All our lockers are belong to someone?
January 28, 2015 6:16 AM Subscribe
We have a couple of hundred storage spaces in our collective workshop, and they're managed on paper, in a folder, on a shelf, at the office. I'd like to digitalise it and add a working waiting list. O hive, bestow your wisdom and deliver us from Excel!
We have 400+ members and at least as many storage spaces of different sizes spread out over the workshops. Space is at a premium so people sign up on a waiting list when they join, but since the administration of this is on paper it quickly disintegrates into messy notes and scribbles.
Now, I could just make a spreadsheet and have it done with, but since I'm digitalising this I might as well opt for something which would allow some more functionality - same person waiting for a specific kind of storage, or multiple spaces, etc - and at the same time minimising the inevitable human error in the process. Any suggestions for this?
I'm also in the process of trying out CiviCRM (after my previous question here) and perhaps there's some nifty way of managing this within that - in that case I'll just hold off on digitalising it until I got CiviCRM up and running. If anyone can yay/nay this option I'd appreciate it.
We have 400+ members and at least as many storage spaces of different sizes spread out over the workshops. Space is at a premium so people sign up on a waiting list when they join, but since the administration of this is on paper it quickly disintegrates into messy notes and scribbles.
Now, I could just make a spreadsheet and have it done with, but since I'm digitalising this I might as well opt for something which would allow some more functionality - same person waiting for a specific kind of storage, or multiple spaces, etc - and at the same time minimising the inevitable human error in the process. Any suggestions for this?
I'm also in the process of trying out CiviCRM (after my previous question here) and perhaps there's some nifty way of managing this within that - in that case I'll just hold off on digitalising it until I got CiviCRM up and running. If anyone can yay/nay this option I'd appreciate it.
I'd roll your own custom solution with FileMaker. It's easy to learn, and you have a lot of configuration options for it. You can log into your custom database with a filemaker client or a web browser, and you can even save your database as a compiled executable you can distribute to other people. (Mac or PC platform) It's some of the easiest, quickest custom app development you'll ever see. Don't mess around with trying to adapt existing solutions to your exact scenario, create something perfectly suited to your exact scenario.
I do web-app type work at my day job and on a freelance basis - if you're interested in someone building a solution for you, feel free to get in touch, but quite honestly you could probably do it yourself in a few days and FileMaker is a great skill to have as it's adaptable to so many things.
posted by signsofrain at 6:55 AM on January 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I do web-app type work at my day job and on a freelance basis - if you're interested in someone building a solution for you, feel free to get in touch, but quite honestly you could probably do it yourself in a few days and FileMaker is a great skill to have as it's adaptable to so many things.
posted by signsofrain at 6:55 AM on January 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
You already know Excel, and you don't need concurrent access. I'd stick with that.
posted by devnull at 7:27 AM on January 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by devnull at 7:27 AM on January 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks for the suggestions. I've considered Filemaker but I've never been quite happy with the apps I've used based on it - might give it another look, but mightn't I as well go with one of the Hypercard clones, like Supercard or Livecode maybe? (Also, we're a non-profit, so Livecode has "free" going for it.)
I'm not sure if Civicrm has an issue tracker, but that might not be a fit since I don't know if trackers have conditioned waiting lists, or if that function could be shoehorned in. ("Joe is next on the waiting list for a medium shelf either on level 4 or 5 - whenever one becomes available, flag that") The upside to using Civicrm would be that it would integrate with the membership database, and users could see what storage they have or sign up on a list themselves, rather than go through the office.
As for Excel - I don't really know know it, but rather "know-ish" it. It's a tool I ought to learn though, so if it's a fit this could be an opportunity to do so.
posted by monocultured at 7:40 AM on January 28, 2015
I'm not sure if Civicrm has an issue tracker, but that might not be a fit since I don't know if trackers have conditioned waiting lists, or if that function could be shoehorned in. ("Joe is next on the waiting list for a medium shelf either on level 4 or 5 - whenever one becomes available, flag that") The upside to using Civicrm would be that it would integrate with the membership database, and users could see what storage they have or sign up on a list themselves, rather than go through the office.
As for Excel - I don't really know know it, but rather "know-ish" it. It's a tool I ought to learn though, so if it's a fit this could be an opportunity to do so.
posted by monocultured at 7:40 AM on January 28, 2015
If you have other Office applications in addition to Excel there are real estate and asset tracking Access database templates you could download. Maybe one of those could be tweaked to do what you want.
In my experience it's much more difficult to screw things up and loose things with actual database software than using a spreadsheet as one. I know they're much more complicated (or they can be), but it's another skill for the resume.
posted by sevenless at 8:33 AM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
In my experience it's much more difficult to screw things up and loose things with actual database software than using a spreadsheet as one. I know they're much more complicated (or they can be), but it's another skill for the resume.
posted by sevenless at 8:33 AM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Joe is next on the waiting list for a medium shelf either on level 4 or 5 - whenever one becomes available, flag that
If you're an NGO looking for a free or near-free solution it seems unlikely to me that you're going to find something pre-packaged that does anywhere near what you want and also has some kind of embedded scripting engine and event model that would let you write conditional rules like this.
(And actually, even if you had a fairly sizeable budget, I would still kinda expect the outcome to be that you'd end up hiring someone to write something from scratch or adapt a more general software package to your needs. But I have to admit that I'm not super-familiar with the current market for point-of-sale software, which it seems this would probably fall under.)
posted by XMLicious at 12:42 PM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
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