Best way/tools to use to put a Form on Intranet site

[JohnBates]

Hi Web developers -

I have been asked to design and implement a way for our employees to submit requests to our IT dept. (Presently they fill-out a paper form and deliver it to the IT dept) We want to reduce the paper flow, so the idea is to create an Intranet-based form that the user will complete and submit electronically.

The tools at my disposal are: HTML, FrontPage 2000, JavaScript and ASP on a Windows NT 4 network. (I know very little about ASP)

I'm really asking for suggestions: How would you go about this; what tools would you use ? I would like to keep the solution as simple as possible.


Thanks for your ideas. John

 

[mow]

There are a number of alternatives (more than I know). But here are 3:

1. This is very simple but i've not used it - if you developed your pages in frontpage, you can set up your form properties and put a mailto address in the action box. When u submit the form, it would open the clients email application and insert the to address & subject (if u've set them up) and insert the form contents (as an attachment i believe).

2. I've used this and I love it. If u can run CGI scripts off your server, then get formmail.pl from matt's script archives (

http://worldwidemart.com/scripts/formmail.shtml).

It comes with some documentation, so u'll set up your own parameters (IP address etc).

3. If u'd rather save the submissions from the form to database, then ASP is great for that. You could create a very simple database in access (which your IT dept would then access) and write sql scripts to submit your form to the database. If u need help with this, try out

http://www.w3schools.com/

- there are asp, sql, ado etc tutorials.

NB: You could submit to a database and also send out an email to the recipient simultaneously

Bon Chance
-Mowunmi

 

[Bentley22]

I suppose it depends on how complicated this form is. If it's just the persons name, e-mail, and suggestions, then the mailto or formmail solution would be ideal. However their big drawback is a lack of presentation. If you have a lengthy form with many different questions, you may want to go with the database, to help you organize all the information. The amount of knowledge required to get a small ASP webapp off the ground is surpisingly little, I was able to get a decent online store up a running in about 3 days. Additionally, for simplicity's sake, you could write another webapp that retrieves the data for you, and presents it very nicly. Granted, the database is the most complicated solution, but I think it gives the best results.

 

[JohnBates]

Thanks mowunmi and Bentley22 for taking the time to respond...

This will be a fairly complex form, with a few check-boxes, maybe a drop-down list for the user's Dept. #, and the usual text fields for name etc.

So based on your suggestions, I will probably build an ASP doc and a SQL Server table to store the data.

You gave me exactly what I needed to get started.
Thanks, John

 

[rufc]

Bentley22, I`m looking into integrating a database into a website but have no idea how to go about it. The url you gave is a very good resource, many thanks but is there an actual link you can give me for a database/asp novice?

I also need to set up an online store, gow did you go about that?

thanks....

 

[Bentley22]

1. are you looking for a tutorial for a novice, or an example, and
2. are you trying to build an online store yourself, or is this a package you already have, and are deploying?

 

[Bentley22]

Very well, censor me for no apparent reason.

 

[rufc]

1.A tutorial to make an online database and an example for if I get stuck if at all possible please.

2. A friend has a website but would like to start selling his service (so there would be only two things to sell, one for £60 and one for £100, expected sales = 100 per year only).

Is this possible? thanks

 

[Bentley22]

Webmonkey provides some excellent tutorials on this subject, you can find them here:

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/backend/databases/

The first two are required reading, and the rest are interesting. If your looking for something that is easy to get started on, I'd suggest using a Microsoft Access Database. Besides, in comparison to other systems, very cheap!

If you don't have a shopping cart set up yet, and are still learning, I suggest this:

http://www.urlogy.com/asp/ashopkart.asp

I used this to learn on, and is a good base to start from. Be warned, you will need to know the basics of ASP scripting to do this.

Webmonkey's ASP tutorials:

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/programming/asp/

If your new to all of this, it's going to seem all a bit daunting. However, it can be picked up fairly quickly. Remember, theres a bunch of tutorials out there, plus these forumns.

Good luck!