6 ms·

It's hard to say from here what would be the best thing for them to use, but simply using a modern spreadsheet format instead of the ancient xls seems fine for

by TwoBit 6y ago

It's hard to say from here what would be the best thing for them to use, but simply using a modern spreadsheet format instead of the ancient xls seems fine for interchange.

bitlevel 6y ago
There's not much to stop the devs from using open source tools to create a PHP web frontend and db backend for this data - and secure it as well. Heck, if they still need to export, they could do that from the data too. Sure - use Excel for POC, but get that DB backend up pronto.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  I work in an office that relies way too much on Excel. To consider your solution, first showstopper, it needs a server. We don't have a server, nor anyone who knows how to manage one. We'd need to ask IT, that will take months and they'll require a budget transfer, so we'd need to request it to management (which will need a business case to convince) and involve the finance guys. We can't just plug a RaspberryPi into the wall, not only that would get me fired, but also it wouldn't be able to connect to anything without the company's certificates for the proxy or whatever. Second, we need people who can code in PHP (and their backups when they leave). Probably in practice we'd need IT to do that, so that's more months and budget required. Obviously anything stored in the cloud is out of the question, just the authorizations and contracts to do that would take a year. So in the end it ends up as a shared spreadsheet.
  - fetbaffe 6y ago
    How do you share the spreadsheet? Shared network drive? By email? With Excel?
    - benhurmarcel 6y ago
      Shared network drive usually
  - bitlevel 6y ago
    I'm sure, at a push, a PC could be co-opted to do the work while a server (even online) could then be brought up to speed and the data migrated - but that's your use case. What we're talking about here is a government department who do have access to servers, but choose not to use them (or so it would seem).

by TwoBit 6y ago

It's hard to say from here what would be the best thing for them to use, but simply using a modern spreadsheet format instead of the ancient xls seems fine for interchange.

bitlevel 6y ago

There's not much to stop the devs from using open source tools to create a PHP web frontend and db backend for this data - and secure it as well. Heck, if they still need to export, they could do that from the data too. Sure - use Excel for POC, but get that DB backend up pronto.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
benhurmarcel 6y ago
I work in an office that relies way too much on Excel. To consider your solution, first showstopper, it needs a server. We don't have a server, nor anyone who knows how to manage one. We'd need to ask IT, that will take months and they'll require a budget transfer, so we'd need to request it to management (which will need a business case to convince) and involve the finance guys. We can't just plug a RaspberryPi into the wall, not only that would get me fired, but also it wouldn't be able to connect to anything without the company's certificates for the proxy or whatever. Second, we need people who can code in PHP (and their backups when they leave). Probably in practice we'd need IT to do that, so that's more months and budget required. Obviously anything stored in the cloud is out of the question, just the authorizations and contracts to do that would take a year. So in the end it ends up as a shared spreadsheet.
- fetbaffe 6y ago
  How do you share the spreadsheet? Shared network drive? By email? With Excel?
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    Shared network drive usually
- bitlevel 6y ago
  I'm sure, at a push, a PC could be co-opted to do the work while a server (even online) could then be brought up to speed and the data migrated - but that's your use case. What we're talking about here is a government department who do have access to servers, but choose not to use them (or so it would seem).