Timeline Control?

[krose]

I am looking for a control that would look like a timeline (12 hours)
which would allow the user to click at a particular location on the
timeline, then allow characteristics to be associated with that point.

Free or For Profit either one.

The idea is I am developing an activity tracking system for a
manufacturing environment where they want to track activities that are
occuring throughout a shift. Activities have start and stop times and
have characteristics.

I would like to modify/edit the times if they make a mistake (my vision
is to be able to slide the points on the timeline thus adjusting the
start and stop times on the fly).

If anyone has any other ideas on UI development, I would like to hear
them.

Thanks in advance,
Kevin

[Keith W]

"krose" <kr***@bluebonnet.net> wrote in message
news:11*********************@g44g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...

I am looking for a control that would look like a timeline (12 hours)
which would allow the user to click at a particular location on the
timeline, then allow characteristics to be associated with that point.

Free or For Profit either one.

The idea is I am developing an activity tracking system for a
manufacturing environment where they want to track activities that are
occuring throughout a shift. Activities have start and stop times and
have characteristics.

I would like to modify/edit the times if they make a mistake (my vision
is to be able to slide the points on the timeline thus adjusting the
start and stop times on the fly).

If anyone has any other ideas on UI development, I would like to hear
them.

Thanks in advance,
Kevin

I'm sure it would be possible to associate time of day values with a pseudo
time line using rectangles on a form, is that the kind of thing you had in
mind? What sort of resolution are we talking?

Keith.
www.keithwilby.com

[krose]

I think a MS Outlook style control or Gantt chart control might do the
trick, but I cannot find one that works with MS Access.

I found the following, but it does not appear they will work with MS
Access. Does anyone have any experience with these, or could recommend
another?

Janus Schedule and Timeline Control for .NET
ActiveGantt
Component Go - WebDailyCalendar 1.0

Thanks again,
Kevin

[Hank]

Kevin,

I do something very similar to what you are talking about.
Our factory workers clock on and off of jobs throughout the day so all
labor is captured and we know how much time is spent on each part. I
do a graphical display of these events but never thought of adjusting
them on the graph. Another poster asked about what resolution you
need.

Because people often have clocking errors or simply forget to
punch, I have a time correction screen which displays the selected day
and employee and allows us to adjust the times, the job number, or the
workstation. We use this information in many reports and to check the
accuracy of our job estimates. It is also useful to know where a job
is at any given time. If a customer calls about a part, we can enter
the job number and immediately see how many operations in the job
stream that have been started and finished.
It is also useful in tracking problems. If a braze joint
fails, we can track it back to the person who made the joint and,
perhaps, do some retraining, if necessary, or adjust our QC procedures.

If you need more information, please ask.
Hank Reed

krose wrote:

I think a MS Outlook style control or Gantt chart control might do the
trick, but I cannot find one that works with MS Access.

I found the following, but it does not appear they will work with MS
Access. Does anyone have any experience with these, or could recommend
another?

Janus Schedule and Timeline Control for .NET
ActiveGantt
Component Go - WebDailyCalendar 1.0

Thanks again,
Kevin

[krose]

Hank,

I have currently resorted to building a UI with command buttons
(labeled in 10 minute intervals, which is specified by the project)
down the form (I am calling it a shift grid). I will have the user
click on the stop time of the activity. It will then bring up a form
which will allow them to select the activity and its characteristics
(the start time will be the previous stop time, which for this
application is reasonable). Upon saving the activity info, they can
return to the shift grid, but the command buttons representing time
which has been logged will be disabled, thus only allowing them to log
time moving forward.

This seems like it will work great if there are no mistakes, but as we
know there will be (probably in the first shift that uses the app!)
So...I am thinking about this, and your time correction screen sounds
like a good idea.

My original thought was if they could simply slide their activity times
up or down (similar to how you move time on an Outlook calendar) this
would avoid overlap/conflict of activities' times, while giving a
graphical view.

I did find a few controls (FarPoint's Daily Planit and DBI
Solutions::Schedule ctMDay control), but thought I might give my
"homemade" solution a whirl first.

Thanks for your reply, and I will keep you posted if I come up with
anything that seems "slick" enough to help others with.

Kevin

[Hank]

Kevin,

I should have metioned that on the Time Correction screen, as
I said, you see all of an employee's clock ins for the selected date.
First you select a particular entry and then there are a series of
buttons to adjust that entry by one minute, ten minutes, one hour, or
four hours (Up or Down). That saves a lot of typing and therefore
typing errors.

Hank