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Setting Up a Spreadsheet Accessible by Everyone in the Office
The Crowing One
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've done some googling and cannot, for the life of me, figure out if the following is possible:
I work in an office where there is a lot of back and forth between myself and the employees I support. We have to trade specific information all day long, and at the moment this is done chaotically through email. In my quest to better productivity and streamline our systems I want to have a central Excel spreadsheet (or even document) that can be accessed and edited by everyone involved. I have done similar stuff through simple network sharing before, the problem is that everyone who needs to be involved is spread throughout our entire region in three offices.
The grand idea is to have my people edit and add information to the spreadsheet that I can then pull directly off and go about my day with a minimum of frantic searching to ensure that I have everything I need. The information conveyed is all simple text and the system would need to be accessible from multiple locations.
Anyone have an idea of where I could get some info on something like this, or am I just dreaming?
I work in an office where there is a lot of back and forth between myself and the employees I support. We have to trade specific information all day long, and at the moment this is done chaotically through email. In my quest to better productivity and streamline our systems I want to have a central Excel spreadsheet (or even document) that can be accessed and edited by everyone involved. I have done similar stuff through simple network sharing before, the problem is that everyone who needs to be involved is spread throughout our entire region in three offices.
The grand idea is to have my people edit and add information to the spreadsheet that I can then pull directly off and go about my day with a minimum of frantic searching to ensure that I have everything I need. The information conveyed is all simple text and the system would need to be accessible from multiple locations.
Anyone have an idea of where I could get some info on something like this, or am I just dreaming?
The Crowing One on
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Somewhat. I have concerns about security for anything web-based.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I agree - you could make a very simple (internal only, if needed) web front end so people can add things to a database that you monitor.
It's not a great solution but its free and easy to setup.
Only one person could be editing it at a time, but if you want version control software so multiple people can work on one document at the same time that's a different ballgame.
Thanks!
The email system also guarantees trackability, so you can find out who didn't send what at what time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharepoint
Put an excel spreadsheet on it and everyone can edit it
FYI - you can use a database like mySQL for free and write a very simple front end in PHP for free as well.
My company has an obstinate IT department which is quite slow and typically ends up just avoiding any questions or needs of other employees, in the hope that they'll eventually go away. As some departments have rather high-tech needs, though, my business unit in particular often just puts shit on Google Docs so they can share it among themselves quickly and easily.
You can do this with Excel and some central microsoft-based servers to handle access control, but, again, that's an IT concern. Google Docs spreadsheet is only accessible to those who are explicitly shared on the document -- and Google, arguably -- making it as secure as something you would email around. Doesn't take much for an employee to simply fwd an email with sensitive data to someone outside the company. Having it on Google Docs where you can see who a doc has been shared with is arguably much more secure than simple email. It also reduces the problem of multiple edits on a single document occurring simultaneously.
The solution was for each person in a department to edit a specific document on a network share. They could edit their numbers as needed.
Another spreadsheet was set up, that only the department head would access, which had formulas that would use the other spreadsheets as the source.
its crude, inelegant, inefficient and a bitch to configure .. but until you want to spend money on a proper solution, or work with proper multi-user systems.. that is the thing to do.
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Came here to say this. Access works pretty much exactly like Excel. Simple, familiar, commonly used, secure, and has the features you need.