Remote input feasible for small office?

[CactusWren]

Hi, I'm setting up a small law office with three lawyers and two paralegals. We're considering MS Access to keep track of client information, which will be used to populate legal pleadings, newsletters, etc. The data will be entered by the lawyers and the paralegals.

However, this will be run out of an executive suite with one paralegal and otherwise remote connections. Everyone would need to access and update the database remotely.

On the plus side, we are all familiar with Word and will be doing a lot of mail merge. We have used Access previously (mostly 10+ years ago, though).

On the minus side, it appears that Access is not geared to work "in the cloud" much. I do have some programming skills and have hosting, and have installed MySQL databases before for WordPress, but all at a pretty low level. "Power User" more than programmer, for sure. I do not want to bite off more than I can chew and have to be putting out fires with this thing--it's a law office and we will need it to work fairly smoothly.

Is Access a good solution for this setup?

[CJ_London]

as you say, access is not geared to work in the cloud. In my experience the best option is to use a cloud based terminal server, particularly if you are just starting out as you won't have invested in an office based network. If you all use terminal server you can keep all your documents/spreadsheets etc there as well. Main benefit from an access perspective is that performance is very close to having everything on your local machine and access runs 'as is' you can simply transfer your files to the server, the only change required is linking the front ends back to the back end. Choose a host that is local to you (same country) for best performance.

Another benefit is you are not restricted to windows machines, you can use any OS that supports remote desktop (which is what you use to connect to terminal server)

The alternatives are

* to use something like sql azure as the back end, but that comes at a cost as well, performance is not quite as good and you really need to take into account the need to minimise data traffic.

* develop your website as a front end - not sure that wordpress would cut it though.

* have spare machines in the office that users can connect to using something like teamviewer

Note access does not work with onedrive or similar

[CactusWren]

Thanks for the reply, the terminal server sounds like the best bet. I will research that... is Microsoft Virtual Desktop in this category? And they also have a competing (older) technology called Remote Desktop Servers that seems to be an older variation on the theme. The pricing on the Azure-based MVD looks like you need to make a new database just to figure it out!

[CJ_London]

Azure pricing is difficult!

Not sure about MS virtual desktop - think it uses sharepoint which is a bit like onedrive.

Remote desktop is standard to windows and is the means by which you connect to a remote server - I guest the could be a remote desktop server but not an area I have much knowledge on

[CactusWren]

Another quick question: Is it feasible to put the database on a particular desktop and have the users use front-ends loaded on their own desktops, using the Remote Desktop Connection only when accessing/updating the database?

[CJ_London]

don't know too much about that but think a) the 'office' desktop would need windows professional to allow remote access in (click on the windows icon and type 'remote desktop'), b) you need very fast broadband and c) you might find only one user can connect at a time (it's a desktop machine, not a server). Overall could be slow to unworkably slow.

It all depends on how often users need to access the database. If this is business critical, you need to grasp the nettle and do it properly

[NoellaG]

You don't need Azure SQL. A (free!) version of SQL express can be installed on the remote server. After all, a SQL server is designed to run on a remote server. To manage it you can install SSMS locally, and to connect to it you need to install ODBC for SQL server on the local machines. SQL express comes these days with reporting sertvices, so you don't even need to make the reports in Access, create them in SSRS and you can connect to your reports using the web. Only for the input forms you'll need Access or a web app you can design in PHP or another web design software .