Access Services is Microsoft's answer to running MS Access applications on the web, in Sharepoint. The obvious advantage is that a user with login credentials can access their data from any web browser. I have completed and published my first MS Access Services project. It has been tested on an iphone/ipad and it runs just like on a PC (not quite as much fun on an iphone because of the screen size but great to have the option in a pinch). I don't know about you but I can think of lots of business needs that this might fill. Microsoft Access is the most widely used desktop database system in the world. Sharepoint is the perfect intranet environment and adding Access Services extends that usefulness.
Challenges that had to be overcome:
1) Office 2010 was the first release of Access Services so finding a lot of good examples and forum support is a challenge. A Google search on any MS Access features or questions returns beaucoup of resources - such is not yet the case with Access Services. Microsoft recommends http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/Access-Services-Web-Data-f74.html and I have found others like http://accessexperts.net/blog/category/access-web-database, http://channel9.msdn.com and http://dmoffat.wordpress.com. Though there are many that try to offer support, most prefice their comments with "I haven't tried this yet, but ..." It's a start, we are all learning and any effort these non-paid folks make to help should definately be appreciated. I've found posts by Albert Kallal are very comprehensive and informative.
2) I heard a lot of buzz about the fact that you must either have Sharepoint hosted in house of pay for the hosting service. Some complained that it was too expensive. In my opinion, this is not an issue. Any serious business application on the web must be securely hosted somewhere and Sharepoint offers that security and flexibility at a reasonable price for businesses. For $49/month accesshosting.com offers 5 users and handles our needs. That is not concurrent users, concurrent users aren't limited. That 5 users is user logins. So I configured administrator, contributor and viewer users with 3 user logins to spare. Accesshosting includes a daily backup in the hosting price but will only restore back one day. This is not an adequate backup/restore flexibility for most businesses but you can upgrade backup/restore options or plan your own backup.
2) Optimizing the design for speed. As we are running this in a web browser with multiple and varied internet speeds, making it as efficient as possible is important to it being a useable tool. My project contained about 14,000 records in the largest table and initially was too slow to load. The solution was to open the main page with a subset of the data (A-C for example) and offer the user a box to search for the record(s) they want and then query the next small subset of data. Doing this in all forms made a huge different in speed.
3) Offering multiple report formats and filtering options. I have 10 reports including formatted labels, each report/label has 3 or more filtering options. I host with Accesshosting.com and they include SQL Reporting Services in the hosting. In this way, my users are able to generate their reports and print or export in multiple formats including PDF, Excel, CSV and more. Does the trick.
I'm excited about the results and looking for my next project!
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, July 4, 2010
MS Access 2010 - Sharepoint Hosting
I have taken the giant step of upgradng to Microsoft Office 2010 and I love it. I did not upgrade to 2007 because I chose to wait for the second iteration of this major upgrade. For MS Access 2010, the major improvement and, in my opinion, move in the right direction, is the new Access Services that makes it possible to develop an application totally for the web and hosted on a MS Sharepoint server. Data is moving to the web, we know it and if we are smart, we will get ready to support it.
Here's how it works: In Access the developer must select "Web Database" option when starting the project. All forms, reports, Queries and events are developed with web compatibility. New macro functionality has been added to extend the capabilities. Access 2010 allows forms and reports to be published to web sites using what is called "access web services" that runs on Sharepoint software. These web based forms and reports run in any standard browser. Before publishing your project to the Sharepoint server, it is checked for compatibility and errors reported.
Many have voiced the concern that having to run in Sharepoint creates an expense and complication that will impede this usefulness. Honestly, I had this concern at first but here's what I decided: Any URL will have to be hosted somewhere and security, user-access, multi-user conflicts in tables, etc., will need to be handled somehow. Sharepoint does it effortlessly to the developer and there are many reasonably-priced hosting services out there. You can find 30-day free trials to host and demo sites to customers if needed as well. I have used www.accesshosting.com for such a demo and been happy.
Here's how it works: In Access the developer must select "Web Database" option when starting the project. All forms, reports, Queries and events are developed with web compatibility. New macro functionality has been added to extend the capabilities. Access 2010 allows forms and reports to be published to web sites using what is called "access web services" that runs on Sharepoint software. These web based forms and reports run in any standard browser. Before publishing your project to the Sharepoint server, it is checked for compatibility and errors reported.
Many have voiced the concern that having to run in Sharepoint creates an expense and complication that will impede this usefulness. Honestly, I had this concern at first but here's what I decided: Any URL will have to be hosted somewhere and security, user-access, multi-user conflicts in tables, etc., will need to be handled somehow. Sharepoint does it effortlessly to the developer and there are many reasonably-priced hosting services out there. You can find 30-day free trials to host and demo sites to customers if needed as well. I have used www.accesshosting.com for such a demo and been happy.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Go Where the Work Takes You
I have been awarded several MS Access database development projects of late that I would like to share:
I recently completed an application for a wonderful European style bakery in Atlanta that is growing daily. The chef needed a way to control the process of receiving and tracking daily customer's orders, generating the baker's daily production reports with breakdown of dough types, dough volume required, and invoicing of customers. I worked closely with the client and we have developed a great tool that will make the daily process more efficient, easier to manage and less time consuming. Really enjoyed this project.
I am working on modifications to an application used by a local micro brewery to manage their process. This is a challenging project as I am wading through some very different, and totally without comments, code. To further complicate matters, the original programmer and I seem to approach the process differently. An occasional challenge can be good and keep you on your toes.
The third project is for an association that promotes a food product. Though I am modifying and adding to an existing application, I and the original programmer seem to approach the process similarly. I can more quickly understand where he is going.
The moral of the story is: Go where the work takes you. Be flexible enough to see a need and accept the challenge.
I recently completed an application for a wonderful European style bakery in Atlanta that is growing daily. The chef needed a way to control the process of receiving and tracking daily customer's orders, generating the baker's daily production reports with breakdown of dough types, dough volume required, and invoicing of customers. I worked closely with the client and we have developed a great tool that will make the daily process more efficient, easier to manage and less time consuming. Really enjoyed this project.
I am working on modifications to an application used by a local micro brewery to manage their process. This is a challenging project as I am wading through some very different, and totally without comments, code. To further complicate matters, the original programmer and I seem to approach the process differently. An occasional challenge can be good and keep you on your toes.
The third project is for an association that promotes a food product. Though I am modifying and adding to an existing application, I and the original programmer seem to approach the process similarly. I can more quickly understand where he is going.
The moral of the story is: Go where the work takes you. Be flexible enough to see a need and accept the challenge.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
We Are a Google Favorite Place!
It's been almost a year since I posted (shame on me). Still here after 15+ years. We have been staying busy with a large project collecting police accident reports and validating the VINs. Been promised more to come and glad of it.
We we're excited to receive a Google "FAVORITE PLACE" decal this week. Shows that the hard work I've been doing to promote our services on the web have had benefit. Google sent out 100,000 of the decals to those businesses that had enough clicks from their Local Business listings.
Thanks Google!
We we're excited to receive a Google "FAVORITE PLACE" decal this week. Shows that the hard work I've been doing to promote our services on the web have had benefit. Google sent out 100,000 of the decals to those businesses that had enough clicks from their Local Business listings.
Thanks Google!
Friday, January 9, 2009
Lost a Bid
We were not selected to continue in the bid process this week. A large telecommunications company located in our area gave us the honor of being included in their RFP list. We gave it our best shot but one of the things they looked at was company growth and receivables. Unfortunately our growth is flat and our receivables have gone down. We were also in the upper-middle tier on our pricing. There were some unknown variables inherent in the project that caused us to bid a bit higher. They gave about a week in a half to prepare the bid.
It's a tough economic market and this company had previously started this project with a subsidiary company of a very large corporation. They went bust, leaving them with a failed project to start over. The moral of the story is: size may matter but it doesn't guarantee success.
We have a strong history of successfully starting, continuing and completing projects. We have never let a customer down and had hoped that this would be considered. We are also proud of the people that have worked with us over the years. Some in our office, some from their homes. Local mothers for the most part that want to help with the family budget.
C'est la vie! If at first you don't succeed, try try again.
It's a tough economic market and this company had previously started this project with a subsidiary company of a very large corporation. They went bust, leaving them with a failed project to start over. The moral of the story is: size may matter but it doesn't guarantee success.
We have a strong history of successfully starting, continuing and completing projects. We have never let a customer down and had hoped that this would be considered. We are also proud of the people that have worked with us over the years. Some in our office, some from their homes. Local mothers for the most part that want to help with the family budget.
C'est la vie! If at first you don't succeed, try try again.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Being Prepared When the Opportunity Arises
So I had been awarded a job capturing names and addresses from Kids Club applications for Burger King Corporation. Burger King had 6,000+ franchisees at the time and each was a distribution point for these applications. This was huge! I was given estimates of up to 20,000 applications per week. I got to work setting up an office in my garage, hiring and training people. We put six workstations upstairs networked into a Novell server. I also designed the data entry screens that we would need to key into and conversion/upload processes we would use. I wrote it in, are you ready, dBase III. This was a DOS based database language (the mother of all database systems today). It was actually very effective. I designed it as a multi-user back-end system with distributed front ends running on the local PC's. It was fast, safe and, as I said, efficient. We used it successfully for many years. My mantra was, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Over the years I upgraded dBase versions, finally moving into OOP dBase for Windows with SQL. I currently use MS Access, VBA and SQL. You might say I was forced into it by the business world, but I have reached an expert level and am very happy with that decision. I design screens that give me an edge in speed and accuracy. I listen to input from the people that are using the screens and constantly tweek and improve the screens and processes.
Okay, we're ready, where's the work? We waited impatiently, checking our details and loose ends. We had set up a PO Box at the post office and were checking each morning. After a couple of days with no work, Bob the Postmaster called and said "You've got some mail here. I think you better come see this." We were excited, and thought, "Oh boy, maybe we have enough to get one or two of these girls working for a day or two. So we went to the post office, and you could have bowled us over when we saw our mail. We were brought into the back mail room, and as we walked in we saw very large orange plastic bags piled up everywhere. Bob the Postmaster walked us right toward them and said "Here's your mail." "OH MY GOODNESS! That's our mail?" "Yes, ma'am."
After we picked ourselves up off the floor, we went home and got the truck and started carrying those big bags back to the garage. We filled up the downstairs of the garage with them. On opening the bags we found a mishmash of applications, complaint letters, letters from crazy people, little gifts from children, photos of Burger Kings loyal children customers, etc. A large part of the job was sorting and separating that mail. I can picture Rhonda, our mail sorter person, sitting with trays in her lap as she sorted through the bags. We also added several Value Added Services to our responsibilities on this job such as answering the white mail and housing a customer complaint phone line.
Our 20,000 weekly estimate turned into 60,000 in reality, but we geared up and got it done. Needless to say, we got all six people started plus more and kept them working for over 12 years on that job. We eventually rented a local office space, as the job warranted. Burger King franchisees considered this their most effective marketing to date. We only stopped doing it after they awarded their marketing to a different company that chose to use their own in-house vendor. We have recently noticed that Burger King is collecting all the applicants directly online. Karen was the account director for the Burger King Kids Club and who we answered to. She is my idea of a great manager. She was no push over and could be tough and tenaciously accomplish her goals while being reasonable and fair at the same time. She gave us a glowing reference that will ever be appreciated.
They were good years, and we appreciate the opportunities that we were given and the great contacts we made. We kept ourselves working and created in-office and at-home jobs for some good people. At one time we had twelve in-house employees and 40 local people typing at home as sub-contractors. We continue to use some of those same people today and enjoy running into the others around town. A good case for always being fair and kind.
Have you had any memorable job experiences you can share?
Okay, we're ready, where's the work? We waited impatiently, checking our details and loose ends. We had set up a PO Box at the post office and were checking each morning. After a couple of days with no work, Bob the Postmaster called and said "You've got some mail here. I think you better come see this." We were excited, and thought, "Oh boy, maybe we have enough to get one or two of these girls working for a day or two. So we went to the post office, and you could have bowled us over when we saw our mail. We were brought into the back mail room, and as we walked in we saw very large orange plastic bags piled up everywhere. Bob the Postmaster walked us right toward them and said "Here's your mail." "OH MY GOODNESS! That's our mail?" "Yes, ma'am."
After we picked ourselves up off the floor, we went home and got the truck and started carrying those big bags back to the garage. We filled up the downstairs of the garage with them. On opening the bags we found a mishmash of applications, complaint letters, letters from crazy people, little gifts from children, photos of Burger Kings loyal children customers, etc. A large part of the job was sorting and separating that mail. I can picture Rhonda, our mail sorter person, sitting with trays in her lap as she sorted through the bags. We also added several Value Added Services to our responsibilities on this job such as answering the white mail and housing a customer complaint phone line.
Our 20,000 weekly estimate turned into 60,000 in reality, but we geared up and got it done. Needless to say, we got all six people started plus more and kept them working for over 12 years on that job. We eventually rented a local office space, as the job warranted. Burger King franchisees considered this their most effective marketing to date. We only stopped doing it after they awarded their marketing to a different company that chose to use their own in-house vendor. We have recently noticed that Burger King is collecting all the applicants directly online. Karen was the account director for the Burger King Kids Club and who we answered to. She is my idea of a great manager. She was no push over and could be tough and tenaciously accomplish her goals while being reasonable and fair at the same time. She gave us a glowing reference that will ever be appreciated.
They were good years, and we appreciate the opportunities that we were given and the great contacts we made. We kept ourselves working and created in-office and at-home jobs for some good people. At one time we had twelve in-house employees and 40 local people typing at home as sub-contractors. We continue to use some of those same people today and enjoy running into the others around town. A good case for always being fair and kind.
Have you had any memorable job experiences you can share?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Starting a Data Entry Company
Okay - ages since I blogged but here goes.
I left off the Day of Small Things when I lost the job keying insurance forms for a doctor's clinic. From there I again went and found employment out of the house and had to have my son's stay in after school. I was traveling about an hour to work and my husband often made it to school to pick up the kids before me. I started out in a temporary position (Kelly Girls) as a specification typist for a design/engineer company. When a position opened up for an Administrative Assistant for one of the principles, I got it. I moved from there into IT support when a new network was installed (all the new high tech stuff). I enjoyed the job until the company started having financial trouble and a lack of jobs. They began laying off and soon closed up the office and moved the operation to Boston. Again I found myself looking for work. Only this time I had a little severance money. My husband and I thought it out: what could I do to make our lives easier, to be there for our sons? We decided that I would get some schooling in computer networking and get certified as a Novell Network Engineer. I took the classes, passed the seven tests and got my certification. Now maybe I can get something with more flexibility and closer to home. Sorry Charlie, I hunted for a job for a long time and it seems that I was more marketable as a secretary. However, I got a call from someone who knew someone I knew that needed a network installed in their office. It was a very large printing company - American Signature. They had just procured a job managing and processing a Kids Club for a major fast food company. I managed to present them with a network plan and a design for their data entry keying screens and data processes.
This was my real start. They decided not to do the data entry and processing in-house themselves and let me bid on it. I got the job! We had to get to work. To be continued....
I left off the Day of Small Things when I lost the job keying insurance forms for a doctor's clinic. From there I again went and found employment out of the house and had to have my son's stay in after school. I was traveling about an hour to work and my husband often made it to school to pick up the kids before me. I started out in a temporary position (Kelly Girls) as a specification typist for a design/engineer company. When a position opened up for an Administrative Assistant for one of the principles, I got it. I moved from there into IT support when a new network was installed (all the new high tech stuff). I enjoyed the job until the company started having financial trouble and a lack of jobs. They began laying off and soon closed up the office and moved the operation to Boston. Again I found myself looking for work. Only this time I had a little severance money. My husband and I thought it out: what could I do to make our lives easier, to be there for our sons? We decided that I would get some schooling in computer networking and get certified as a Novell Network Engineer. I took the classes, passed the seven tests and got my certification. Now maybe I can get something with more flexibility and closer to home. Sorry Charlie, I hunted for a job for a long time and it seems that I was more marketable as a secretary. However, I got a call from someone who knew someone I knew that needed a network installed in their office. It was a very large printing company - American Signature. They had just procured a job managing and processing a Kids Club for a major fast food company. I managed to present them with a network plan and a design for their data entry keying screens and data processes.
This was my real start. They decided not to do the data entry and processing in-house themselves and let me bid on it. I got the job! We had to get to work. To be continued....
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