Spreadsheet to database

jobs
1

Hello all,

I have just started my own business in the IT and Electronic Security industry. A large part of the business is performing audits on existing sites. This is basically taking down login information, serial numbers, IP addresses, screenshot, photos, etc. We mostly do this via spreadsheet but its messy. I have this giant spreadsheet that has been added to over the years. It works but its clunky.

I am looking at the possibility of converting this spreadsheet to a database. Just briefly thinking about it, the requirements would be:

  1. Layered of course (Tables for unique details like IP address, Mac, and hostname and pages for data entry.)
  2. Web based with ability to upload screenshots or use device inbuilt camera
  3. Basic user access control (User has access to certain GUI input pages with no table access. Only the admin will have table access)
  4. Shared so multiple people can make changes at once and see other peoples changes in realtime
  5. Seperate database for each project, easily brought up in a docker of some sort (We wont need to have multiple sites sharing a huge database and prefer to easily start up an instance when the database is required)
  6. Database can be stored either on a server or on technicians laptop and brought up with a few clicks. When finished, closed and stored for future reference.
  7. If at all possible, but not imperative, import designer straight to tables from spreadsheets

I’m hoping either someone from this community would like to have a go, or point me in the right direction. I heard that their are online software tendering sites but I couldnt find any by searching. I don’t have a lot of money (Australian currency is doing OK at the moment) but I’m hoping this is a pretty easy one for someone out there.

If interested, PM me and I will send you the spreadsheet I need converted.

Thanks,
Mike.

1 Like
2

You can try Airtable which is a spreadsheets on steroids.

1 Like
3

That’s exactly what I was going to recommend! It’s a great halfway point between a spreadsheet and a a database.

I’m not sure if it has offline support though, it might be online only

1 Like
5

Thanks for the advice. But hit the nail on the head. Cannot be used offline. Which is why I’m looking at a self contained database that can be used either online or offline.

I can achieve what I need with Microsoft Access. But then Im in the same position. No time to figure out how to do it. Which is why I thought it would be best to pay a community member to build one using an open source solution. And after reading a fair bit, I personally think Meteor is one of the best database platforms out there. HTML5, NoSQL Mongo, and JavaScript. Thats a pretty cool combination.

7

@mallen12 I think it’s pretty easy to import your spreadsheet data into any database, but databases don’t give you super friendly user interfaces by default. That’s why spreadsheets are so popular, because they are like a database but give you a user interface that is “acceptable”, not great though.

WIth Meteor, you could build a better user interface to view & edit your data, but that part is building an entire app, which is a good amount of work, even though Meteor makes that easier than any other platform I know of.

Airtable is a very good solution, I personally use Airtable a lot, and the mobile app is offline capable and pretty nice for data entry & display. Airtable also has an API, so you could start with data entry there and use the API to get your data into MongoDB, so you could then work on adding features to your app over time.

Considering the Airtable team has raised $159 million so far, they’ve put a lot into their apps. You might be able to find a Meteor Dev to build what you want for $10k, but $100k is a more reasonable number to build a full app. Meteor can give you “offline” access to a database, but that’s a bit extra work for other users who access the app. If you were the only user who ever acced an app you build, so you ran it on a local laptop, you could have offline access form the get go, but I’m assuming you would want various people to all work from the same database data.

Check out Airtable, like actually try it, then if it doesn’t work for you, you could hire someone to build your app, but app development is not low cost :slight_smile: