Replacing Paper forms with Access

[Ceriumde58]

Hello all,
My employer(an electrical subcontractor) has been having trouble getting detailed reports from their field crew. They have given me the task of finding some kind of solution for this problem that would allow the field employees to submit their daily reports digitally. I have very little experience with access beyond an introductory level and have run into a brick wall when it comes to creating a digital version of their daily form.

The paper daily form requires employees to record information about the given day's weather, labor, and equipment use. I've broken out each of these sections into individual tables with a DailyFormID field to link each section to the same form for reporting purposes.

What I am struggling with is the next couple sections. These sections require the field employee to list the scheduled activities for the given day and record various information about each activity. Because each day may have a different number of activities to be done each daily activity has a Unique ID and a DailyFormID field. I haven't been able to figure out how to make the forms allow for multiple activities to be entered with different information in each of the fields EXCEPT for DailyFormID

attached is a scan of the paper report i am trying to convert

 

[spikepl]

Just some thoughts.

You speak of "digital version of their daily form". Is that a sensible/desirable thing to do? A daily form is something the foreman or whoever can have with/on him all day, and add info to it as time goes by. A computerised form is tied to a desktop/laptop, and requires filling a paper form during the day and then typing the same info into a computerised form? It may be so or perhaps not - the reason why I am asking is that I have witnessed computerisation of existing workflows, and first afterwords were the appropriate questions asked (and the proejct was then set up properly) How is the info to be collected and at which times and by whom and from how many places ... where is the db .. how is it to be accessed ...

 

[Ceriumde58]

The forms are supposed to be completed by the foremen onsite. As part of their daily responsibilities the foremen must record each employees daily time card which they are able to do through a program called NetExtender which gives them access to the corporate network. Which is where this DB will be stored. The current issue is that the paper reports are not being filled out thoroughly enough to provide useful information. Because employees don't know the specific names of certain scheduled activities and don't have time to look them up.

This info would be collected at the end of the day's shift, from one foreman per project. Ideally at the same time as the time cards are entered.

 

[junimitsu]

I think you have the right idea. You'd have a table called something like tblSchedActivities, with an Autonumber (the unique ID), DailyFormID, then all those other fields in that section of the form. Then create a subform based on that table (though I'd hide the Autonumber and DailyFormID fields) . Set the default view to Continuous Form. Place the subform in the Master form, and link the Master/Child ID fields. It should let you add as many activities you want per day.