which someone has to enter in, etc. > Here is your first point of failure, and your biggest time waster. Whatever solution you adopt for the data storage, the parent should be able to enter this information direct to the system. Whether that is on their own browser at home, a browser sitting in the corner of the organisation's office, or some other way, it will eliminate the dual handling, and the errors inherent in someone else transposing it into the "system". If it needs to be verified by a signature (and stuff like "Johnny is permitted to go sailing|rock climbing|watch M Rated DVDs" probably wants permanent verification), it can be printed out at the end of entry, signed, and stored in a filing cabinet (or better still scanned and attached to the database). > Ideal would be to print last term's details and only enter any > changes, e.g.) > A spreadsheet is capable of producing reports, and if there are only a few changes for kid X then a cut and paste from last term's spreadsheet line to this term's is pretty damn simple, and not really time consuming at all. We all know spreadsheets are not databases, despite the fact many people use them as such, but is their existing solution just being badly managed? I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would not just print out a report from last term and say "change anything that needs updating and sign it" - then do a c&p and make any necessary changes. > > They have a budget to implement a "proper" solution for tracking kids' > details. They've been quoted five-figure sums for American > off-the-shelf solutions which seems a bit much. > > I reckon this list is a good place to discuss suitable OS/Linux > solutions. Go! I'll start with: can OpenOffice (or LibreOffice, or > whatever) be customised up to support this sort of thing? > > Open/Libre have database hooks - there is a menu for LibreOffice Base in my Linux Mint system. However I would have thought a LAMP based system would be a possible answer. There are libraries for producing pdf reports from databases or other data, reportlab for example. Whether the costs of setting something like that up and maintaining it is any less than 5 figures, I don't know. > [Please contact me _off_list_ if you feel you have the professional > chops (technical ability, requirements-gathering and customer-facing > skills, usability knowledge) to implement something like this.] > > Cheers, > Roy. > _______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list > Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz > http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users >
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