Good afternoon everyone,
I have been thinking about an app that my company could use when staff are sent away on weekend events.
The company hires our PDQ (payment terminals) to various markets/fairs/events throughout the country. They are based in London, with most of the events being further out in the country (Telford, Oxfordshire, to name a few). Whilst at the event I would like for our customers feedback, complaints, questions, concerns, ideas, notes on our equipment, e.t.c. to be logged using a tablet, rather than pen and paper. I feel the most effective way to do this is creating our own app. It does not have to be pristine, with a professionally chosen colour scheme, perfect graphics e.t.c., but a simple app that is user friendly and just works. Ideally we would be able to upload an Excel spreadsheet to it, containing customer details, that can be displayed using some form of table/report layout whereby notes can be added. So, for example, 50 customers and their details are on the spreadsheet, it's uploaded to the app and each one can be opened individually. A signature section to confirm receipt of the equipment would also be a fantastic bonus. Once the event is over with, it would help if the report can be pushed/emailed in a usable format (again Excel would be great) so that certain parts can be extracted and used in various other reports.
So my question is... Am I completely mad for hoping the above is achievable, or extortionately costly? Or is it relatively simple considering the advancements in app making and the kinds that are available today? Could a relative novice be able to make it, or is it best reserved for a Pro?
Any help, questions, suggestions, silly remarks welcome.
Thank you
darrenbilly said:
Good afternoon everyone,
I have been thinking about an app that my company could use when staff are sent away on weekend events.
The company hires our PDQ (payment terminals) to various markets/fairs/events throughout the country. They are based in London, with most of the events being further out in the country (Telford, Oxfordshire, to name a few). Whilst at the event I would like for our customers feedback, complaints, questions, concerns, ideas, notes on our equipment, e.t.c. to be logged using a tablet, rather than pen and paper. I feel the most effective way to do this is creating our own app. It does not have to be pristine, with a professionally chosen colour scheme, perfect graphics e.t.c., but a simple app that is user friendly and just works. Ideally we would be able to upload an Excel spreadsheet to it, containing customer details, that can be displayed using some form of table/report layout whereby notes can be added. So, for example, 50 customers and their details are on the spreadsheet, it's uploaded to the app and each one can be opened individually. A signature section to confirm receipt of the equipment would also be a fantastic bonus. Once the event is over with, it would help if the report can be pushed/emailed in a usable format (again Excel would be great) so that certain parts can be extracted and used in various other reports.
So my question is... Am I completely mad for hoping the above is achievable, or extortionately costly? Or is it relatively simple considering the advancements in app making and the kinds that are available today? Could a relative novice be able to make it, or is it best reserved for a Pro?
Any help, questions, suggestions, silly remarks welcome.
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That certainly is a nice idea, but unfortunately it doesn't seem very realistic.
If anyone was to attempt to create that, it'd definitely need to be an experience app maker, as the code required to make an app like that is astronomically difficult.
Meh. :|
Scaling it back...
OK, I thought that may have been a lot of 'blue-sky' thinking. How about if the information was entered manually somehow and then notes were made on each one?
It would be great if each event could be stored on the app and looked back over for reference if need be. Say if the customers information was entered using the app creation tool, then a signature was taken and saved as an image, perhaps a picture of it can be taken and then uploaded to the app?
To the app developers... Is there something based on my proposal that could be made more easily?
Thank you
Related
With the NHL season coming up, as well as Mango, I was wondering how easy would it be to develop an app?
Would like to do something simple (in theory) with schedule, favourite team: live score/stats. Score Push/Toast/Tile notification. Maybe team news, or league news.
Heres is the stupid part, I have no experience ever developing an app, nor have any programming knowledge.
Thanks in advance for any help.
I assume you will need Visual Studio 2010 and will have to know .Net 4 and use VB or C# as a choice of language.
Not really sure about anything else past that.
there are plenty of tutorials around which will help you with that. the designing bit is not difficult at all: it's very intuitive in fact. you'll need to go through some basics of coding though. I recommend the dev education resources in the app hub (create.msdn.com). Best of luck with the app!
Thanks for the replies. I look around and yes as mentioned the designing process is a pretty intuitive and the coding seems like something I can probably find help with.
Question that I have now, is how would be able to get the actual data? Are there services to which I can connect to have live scores, stats, news, etc?
I know these are newbie questions, and I know I can probably just find the info on various websites, but I am the type that like to get a conversation going and perhaps find someone that can help out..... in return I promise to make an awesome app!
N0MN0M said:
Question that I have now, is how would be able to get the actual data? Are there services to which I can connect to have live scores, stats, news, etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the hard part. I considered doing something similar previously but there don't appear to be any free services for sports scores. I remember stumbling upon FanFeedr but didn't really look to deep into it.
I kind of figured ESPN would just update SportsCenter with Mango features that add everything I had in mind eventually.
Best of luck with your NHL app! I can help if you have any questions I’ve already written a multi-league football app that does the things you mention (and a few things you didn’t )
Probably the best way to start is to try and write some code that reads RSS feeds; that way you’ll be writing your team and league news functionality which will immediately make the app useful. You could then e.g. have a page that displays news for each NHL team such as using the following RSS feeds:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/rss
(note the terms and conditions on the Yahoo one say not for commercial use; but if you’re looking to make it a paid app there will still be plenty of sites that let you use their RSS feeds for free).
To start coding it there’s a tutorial video on how to write a simple RSS reader using visual studio and expression blend here:
http://www.windowsphonegeek.com/videos/creating-an-rss-reader-for-windows-phone-7-in-5-minutes
For getting the live scores data (e.g. as an xml feed) you’re most likely going to have to pay for it (and people who provide it charge wildly different prices so have a good shop around). E.g. these people seem to be popular and do NHL (although they’re not the company I use so can’t comment on what they are like – mine only do football)
http://www.xmlteam.com
http://showcase.xmlteam.com/index.php/samples/showfixtures/8/l.nhl.com
Also note that getting access to data from a provider is only the first step – you’ll also need to write some code on a web server somewhere that transmits the scores and other data out to users of your app. Most sports data providers will not want each individual app user to download from them; so they’ll expect just you to download from them, and your users to download from you (i.e. for that you need to write a ‘web service’ on your web server/hosting company, probably attached to a database).
If that all sounds too scary, and/or you’re not looking to spend any money yet (which is probably wise) why not make the main focus something other than the live scores? e.g. perhaps you could make the news reporting better than other apps out there - e.g. lots of different news feeds for each team - really in-depth background on each team, perhaps a way for fans to talk to each other, ability to post things on Facebook about their team, tv schedules, toast messages for news headlines as they come out, player profiles, pictures… etc. etc. You could even type the scores in yourself if you still want them or just provide links to websites from within the app. Have a hunt around though as you sometimes find fan sites that put live scores and stats into free RSS’s.
You asked how easy it is; mine took about 3 months (and I’m a developer with 14 years’ experience of Microsoft technologies) but it all depends how many features you’re trying to write, and how professionally (I wanted to write the best). There’s so many great forums and examples of code out there you’ll be up and running in no time.
Hope that helps,
Ian
I need a developer to help me create a insulation estimation form with input from the salesman for an end product that will create a emailable form to the end user (buyer)
Details:
I have a PDF created with the layout, so visually the design is already there.
What I need is someone capable of creating a database for the insertions of pricing and materials that the app can pull from. This database needs to be changeable for changes in pricing and other options. The form needs to be able to use the database to create an end estimation that has the option to email. I would also like to be able to attach photos from the device to estimation when emailing.
I am intending this for use on a honeycomb tablet such as the Xoom or the Iconia.
If you or someone you know is capable or interested in producing such an app for me, please PM with your/their information so that I can get in contact. I am looking to get this project done asap and am not looking to distribute this via market yet (we will talk about that as well)
I do not have the technical ability to do this so I deffinantly need the right person/presons.
Thanks,
George
Hi all,
Have been looking for a crm, stock & invoicing type app to run on my samsung tablet for a little while and am not really finding anything that covers all of the bases. Most just seem to be front ends for large corporate systems and the others very limited in what they can do, so I thought I'd seek guidance.
What I'm looking for, well I'm self employed and travel to a customers premises where I primarily sell a product but also carry out ongoing servicing. Regular service's also include additional products. Some of my products are stock items but many are ordered from a small number of suppliers specifically on behalf of the customer.
The app will need to; maintain a customer database, be able to schedule appointments with them, maintain an account balance, generate an invoice that is emailable direct from the app, maintain a stock list, raise orders to replace stock or to fulfill customer demand, generate various reports for total receipts, total spend, customer spend etc. Ideally this should all be able to sync back to google docs for record keeping, analysis etc.
So what do you think people any ideas?
I have so far spent 3 days trawling through the app market with no luck, nothing I've found does all of it and juggling 2 or 3 apps is defeating the purpose of using an android tablet I may as well just buy a notepad & pencil.
Not sure if this is the correct forum for this so, please move if you feel somewhere else is more appropriate.
Many thanks
Jon
Edit sorry realised it's in the wrong place, have reposted but can't see how to delete this post, admin can you delete please.
Hello everyone! I am new to the forum. Been thinking of joining for a while but my current issue has been the push I needed to join. I have looked high and low for the answer but to be completely honest I am not entirely sure what to look for. Not sure what my question is. I have also looked around this forum for a a good little while stopping on this thread to ask my question. I hope it's the right place to start. I will try to ask this in a way that is understandable and relevant. In your answer please take into consideration that I am new-ish to Android Development. =) (I can do the basics, Root, hack, crack, etc,.) I know enough though I think to follow your answerer and understand it.
** Question: For my Project should I go with a full Android App, go with a website that can be viewed on a mobile phone, or should I build the back-end on a web server and have an android app that delivers the front-end? (Front-end being the login, the styling of the pages, where the interaction between users take place, etc,. ) I'll elaborate on my question below. **
Alright. I started building a website. Conceptual anyway. I have been designing it on paper, white board, Photoshop etc,. The website is going to be a social site of sorts. Unique in it's own way. At first I was going to do just a website. Then I realized as my creation grew that I wanted it to be an App. Then decided, due to all the back-end server programming and functionality required, I would most likely have to build it as a website or web application. To give a brief summery of the site. There will be a login system with profiles, instant messaging. video chats, group chats, ability to play simple games like cards, chess, and more. I will also need to be able to control sessions. Write new session information on the fly based on certain actions the users take.
My problem, I think, is that i'm not sure the most efficient or effective way to go about doing this. If it was going to be on a computer I would write it up in PHP and obviously display the site with HTML/CSS. The display part I think is where I am at a loss. At least one of my issues. Since I would like for this to be an app for Android I may need a new way to display the 'site' if that's what It will even be called once it's an app. If I'm going to shoot for it to be on mobile phones then I'm thinking I can get the cosmetics looking good as well as using it to my advantage. I prefer the 'app-like-interface' rather than scroll with mouse and click on the page as if it were a website. ( 'app-like-interface': I am referring to buttons, and menus, and a overall 'pretty' interface. touch screen etc,.)
So should I write it as a website in it's entirety and just display it as a mobile site?
Should I completely trash the idea of doing this for mobile phones?
Should I (if it's possible) write everything on the back-end with PHP but create an app with java to display the styling and build the interface?
Or should I do something else entirely that I've not mentioned?
My apologies if this question was a bit to long. Tried to be thorough. Thanks so much in advance as well. This answer is something I need before I can even consider continuing. Thanks!
Az Tek
I have a friend who owns a restaurant and he offers an astounding number of sushi and sashimi dishes. It's often difficult, with so many offerings, for a server to know the ingredients of each offering and it's also difficult for the customer when he or she wants to look at and determine which offering to choose.
The owner wants to purchase several tablets that can be used for information purposes by both the server and the customer. He wants to put 500 to 1000 pictures on the tablets, with the ability to add a descriptive text for each picture. If this can be achieved by use of the tablet alone that's fine, but each tablet will have to have the same information and he doesn't want to have to configure and at times update the pictures and text on each one individually, which would be time consuming to say the least. He also plans to place a larger monitor at the sushi bar that would display the same information, possibly on a continuous, automatic rotation. The restaurant uses Windows computers at several locations throughout the restaurant so if the information will have to be composed on one of his computers before transferring it to the tablets the tablets and app will have to be able to connect with and be compatible with the Windows OS. Needless to say, these tablets must be user friendly for the server and customer.
I would appreciate it very much if someone could let me know which tablet and app would be the best for doing this. I suppose he would want a small tablet that is easy to use by both the server and the customer. He wants each observed page on the tablet to display only one picture and one description to make it easy for all involved, similar to how a digital photo album displays only one picture at a time and he wants to be able to progress from one page to the next by swiping the page, tapping the page or using an arrow embedded in the picture. I need the recommendation on a tablet for ease of use with the app.
Thank you in advance for your time and any assistance provided.
C. B.
Please visit the following two threads and read there...http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2230428 and
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2229761