BYU Independent Study employs a number of processes to accomplish its day-to-day operations. One of the processes allows employees (field agents, sales, marketers) to place orders and requests for SWAG and booth supplies to be delivered to destination locations before arriveing. These locations may be schools, hotels, or residential.
Before this program, BYUIS managed this process manually. The users are the field agents, sales specialists, and marketers. Users place orders with the shipping office at BYUIS. Orders were maintained in a notebook with sticker labels to match the shipping labels. Inventory was adjusted manually despite being kept in an excel spreadsheet.
Objective:
· Give users a simple way to place orders.
· Track order from placement to receipt in one place.
· Inform users by email/text of delivery information.
· Update inventory after shipment.
· Preserve a platform that can handle employee turnover.
· Provide a Macros to:
o Show a form (dashboard) that will roll up all inventory information into one screen.
o Update Inventory from shipped requests.
These are the issues expressed by the BYUIS in this process. Excel is used to store all inventory information. Google docs and Google forms gather requests from users. Only the shipping office deals with the excel spreadsheet. He will receive orders and process then through third party software provided by FedEx. After recording all tracking numbers, the Google doc spreadsheet is scraped into Excel with VBA. Information from the orders/shipments update the inventory. A form has been created. It is not interactive. It is a dashboard. The dashboard of inventory data will simply display the inventory data (contained on 8 sheets) in one form view.
The programming cost estimate is approximately 30 hours. The larger portion of the project will be the support of the programs and processes through technical documentation. Because this is a “real world” project, documentation is essential. This project estimates an additional 20 hours of documentation including:
· Technical overview of Macros and program.
· “How to” customization examples
· Change Management Scenarios
o New User Employee
o New Inventory Item
o Change Web Resources
LINKS:
The Minchin Timesheet System is designed to provide an easy way to keep track of time spent on various projects, especially in situations where the user is working on several projects serially. From the main interface, click on “Record Time Stamp” will prompt the user for a project number, a subproject number, and their employee number. When they are finished, they click “Record Time Stamp” a second time to log off. A button (“Am I Logged In or Out?”) provides a simple way of confirming their status. A third button (“Generate Timesheet”) will automatically generate a timesheet for the employee, breaking down their time by day, project and subproject, and saving the result as an easy to email or print PDF.
The example provided here works as described above, but more excitingly, provides a framework to build off of to add many more features. That said, if a simple record of time punches is all you need, the existing version should function very well.
Full Description (Report)
Excel Workbook
Example Timesheet 1
Example Timesheet 2
Update July 7, 2010: Version 1.1 has been released at Blog.Minchin.ca. The update smooths over the edges a little, corrects a few minor math mistakes, and adds an “About” dialogue. Further updates, when released, will be released there.
