Data Capture app

[Homegrownandy]

I'm currently looking into how we can capture data more effectively. Ideally I would like my colleagues to use a phone app to enter data when they are out of the office which can then be uploaded to the database. We currently have a paper based data capture process.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on how I should go about this?

cheers, Andy

[NTC]

phones so far don't have a lot of memory and so in terms of local data entry and storage you might want to consider a tablet

but a phone to a web site where the web site holds the data would work

in either case - Access is inherently capable of importing structured data - emphasis on structured - like an excel sheet.... so you could use a phone or tablet to any excel sheet and I believe that google docs includes a copy cat of excel sheet.... these could then be imported easily into your Access database

[ItsMe]

Phone apps can be a pain. Either way, I don't see Access playing a role in collecting or storing data from the field. In the United States, it can be difficult to get a phone application onto multiple phones. You might need three different accounts (Google, Apple, Windows Phone) to load and run your applications on multiple phones. You would need to compile your application as three different apps, one for each operating system.

Alternatively, you could create a single web application and use different phones' web browsers to open and run your application.

As described by NTC, you might be able to use spreadsheets as a user interface to store data locally on a phone. I believe office is available for all platforms now. Another way may be to use Adobe Acrobat to create forms. A PDF file can be created in a way that the fields within use XML for Import/Export procedures.

[Homegrownandy]

Thanks for the replies. My old boss once said to me, " you are the least technical technical person I know". I don't use smart phones a lot, its only within the last year I got one.

So you think I can use a pdf on a phone to do what I want? That would be perfect for me. A website isn't an option because often internet wont be available to the engineers here. A spreadsheet would also be a nice option providing it does what I need.

[NTC]

PDF is not importable by a database as it behaves like an image. Stick with excel.

[Homegrownandy]

Alright. Thanks.

[ItsMe]

...So you think I can use a pdf on a phone to do what I want? That would be perfect for me...

It is possible to collect data within a PDF and have the PDF communicate the user input to a database via a predefined XML schema. This is not a small task and would require Adobe Acrobat Pro. It is a similar process to programming an Excel spreadsheet to spit out XML schema. A quick google search ... did not review the content.
https://support.office.com/en-us/art...6-86faa249ed7f

http://www.mrexcel.com/articles/using-xml-in-excel.php

and for PDF ... although I believe there may be an easier approach using a submit email
https://answers.acrobatusers.com/Exp...ML-q25429.aspx

[Homegrownandy]

has anyone here used excel like this to capture data 'on site'?
Its me - If you were faced with the problem of capturing data how would you go about resolving it? I'm curious as to which solution you would lean towards.

[ItsMe]

I would lean towards a web app using ASP and dot net. I would probably use Microsoft Azure as a host for the Web App and store the data on Azure SQL Database. The big problem will be synchronization. You could open up an endpoint to your on-premises database but I would probably recommend Azure to act as a sort of DMZ. You would have to analyze the business rules to come up with a budget and determine if you need bidirectional synchronization or you are dealing with a simple append process or something in the middle.

If the submission of a PDF form will work, it is likely your business rules fit the simple append process.