Hi Monika,
There is no simple and elegant way to get from where you seem to be to
where you want to be. There is an unstated assumption that all of your
users at least have systems at home capable of running Windows ]
My knee-jerk reaction to the question is to have them use Excel
spreadsheet templates that you will have already programmed and given to
them that they complete at home AND at work (so that they're always using
the same tool in the same way). That assumes that they at least have Excel
at home. Their spreadsheets must be deposited in special folders and
should have date coded names. OR they always email the spreadsheets to you
and you do the rest. You then do what you need to do from the Access side
to identify and read in their data.
You can create Word templates for them to use. You set up the template
with bookmarks and the like. They use the same template and process at work
and at home to encourage compliance and accuracy. They email you the doc
files and you manage it from there on. You'd need to use Automation within
Access to read the Word documents.
If the facility you contemplate is sufficiently worthwhile for your
organization to spend a few hundred $ you can purchase the Office Developer
Edition for your version of Access. That will allow you to distribute an
Access runtime with your application. Your users won't need to have Access
on their home systems. That still leaves you with the issue of getting
their data to you system. The simplest thing is for them to email you a
copy of their back end (assumes you're righteous and will break your app
into a front end and a back end).
In line with the above paragraph, I have done something further along
those lines for a non-techie market (medical transcriptionists) who
sometimes need to share information. There are sometimes groups of
transcriptionists supporting the same practices. Within a practice they
want to be able to share the common information such as practitioners and
patients including names, ID numbers, account numbers, etc. That promotes
accuracy and saves incredible amounts of time since they don't all have to
enter the lists from scratch. I created an Export function and an Import
function. It took me a little time to think it through and to implement it.
The best mode of operation is to have all of the tools on the company
system and to enable workers at home to logon to the company system and do
their work as if at their desks. }
hth
