OT? Building an intranet for work

[Mr Sandman]

Hi peeps. Could do with some help/pointers to do the following - I want to set up 3 iPads for 3 small business premises. What I want to do slowly move forms that need filling in by staff during the day from being paper based, to electronic. Currently, staff print out and complete and sign sheets of paper. What I envisage is that

1.each premises will have an iPad, staff pick it up, type in a passcode and open a browser.

1. The home page will be a simple page asking the user to either, view historical documents or make a new entry. Or some other task like view memos.
2. The user will then pick an option, say make an entry.
3. This will then open another page where they can select what form they want to complete.
4. The form will pop up with fields to complete., they fill in the form fields and hit a button saying ?authenticate?, where the iPad will take a picture of the person completing the form(as a record of who completed the form), and file the data somewhere where it can be interrogated in the future.

I know, lots of things to do here. But any guidance to get me started would be appreciated. I know a little vb.net having automated a home brewery a couple or so years ago and some python from playing with raspberry pi. I know it?s a steep learning curve but I?m willing to learn, i just want to do it the simplest way, starting simply and slowly making it more complex.

Cheers Steve

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not great choice of input decvice but...

OK...

OK

You simply need to set up a web server on a virtual server, learn linux apache php and mysql and spend 4 months writing and debugging it :0)

Start by getting a crap old PC and installing someething like debian on it

And Genie

Then get coding

[John Rumm]

Start simple and keep it that way ;-)

Google forms are a very easy way to go. You create a form that captures the info you want. That can include the option to upload files and images. You link the form to a google spreadsheet, it then dumps all the entries in there. You can publish bits of the sheet as read only web pages as well if you want.

If you want get fancy then you can use scripting in the form or the sheet to do clever stuff, like dynamically updating the questions in the form based on info in the sheet.

I did a simple one for a property maintenance company a while ago to they can keep track of spend on jobs. They have a shortcut to a form on their phone. That asked who is claiming the expense, what its for, how much and for which property. They they take a photo of the receipt and add that to the form. Job done. Back in the office they now have a sheet that in real time logs all the submissions.

[Roger Hayter]

snip

I agree. I would regard being forced to fill in forms via a touch screen all day as constructive dismissal, so I hope he plans to provide keyboards.

[Mr Sandman]

Staff would only be filling in forms twice a day at most. Probably 2 paragraphs worth each. Other forms would be from drop down lists or check boxes. Has anyone used wamp?

[Mr Sandman]

Not great choice of input decvice but...

OK...

OK

You simply need to set up a web server on a virtual server, learn linux apache php and mysql and spend 4 months writing and debugging it :0)

Start by getting a crap old PC and installing someething like debian on it

And Genie

Then get coding

Any tutorials you?d recommend to get up and running quickly?

[The Natural Philosopher]

[Brian Gaff]

But these are apple devices not pcs. Also most people I know are not happy typing on on screen keyboards. So that means each has a bluetooth keyboard. What about some laptops instead many have cameras. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes indeed as I said to start with, and if doing that move away from Apple, or go completely apple if you can afford it, its a bit awkward as if you want to write in Windows its probably more an off the shelf solution, but may be more hackable. Brian

[John Rumm]

Or you do the sensible thing, and go to a hosting company and get the whole thing off the shelf already setup.

Just install Virtual box on your normal PC if you want to play with linux etc.

[Theo]

That'll do most of it, but it's the 'take a photo of the user' that's the tricky bit.

It can be done, but you might have to experiment to see if there's a way to force it to use the front facing camera, and to take a live picture. Some of these methods:

suggest it'll offer to upload a saved photo, which is exactly what you don't want for 'live signature' application.

It might be easier to come up with another way to authenticate users.

Theo

[John Rumm]

Possibly - much depends on what you are trying to do. If you just want to know who filled in the form, give them a drop down list of names to choose theirs from. If you actually want to know it really was them, then perhaps setup a script on the sheet with a timed event to mail a unique daily reference number to each of the potential users, that they then need to enter into the form.

[jeikppkywk]

I used to think that until I did quite a bit of it. In some ways its better than a keyboard, particularly with a well designed system that allows you to just type a couple of letters and accept what is offered instead of typing the whole thing. But its not clear how well that would work in his situation because it isnt clear just what is being entered on the forms.

Just a couple of days ago, got a signed for delivery and had the delivery monkey suggest that I use my finger to sign with instead of the stylus clipped to the back of the device. Works well.