Stuck between a rock and a programming place.

ID:44356
 
Jun 20 2008, 4:38 am
Recently I was asked by my employer to find a better, preferably free, replacement for our scheduling software. It is a little dated, and runs on a database backend with no main server. Basically, it accesses the SQL database directly, as apposed to calling MySQL to do it. This comes into issue when you realize we have 30 users constantly using this program, which means at any given moment there may be 5 people editing the same database, with no master server controlling rights. This creates a whole slew of problems, the biggest one being instability.

So I come to you, BYOND, in hopes of getting a few questions answered. I know we have a rather large population of working adults, so perhaps some of you can give me some good tips. My first question is: Are there any good replacements, preferably free, that will have a similar layout to our old system(pictured). This flat view of all employees schedule at once is very, very important to our firm. We must know instantly who is and isn't in an appointment, and I have yet to find a layout that does a better job of this(but I'm open to ideas).

Failing my first question, my second is: Does anyone know any easy programming languages that I could create such a program with? I've looked at the GUI options for a few high level programming languages, and couldn't find any stock widgets that would produce such an effect, so I honestly am at a loss as to where to begin.

Any help I can get from you guys would be great. And if you can recommend a programming language and widget/method, any further support would be great too. If I do make a working schedule program for the office, I plan on releasing it open sourced, so that anyone else who has the problem can have a solution too.
Jun 20 2008, 4:54 am
Delphi will provide a grid component, as part of my Computing project I used it for a similar purpose last year (showing who was scheduled for appointments at a hairdresser). I think you can either provide text for each cell or operate on the canvas, but I'm not sure on the latter.
Anyway, Delphi's pretty straightforward to pick up and use (although I'm not too keen on its pointer support, but this might not be a problem for you). If you want, I'll send you the source code from my project for you to have a look at.
The only problem with Delphi is that it isn't free, with Borland's website pricing it at around $900 for the pro version (which wasn't an issue for me as I got it from school).
Jun 20 2008, 5:00 am
I'd love to see what you produced, but I highly doubt I would use Delphi, because of the price. As stated above, I plan on open sourcing the program, and open sourcing a program that uses a language that is not open sourced, or at least not free, is kinda useless, as few developers could really use it. Also, for that price I could nearly afford the new client/server version of our current software.

Now if any of the technology you used could be easily translated to python or perl, that would be great. Some screnshots at least would be nice. Knowing that Delphi can do it is knowing that other languages can, so screenshots alone are of value.
Jun 20 2008, 5:06 am
Let me add, I've looked into solutions like PHP in the past, but I did not like them, mostly because AJAX can be more problems than it is worth. It would take a lot of reinventing the wheel to get what I want, and printing support(a necessity as well) is very poor.
Jun 20 2008, 5:25 am
Why not use a wiki based system?
Jun 20 2008, 5:30 am
A Wiki for scheduling? I don't see that working. One of the most important parts of scheduling is everything being tied together automatically. You create a new event, and it automatically gets placed onto the main page, as well as the page for the user it is entered to.

Perhaps there is a wiki system for this, but I've never seen one. This is for an accounting firm, not a programming company. I can't expect users to do anything more than fill out a basic form for an event.
Jun 20 2008, 6:35 am
We use Outlook at my workplace, so I don't have much experience with the alternatives. Here are a few links that might be worth checking out:

http://www.google.com/calendar
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
http://www.calendarzone.com/Software/
Jun 20 2008, 6:49 am
I personally use Google Calendar, we have Outlook at the office, and I've played around with Sunbird. The failing of all 3 where that they didn't give a good enough overview of the office as a whole and allow everyone to edit others calendars as necessary. When attempting to view everyone's calendar at once, outlook was pretty much worthless, and the permissions for editing a calendar were not easy to setup. Plus, I have this thing against exchange.

I'll look through calendarzone.com though, it does have quite a list. Something on that list may do what I need.

I know I'm being picky, but I do welcome all suggestions, I just need something rather specific, so most products wont do. I was really hoping that the software we were using was not unique, as it is a rather simple software, that does nothing really special, it just does everything simple.
Jun 20 2008, 7:51 am
Here's a few things that *aren't* free, but might be feasibly priced for an office with 30 people in it:

http://www.appointment-plus.com/pricing.php
http://www.bmscentral.com/store/store.aspx
http://www.cybermatrix.com/psprices.html
Jun 20 2008, 7:57 am
Heh, the cybermatrix one is the one we already use! You could argue that the price isn't too high, but we already dish out about my yearly wages on software as it is, so we are trying to cut back without being held back. We have hit our current 25 license cap, and we plan on growing more, so we don't want to have to dish out a bunch more money every few years because he have out grown our software.
Jun 20 2008, 8:00 am
BMS looks pretty, and it looks like it might be able to replace ProShed, but it is considerably more expensive. If we can't find a better solution, we will just buy the newest version of cybermatrix, but I'm looking for a better, cheaper solution, which I have yet to find >.>

OSS, why must you fail business soooo!!!
Jun 20 2008, 9:23 am
Darn! Well, as the preacher in Rock Ridge said: "Son, you're on your own." :)
Jun 20 2008, 9:46 am
Heh. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I tried out Outlook and Sunbird again, and they both had show stopping problems. Sunbird and gCal had the same problems, it was hard to know who had what appointment, and going to a single users calendar easily(unchecking 30 boxes isn't very fun). Office the showing single user problem, and when you had all 30(or even 10) users onscreen, you could nolonger read names.

All three of them had problems with easy network management. I would have to go to and configure all 30 workstations manually, and if I wanted to add a new user, or remove a terminated one, I would once again have to go to every station.

Thanks for the suggestions none the less. Anyone else got any ideas? I was really hoping someone knew some existing Open Sourced Software that would fit the bill, as I assumed it was a commonly needed piece of software.