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Preben Finnøy Olafsen
3,459 PointsWant to create an app to make my job easier, anyone that can point me in the right direction?
Hello,
I will try to make this as short as possible. I work in a electronic store / warehouse that have about 5000+ items. Twice a year we check all the items to make sure nothing is stolen, and once a week we check all the most valuable things we have (phones/gopro/apple) etc.
Now we all run around with lists that have been printed from excel. Which is not really effective.
My idea is simple, I think? I want to create an app that allows me to "feed" it a excel document and read the list and use the information. The app will need to show all the necessary information One-for-one big and clearly so its easy to see. It needs to show Product number and name of the product (all this information can be found in the excel sheet).
Now imagine running around in this warehouse. We look down on our tablet. It says the product name and number clearly. We run over there check how many there is of that particular item. We can then write in how many we actually have, press continue on the app. Then the next item appears which used to be in the excel sheet.
Iknow this is kinda messy explained. I just need a sense of direction of what I need to learn to start working on it. Especially the entire "feeding" an app a excel document.
As always all help is appreciated,
2 Answers
Karen Freeman-Smith
29,248 PointsCheck out the Android & iOS titles in the library to learn how to create mobile apps. Excel spreadsheets can be exported to a number of formats that can be read by pretty much any programming language. The file you export would probably be read in like an API - so look for courses that talk about using APIs in your apps.
Steve Hunter
57,712 PointsHi Preben,
I'm guessing the Excel spreadsheet is a stock report from a database that manages your stock and orders/deliveries within an application?
If that's the case, you can miss out producing the Excel report and parsing it into a mobile application; you can link your mobile application directly to the database so your data is real-time. You'd need to speak to your IT guy to see what the implementation is but it's likely to be a variant of SQL. The database may come with its own API or you can query it directly.
There's a course on Android database integration in Treehouse called 'Android Data Persistence' but I'd say the first thing to check with is your IT guy or application owner. They may have an easy fix for this which would allow you to sit your iOS or Android app on the existing database negating the need to pull a report from the stock controller and then reload it back in. That would tend to be error prone - but if required, you would want to look at utilising JSON for the data format; more on converting Excel to JSON here.
The mobile access is a great idea - a way to save time & money and produce far more accurate stocktakes; however, keep it simple and utlisie the power of the database that you already have rather than reinventing that in Excel. Do the right thing well; speak to the application owner or database administrator and explain what you need to use their data to do. You can then work with them to integrate your mobile app into the stock control application database seamlessly.
I hope that helps,
Steve.
Preben Finnøy Olafsen
3,459 PointsPreben Finnøy Olafsen
3,459 PointsThank you! Just the kind of answer I was looking for.