***************Background***************
I am the manager of a drafting department with 30 employees. I have been
scheduling work assignments for 25 years, and have relied upon an Excel
spreadsheet to do so. Engineers (130 of 'em) send me their drafting
requests, and I fit them into the schedule. I have looked over the years
for an app that would do this for me, but my needs are so specific that all
the 3rd-party apps just aren't quite focused enough for me, or else are too
expensive in the company's eyes. One of the things I'm trying to do is give
the engineers more control over their drafting requests. Plus, although
I've worked in VB for a number of years, I'd like to learn dotnet. So, I
finally decided to try to write one.
I thought I'd ask you gurus for advice as to how to proceed. Based on how
I've been using the spreadsheet, here's *basically* what I'm shooting for:
1. An user opens my app and is presented with an Excel-type grid.
Drafter's names are down the left side;dates are across the top. There are
7 columns for the display of one week's schedule. Next to each drafter's
name are bars (think Gantt chart) showing their assignments that week. The
bars are color-coded by project.
2. The user can mouseover any bar and get a popup that shows the summary of
how many hours, etc., are scheduled on that project for that week.
3. The user can use "previous" and "next" buttons to have the app display
different weeks' schedules.
4. The user clicks a button to add a drafting task to the schedule, and a
new modal form opens. On this form s/he can pick the desired drafter and
the project from combo boxes. The user enters the number of hours, and the
starting day, and clicks an OK button. *IF* the drafter is not already
assigned during that time, it gets entered into the schedule. Otherwise,
they get a message telling them they're trying to overbook.
And now, my...
***************Questions***************
1. Would the datagrid be the control to use for my basic schedule? Can I
color-code the cells?
2. Would storing the actual data in an Access database, and using my app as
a front end for displaying it, be a good choice?
3. Could anyone recommend any good examples for something like this, such as
working with datagrids, creating mouseover popups, etc.
Many thanks, in advance, for any help and suggestions you can offer.
