My client owns a window cleaning company nationwide and would like an area accessed by a login field so that they can keep a page updated daily for each client (abby, Lloyds TSB etc.).
Basically, the login area is OK, it’s the updatable page itself that’s the tricky bit. My client has all his information in excel, so I guess this would require a database solution. As simple CRM solutions wouldn’t work as he has around 200 entries per day and probably wouldnt want to update everything by typing it in again.
Has anyone else implemented this kind of feature in their site?
There is information about content management systems in the Softpress Knowledgebase.
If you use the search function here on FWTalk you’ll also find more information about them.
There are a few Actions available to integrate different CMSes with Freeway. I have a few listed at my site, and Max has one for WebYep.
If your client is wanting to continue to keep his information in Excel, there may be existing solutions to integrate the information, or we may have to come up with a custom solution for you.
My client owns a window cleaning company nationwide and would like
an area accessed by a login field so that they can keep a page
updated daily for each client (abby, Lloyds TSB etc.).
Basically, the login area is OK, it’s the updatable page itself
that’s the tricky bit. My client has all his information in excel,
so I guess this would require a database solution. As simple CRM
solutions wouldn’t work as he has around 200 entries per day and
probably wouldnt want to update everything by typing it in again.
Has anyone else implemented this kind of feature in their site?
I have something similar, where a bookings secretary keeps apartment
bookings in an excel s/s; she saves it in csv format and uploads it.
The upload is done with a Freeway page form that sends the data to a
Perl script. This pulls the required details from the csv and saves
them in a plain file. The web page that shows this to the user is a
Perl cgi script. The Perl scripts could just as well be PHP in a
general case. In my case the data is a calendar and is all tables
nested about four deep, which I wouldn’t like to code in PHP.
David
–
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
email@hidden www.ivdcs.co.uk
I have just heard back from my client and all he needs is:
Client Name
Date Last Cleaned
Date To Be Cleaned
and an email link back to them. So it probably doesn’t even need to be done in Freeway. Plus as there is alot of info daily it cannot be anything like webyep.
As I’m no coder, manually working with scripts is something I’m not able to do I feel. I may have to look at a customisable open-source option
This it really depends on how the client works. If they are updating the original excel file by hand, only to pass on this file for the web in one go ( they might assume think ‘thats the way they it has to be done’ ), then a simple CSM like WebYeb could work. As rather then working into the excel file changing item by item manually, then they might as well enter manually item by item in a simple CMS system, rather than working on this ‘middle man’ excel file.
Sometimes you’ve got to educate the client into ways of thinking to achieve things simply and cheaply. So I would check carefully how they work before rolling out something more costly and involved.
I would check how the data gets into the excel file, and where else is the excel file used, before totally discounting a simple CMS system. And of course how it should be presented on the web.
On 4 Feb 2008, at 14:41, BigG wrote:
and an email link back to them. So it probably doesn’t even need to be done in Freeway. Plus as there is alot of info daily it cannot be anything like webyep.
David Owen
Freeway Friendly Web hosting and Domains ::
Depending on what your client does and wants, you may want or need a custom solution all around, instead of the existing CMSes I suggested. With what I have in mind, you would still have to “train” your client to export a CSV file from Excel and upload it.
Like David Owen says, another option would be for them to keep the info on the web and discontinue the use of the Excel sheet. This would eliminate a lot of steps, but would also depend on what else they use the Excel spreadsheet for.