Modernizing the Access User Experience (1 Viewer)

Thales750

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I do agree with the last few posts, well-said. The whole "not everything needs to/should be web-based" is one of those, "Say it again!" statements. I agree.

Haven't really gotten into Power suite with my side-clients, so don't know much about the licensing terms.
Suppose I should be glad my bread and butter is still corporate world, where we awake each morning and are told what oxygen we shall breathe that day, just about.

I have a feeling that the cost structure will continue to evolve, as Microsoft's decisions seem dumb sometimes--but I doubt they are dumb enough to completely abandon the entirety of the world's smaller business clients, as it's too significant to do so.
Modern small businesses run almost entirely on mobile devises.
 

Pat Hartman

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Modern small businesses run almost entirely on mobile devises.
Not in my world. No one I know wants to do anything using the tiny keyboard and screen of a phone when they are doing actual work. Email is about it and that is tedious with two finger typing. Oh yeah, they play games on their phones too but then that isn't work.
 

Isaac

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Modern small businesses run almost entirely on mobile devises.

Same as Pat - not any of the ones I work with. They do do a lot of remote work, though - widespread in my clients.
All I have to do for that is rent some AWS or virtual private servers, though.

With some exception. I did have a client a few years ago that wanted more mobile device stuff, so for him I used Google Sheets with AppSheet. It worked well enough for simple data entry forms and simple reports.
 

Pat Hartman

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So, @Thales750 , perhaps you can tell us what actual work small businesses do on their phones? Some real work is possible on a notepad if it has a big enough screen but not much. You need specialized small forms with limited data that are different from the desktop versions. Same with reports and even spreadsheets. Scrolling is awkward without a mouse.

I have instances where clients wanted certain kinds of field interaction but they wanted to do it with laptops, not tiny keyboards and screens.
 

Thales750

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Not in my world. No one I know wants to do anything using the tiny keyboard and screen of a phone when they are doing actual work. Email is about it and that is tedious with two finger typing. Oh yeah, they play games on their phones too but then that isn't work.
I didn't say phone, I said mobile devises.
They do everything from sales and marketing to project management. Even restaurants have cloud based systems, where the management can have live updates from anywhere.

I have close ties to home building and other type of construction, they are almost exclusively on cloud/mobile.
 
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Thales750

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Same as Pat - not any of the ones I work with. They do do a lot of remote work, though - widespread in my clients.
All I have to do for that is rent some AWS or virtual private servers, though.

With some exception. I did have a client a few years ago that wanted more mobile device stuff, so for him I used Google Sheets with AppSheet. It worked well enough for simple data entry forms and simple reports.
Do you have a preferred service you use? With the Appsheet did you connect the data to your databases?
 
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Pat Hartman

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If you mean that they use notepads, say notepads. I did mention that those had large enough screen areas to be somewhat useful for viewing at least. Any app I build with Access can be run on a notepad that runs an appropriate browser if I am using Citrix or RD as long as I mind the form size.

Even a laptop is a "mobile device" as long as your battery is charged and you have an internet connection. So pretty much anything except your desktop and refrigerator are mobile. "Mobile" devices are more like phones, watches, and handheld scanners.
 

Isaac

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@Thales750
Honestly back when I did this work I used Google Sheets as the back end. Partly this decision I made was due to Appsheet's licensing structure at the time, which they have changed, like...5 times since then. At the time they were just getting started, and really appreciated their customers more - I believe if your back end was Sheets at that time, licensing was free if you had a small # of users, which I did. I remember days when I actually got support emails back directly from Praveen, one of the founders, not sure if he still there.

Now their licensing structures have changed, but also more powerful - sql server is totally an available back end. I have no knowledge or skill in how to "open up" a sql server to that type of access, so I haven't used it like that, but they connect to a lot of great db's.

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Appsheet's capabilities are also 100x what they once were. When I was using it they didn't even have push notifications! So I guess con razon now they charge a bit more.

I used to do some work for a major construction consulting firm. We used access, sql server and some web programming platforms a lot. I don't remember mobile apps being a part of it, but then again, like you said - 'mobile device' which is more expansive. I guess they just used laptops, as well as perhaps tablets that ran MS Programs (surface etc).

Appsheet's web-based dev is really awesome - and loads of fun. live simulator on the right hand side of the screen to simulate any screen size.
 

Thales750

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If you mean that they use notepads, say notepads. I did mention that those had large enough screen areas to be somewhat useful for viewing at least. Any app I build with Access can be run on a notepad that runs an appropriate browser if I am using Citrix or RD as long as I mind the form size.

Even a laptop is a "mobile device" as long as your battery is charged and you have an internet connection. So pretty much anything except your desktop and refrigerator are mobile. "Mobile" devices are more like phones, watches, and handheld scanners.
Yeah, not so much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_device

I mean they use Apps on mobile devises, they use browsers on any mobile devise, they store all of their company data on the cloud and they access it from mobile devices, the cloud doesn't care which platform, or screen size. And yes, if they have their refrigerators wired as IoT then they access them from mobile devises.

I'm trying to figure out way to survive and grow in the post desktop era. Pretending the rock hasn't fallen yet is not the way to make a future.
 

Pat Hartman

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And yes, if they have their refrigerators wired as IoT then they access them from mobile devises.
By that definition, my desktop is a "mobile" device.
 

JMongi

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I'm trying to figure out way to survive and grow in the post desktop era. Pretending the rock hasn't fallen yet is not the way to make a future.
No one is suggesting to the contrary. I'm not sure what bee got in your bonnet, but I would suggest slightly less bombast and more figuring out what you do and do not know and the proper way of talking about it. This little tete-a-tete about mobile devices is pedantic and is missing the point entirely.

I didn't say phone, I said mobile devises.
They do everything from sales and marketing to project management. Even restaurants have cloud based systems, where the management can have live updates from anywhere.
Cloud based infrastructure does not equate to mobile devices. Cellular phones were "mobile devices" long before they were upgraded to smart phone status. Tablets are still mobile devices even if they never once connect to WiFI or cellular service. Cloud based (i.e. centrally networked storage repositories accessed remotely via a network connection) have been around practically since the beginning of the computer. "Cloud based" is just a marketing buzzword that has certain modern connotations associated with it.

I mean they use Apps on mobile devises, they use browsers on any mobile devise, they store all of their company data on the cloud and they access it from mobile devices, the cloud doesn't care which platform, or screen size. And yes, if they have their refrigerators wired as IoT then they access them from mobile devises.

I'm trying to figure out way to survive and grow in the post desktop era. Pretending the rock hasn't fallen yet is not the way to make a future.
I work for a small company. We do not store all our company data on the cloud and our president might actually have a stroke if someone suggested we do so. I know of very few small businesses that store their company data on the cloud. Some do, certainly not all. Plus, companies that do so are willing to pay for such a system and as Pat mentioned earlier, that's the real rub. The infrastructure to run Access over the web exists (Citrix, RDS, etc) but has real costs associated with it.

My company took forever to decide to upgrade to the cloud based version of Quickbooks despite the increase in data availability/functionality. Why? Because they didn't want their data in the cloud and they didn't want to pay the subscription service fee.

So, as Pat and others have pointed out. It isn't that Access CAN'T be used over the internet, or through a web browser on a mobile device. It's that doing so requires extra layers and extra cost that goes contrary to the target audience for Access in the first place. Build the functionality directly into Access and we can go about our day.
 

Isaac

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i've never personally been able to convince a small client to pay for Citrix, nor to maintain extra PC boxes sitting around (an office somewhere?) or something - and then RDP into those. however I have been able to convince them to use virtual machines and RDP into those.

also, my own application/interest/usefulness/niche for Power Apps is exclusively in the mega-large, corporate atmosphere..........in my opinion, THAT is where the hammer is fallen, and 1/2 of the major ones I've worked for are very close to officially banning Access forever, they've just seen too many failures. It is in this environment that Power Apps is my career-saver, or will be as I learn it more.
(and yes - it is hilarious that corporate america actually believes the result of hobby developers creating power apps will be any different than the past was with hobby developers creating access apps - but we say Yes Sir and move on....)

I'm in a P.A. seminar now - they're telling me like I'm 3 yrs old which is just what I need...........;)

In the next few months, Microsoft is cutting the licensing fees in half (i.e. 10 user/40 app, 5 user/20 app). I predicted in a recent post - that if MS wants this to become the next big thing, its costs will have to evolve and include many more options
 
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JMongi

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Looking at my previous post, I guess I had a bee in MY bonnet too! Been a rough morning. Apologize for the tone! Cheers :coffee::cool:
 

Pat Hartman

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I've had two clients seriously burned by trusting their data to the cloud. Companies that offer subscription products like QuickBooks make it as easy as possible to convert from their LAN products to the cloud because it's all dollar signs for them. Instead of having customers use the same old version for 10 years, they get to charge them a monthly fee forever. How can that be bad? Well for them, it's not bad at all but for the customer it could be a nightmarish loss of data. What if you don't like the cloud service? That happens you know. How do you ever go back? Not easily. The cloud services are not in the business of giving you back your data in any actually useful format. You don't own the software and you don't have custody of the database so how will you convert from QuickBooks in the cloud to a different accounting package? If the app was installed on your server, you would have access to the database and so you convert from one schema to another. I don't mean to pick on QuickBooks. In fact, they may even have an ODBC connection that you could use to get your data back.

My clients went with something else. A really big name shiny new object. This software promises to be all things to all people so like my "smart" phone, it is really bad at most tasks even its primary task of being a phone! They imported their contacts and worked with the product for a year. They wanted to move to something that worked better for them and couldn't get their data out. They were stuck with "reports" which I found OCR software to convert to spreadsheets but the conversion was sloppy so there was a huge amount of clean up.

If I were running a small business, my first question to a software "service" would be - how do I get my data back? If I can't get it back in a format that I can use to import into a replacement app, then I'm not going to use that product. PERIOD.

If I didn't want to manage hardware in my business, I would hire servers where I would install all my software and run them from the cloud but even that is fraught with danger. What if AWS decides they don't like your politics. What if you won't make the cake with the obscene (to you) words on top? Can AWS just cut you off from your network with 24 hours notice? Apparently yes.

Personally, all my home computers back up to the cloud using Carbonite. I still have custody of my data but I have the safety of an off site backup for emergencies. It has saved my bacon more than once. Turns out it is even convenient when I'm at a client site and forgot the current version of the FE I was going to install. I just log into Carbonite and pick up the backup copy:)
 

CJ_London

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I'm not convinced that cloud solutions are really more cost effective than access over citrix or terminal server. Basis of licencing varies enormously but there is still a cost - and weigh that against inability to bespoke (except at additional cost) and complexities of communicating with other systems, etc often means additional costs and/or inefficiencies.

As the saying goes - 'nobody gets fired for recommending SAP'
 

Minty

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As the saying goes - 'nobody gets fired for recommending SAP'

Many many moons ago Screwfix (a DIY hardware supply company in the UK) made the switch to SAP.
I have it on very good authority that it brought them within about a month of the business going bust, due to the enormous clusterf**k that the project turned into.

A similar story with Bosch, we couldn't order spares for 6 weeks when they switched over to it.
We were told it would be 3 days.
 

CJ_London

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been there, done that - one of my clients (a multinational) had 3 SAP systems, one around stock control, another around receipts and payments and an accounting system. The first two came from a different background concept, each competing to be the owner of the primary key. Point is they were unable to communicate directly with each other resulting in a lot of money disappearing down the cracks - we are talking 9 digit money - every year.

I wrote them an Access solution that was able to reconcile some 95% of the differences and identify the remaining 5% for manual resolution.

I've had several clients over the years who have struggled with new systems (cloud based or otherwise) meeting the actual needs of the company. Usually down to a poorly executed fact find on actual requirements and/or budgetary constraints.
 

JMongi

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I'm not convinced that cloud solutions are really more cost effective than access over citrix or terminal server. Basis of licencing varies enormously but there is still a cost - and weigh that against inability to bespoke (except at additional cost) and complexities of communicating with other systems, etc often means additional costs and/or inefficiencies.

As the saying goes - 'nobody gets fired for recommending SAP'
Which is entirely the point, right? They both cost a lot! It's quite a ROI problem for a small business that wants to do things the "right" way instead of shoehorning all their data into Excel. They seem to be moving (glacially) into addressing some of the needs to leverage Access in a mobile world, but, the licensing ("free" power apps vs. paid) is erecting the same financial barrier that made Access the solution of choice for so many over the years.

And I have additional anecdotes of LARGE companies that tried to kill themselves off by switching to SAP. Stepping into my own personal opinion now, I would hazard a guess that if there is motivation to transition to a new data infrastructure, that is quite possibly a symptom of the problem of unenforced business practices that transitioning to a new system will only exacerbate as opposed to fix. Which is why the transition can have a tendency to push companies to the brink.
 

CJ_London

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there is also the scenario - new boss/new IT director/whatever wants to make a mark and make changes - whether they are required or not.
 

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