Travel and absence calendar

[laura]

I wonder if anyone can offer me a few suggestions on how I might go about
designing a travel and absence list/calendar. Perhaps someone has already
written a program to do this and can let me have some code to work on, or if
anyone knows of software out there that might do what I need.

Basically I want to write a program that keeps track of about 200 employees,
where they are when travelling or what days they take as holidays.

I want it to look a bit like a spreadsheet.

I want to be able to show just Monday through to Friday, not weekends.

I want the top of the spreadsheet column titles to be the date, i.e., as an
example, for this week in November:-

"Employee Name" "Monday 15" "Tuesday 16" "Wednesday 17" "Thursday
18" "Friday 19" "Monday 22"...etc.
J. Smith holiday
holiday holiday
M. Jones Paris Munich
P. Brown holiday holiday

The way I want to be able to display the information, which will be set out
as above, is on a monthly basis where they can pick any month of any year
and display the grid.

Data entry will probably be via a form where they can pick the Employee from
a list and select their name, then enter the trip or holiday date, and trip
destination.

So far I have come up with two small tables,
tblEmployee with EmplID, Fname, Sname
tblEvent with EventID, EmplID, Event, Date. (Event of course will either
be the destination or 'holiday').

It should be fairly simple, but from those two small tables, I cannot figure
out a way of creating a "Calendar" which is going to be the top row of my
Spreadsheet/grid (as illustrated above), which is going to be infinite - in
other words, this year, next year, the year after.. etc.. whatever year they
wish into the future. Sort of like a timeline - although I think I would
like to limit them to viewing one month at a time rather than being able to
scroll infinitely left and right.

I hope this is not too confusing and that someone might have a bright idea
to push me forward - I have being laying awake at night wondering how to do
it. I do not know if it should be run from a query or whether I need to
create a table with every day of every year preset - or whether it should
all be somehow "virtual".

Thanks
Laura TD

 

[PC Datasheet]

Laura,

I can create a travel and absence list/calendar for you. You will be able
to pick any month of any year and for any day Monday through Friday of the
selected month show who is on a trip and where and who is on vacation.
Contact me at my email address below if you would like my help.

--
PC Datasheet
Your Resource For Help With Access, Excel And Word Applications
(e-mail address removed)
www.pcdatasheet.com

 

[laura]

Dear Mr. Santus,

Thank you for your reply.

I was a little surprised that you were not prepared to help me in the manner
in which everyone on the forum does, 'free of charge' and thought that that
was why you wanted me to write to your directly. If I had wanted to pay
someone I could have mentioned it in my request for assistance. I am there
to learn and am struggling completely on my own to do so.

If I had had to pay someone for every bit of assistance I have had on that
forum, I would now be poor. I am so very grateful to everyone, no matter how
much or how little help they have given me, for that help and will forever
be indebpted to them for helping to me to progress, even if very slowly. I
have learned a lot on the way too and a lot of people generously help each
other without requesting payment.

A lot of work that I do is for charities - of no profit to myself. I was
very excited to see your offer of help, but then very disappointed this
morning to find you wanted to be paid for it. I think that kind of defeats
the purpose of the forum. I will post this message on there too so that
others can be aware, in case you lift their hopes as well.

Thanks
Laura
----- Original Message -----
From: PC Datasheet
To: Laura
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 1:11 AM
Subject: Re: absence list/calendar


Hi Laura,

Thank you for your interest in having me help you!

I will build a travel and absence list database application for you that
you can use to keep track of your 200+ employees on a daily basis who is
traveling and where they have traveled to and who is on vacation. A form you
will be provided to enter your employees' names. A second form will be
provided where you can pick the Employee from a list, select their name and
then enter the start and end trip dates and trip destination. A third form
will be provided where you can pick the Employee from a list, select their
name and then enter the start and end vacation dates. A fourth form will be
provided where the form looks like a calendar. You will be able to pick any
month of any year. The calendar will dominantly display Monday through
Friday and secondarily show Saturday and Sunday for all the weeks in
whatever month you pick. For each day, Monday through Friday, the calendar
will show who is travelling and who is on vacation for that day in the month
you pick.

Option 1 ---
Include a table for holidays, a form for entering holidays and the date of
each holiday and display the holidays on the calendar.

Option 2 ---
A form for picking a range of months. A report that looks like the above
described calendar for each month in the range you pick.

My fees ---
Main application $550US
Option 1 $150US
Option 2 $250US
Total $950US

Note: Option 1 and Option 2 are not required for the application to
work - it's up to you to decide if you want to include these options.

Terms: Payment in full to start the project. Payment can be made by check
(preferred) or with credit card through PayPal at my website.

The application will be open source whereby you will be able to look at
how everything works and you will be able to make any modifications to the
application in the future you wish. You will totally own the application;
there will be no licensing restrictions.

PC Datasheet
Your Resource for Access, Excel and Word Help

Stephen G. Santus, MBA, Engineer Office (814) 226-5327
52 Campbell Avenue Fax (775)
822-3965
Clarion, PA 16214
(e-mail address removed)
www.pcdatasheet.com


----- Original Message -----
From: laura
To: (e-mail address removed)
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 5:53 PM
Subject: absence list/calendar


Hello, thanks for your offer, how can you help me?

Laura


Laura,

I can create a travel and absence list/calendar for you. You will be
able
to pick any month of any year and for any day Monday through Friday of
the
selected month show who is on a trip and where and who is on vacation.
Contact me at my email address below if you would like my help.

--
PC Datasheet
Your Resource For Help With Access, Excel And Word Applications
(e-mail address removed)
www.pcdatasheet.com

I wonder if anyone can offer me a few suggestions on how I might go about
designing a travel and absence list/calendar. Perhaps someone has already
written a program to do this and can let me have some code to work on, or
if
anyone knows of software out there that might do what I need.

Basically I want to write a program that keeps track of about 200 employees,
where they are when travelling or what days they take as holidays.

I want it to look a bit like a spreadsheet.

I want to be able to show just Monday through to Friday, not weekends.

I want the top of the spreadsheet column titles to be the date, i.e., as
an
example, for this week in November:-

"Employee Name" "Monday 15" "Tuesday 16" "Wednesday 17" "Thursday
18" "Friday 19" "Monday 22"...etc.
J. Smith holiday
holiday holiday
M. Jones Paris Munich
P. Brown holiday holiday

The way I want to be able to display the information, which will be set
out
as above, is on a monthly basis where they can pick any month of any year
and display the grid.

Data entry will probably be via a form where they can pick the Employee
from
a list and select their name, then enter the trip or holiday date, and trip
destination.

So far I have come up with two small tables,
tblEmployee with EmplID, Fname, Sname
tblEvent with EventID, EmplID, Event, Date. (Event of course will either
be the destination or 'holiday').

It should be fairly simple, but from those two small tables, I cannot figure
out a way of creating a "Calendar" which is going to be the top row of my
Spreadsheet/grid (as illustrated above), which is going to be

infinite -
in

 

[Duane Hookom]

I'm not sure what kind of user interface you want/need but for calendar type
reports, check http://www.invisibleinc.com/divFiles.cfm?divDivID=4. This
sample is free.

 

[Larry Daugherty]

Hi Laura,

Your original take on the Access newsgroups is the correct one. It is
counter to the charter of these newsgroups that people lurk and try to
convert someone's post for assistance into a paying proposition. There are
Jobs and Contract newsgroups for engaging work for hire. At
www.mvps.org/access check out "Netiquette" for general guidelines. You'll
note that they also recommend that people looking for work seek it in places
designed for that purpose such as Dice.com. These groups are for mutual
support, not for preying on people seeking help with a problem. Work hard
to solve your own problems and ask for help when you're having troubles. If
you don't get satisfactory help the first time then post again.

You might check out the things Steven Lebans offers for free:
http://www.lebans.com/

I think you'll need to think through your design a bit further so you'll
better be able to envisage your requirements. I recommend using pencil,
ruler and paper to get started or, Excel or Visio. I would then try to
show the complete displays for about 5 busy people who travel a lot and who
have some vacation time thrown in. I'd show them from about Halloween
through Valentine's day. Try to limit what you draw to what you know or
believe you can represent using Access.

The toughest thing about the calendar kinds of applications is deciding
what the limits are of what you'll try to display. You can do just about
anything but you can't do it all at once. You may have to settle on
different views for different data.

HTH

 

[laura]

Dear Larry,

Many thanks for your comments - much appreciated. Needless to say I did not
receive any further correspondence from PC Datasheet, although on doing a
search, I did find that they did offer some help within the spirit of the
Forum to other people. I still resented their approach to me though.

Don't worry, I am fairly persistent, if I don't get a response soon enough,
I try again. I have never failed to get the help I have needed and am
extremely grateful to those of you who assist us along this bumpy road.

I am making some progress - I have been able to create a crosstab query and
copy the SQL code onto my asp page and have been able to produce the 'grid'
I want which has been the biggest hurdle, but it's displaying the data I
want. I did what you suggested, 5 employees and trips ranging over a few
months.

At the moment I am practicing this on a free asp hosting site, but
eventually I hope to run it either over the internet with a password
protection or on a small intranet. I still need to create data input pages
that verify the integrity of the information.

I think that having an Access database on the internet which is updatable is
a powerful tool and I've only just been able to achieve this, this past
couple of weeks, so it's all still very new to me - absorbing the whole
concept and learning the limitations and capabilities. So far, so good.

Once again, Many thanks
Laura TD