Excel, VBA, and the Internet 1

[DrMingle]

I am not sure where I need to go from here. Over the last couple of months we have refined (using this forum) the VBA script we use to search the internet.

The Tool:
Using Excel the user types in critical data points and clicks submit. The tool brings up seven different websites, enters the critical data points and presents the results of those findings all under 30 seconds compared to the typical eight minutes previously.

The Problem:
All the users use different versions of IE. At different parts of the day the bandwith gets eaten up. The tools is not stable enough (currently) to handle all these diffferent variables. One constraint I cannot overcome is the IE versions, they are what they are.

Temporary Solution Currently Being Used:
To customize the script for each user to match the speed or IE version. (Laborious...)

I need your help:
Is there a way to improve the stability of using Excel from each person desktop?
Is there a way to put this Excel tool on an external website and operate it without having to have the user download it to their desktop and still get reliable results?
Does it make sense that this needs to be created in another computer language to make it more stable and useable for the user via an external website?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[kjv1611]

If this is in an office environment, what is the reason you cannot overcome the multiple versions of IE? Standardization generally offers a huge benefit to businesses. If it really is totally out of your hands, that's understandable. If it's out of your hands, b/c of preferences only, then you might want to demonstrate to those who make decisions the difficulty it is causing.

If you can do it without Excel, say in a web script, say PHP or whatever other language, then that would probably be ideal, I would think.

What is the purpose of putting it in Excel, originally?

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[DrMingle]

This is an office environment.

I used Excel because it was on all machines and we had the same version.

I am simply trying to create a more stable environment and thought putting on the web would suffice.

Would I be able to build it as a web application (not an install)?

Thanks for the advice...

 

[kjv1611]

The Tool:
Using Excel the user types in critical data points and clicks submit. The tool brings up seven different websites, enters the critical data points and presents the results of those findings all under 30 seconds compared to the typical eight minutes previously.

Would I be able to build it as a web application (not an install)?

If you can do it without Excel, say in a web script, say PHP or whatever other language, then that would probably be ideal, I would think.

If there is no specific reason other than b/c it's available that you are using Excel, then the answer is yes - yes it can be done in a web application. That is especially the case if you have a server you can run the web app off of. If your office uses its own servers, and especially if one is already a web server, you could use that... of course, that has to be approved by whomever has the authority.

For that, you'd just need to build a userform web page, and have the scripts written behind the form for gathering the data from the other websites, etc. If you base the form on top of some database - MS SQL Server, MySQL, etc, then you could have typical data there in the database that could be queried from to also lessen the work load. Then, so long as you're able to stay away from adding a bunch of flash and such things, you can keep it to where any machine running any web browser can get the job done.

For any sort of user form, the CMS suites aren't bad. Of course, if your shop runs Microsoft stuff, and it can be in the budget, SharePoint works well for Intranet applications. I personally like Drupal the most right now, for a CMS, but SharePoint does have it's pros for an office environment, for sure.

Some references:

http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

http://drupal.org/

- my current favorite

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx

- good for businesses, when you have the budget for it, of course.

http://wordpress.org/

- another popular CMS

http://www.joomla.org/

- ditto

Of course, if your company is mostly a Microsoft customer, there are a couple other options: Microsoft Visual Studio web design, and MS Expression (replaced FrontPage, but is closer to the power of DreamWeaver):

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Web_Overview.aspx

And of course, there are lots of other tools available if you want to design the whole deal yourself. There's obviously Adobe (formerly Macromedia) DreamWeaver:

http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/

So, is it possible to do a web application with no local install of anything required? Absolutely. Can you do it? I don't know - that's up to you. If you have the time, approval, and desire to do so, and understand anything much about computers, I'd say yes you can. But that just depends upon you, and what your needs are. If it's just a basic form, you very well may be able to use one of the CMSes to do what you want without needing to know how to program the scripts. It just depends upon how advanced. And you could always outsource the more advanced parts if need be.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[DrMingle]

Very valuable information....

Thank you for taking the time.