time scheduler

[muffinimal]

Hi,

I just returned from quite a long trip browsing and searching the forums, but I am unable to find anything that could help me. Some things were more or less related, but most weren't close enough.

I have a classroom and this classroom is full of computers. People can make reservations on those computers and generally do so ;-) I want to be able to get rid of the silly excel-spreadsheet I am using now to schedule these computers and people. People can come whenever they like and stay for a fixed number of hours (generally anyway ;-) ).

What I want is:
- to be able to store the people's personalia (no problem)
- to be able to assign the people to computers on certain dates and certain times (no problem)
- to check whether the people can actually use a computer (whether one is available). This is more difficult, I guess, but I think I can do this
- to be able to see 'at a glance' who is scheduled to come for today (or this week and at what time. (Let's say I want the computers in columns and the time in the rows, per half an hour). I'll try and draw a picture below this post). I have no idea whether this is humanly possible. I don't mind spending some time with it. First I would like to hear your thoughts about before I pursue this project...

So, any input about this is welcome. I am sure I must have missed some relevants posts on this forum here, so please feel free to submit any links or search queries to help me...

Also, your thoughts about this are much appreciated, especially about the overview table.


Thanks in advance!

+------+------+------+------+------+
|      |comp 1|comp 2|comp 3|comp 4|
|10:00 |John  |      |      |      |
|10:30 |John  |Maria|      |      |
|11:00 |      |Maria|      |      |
|11:30 | etc  |Maria|      |      |
|etc   | etc  | etc |      |      |
+------+------+-----+------+------+

 

[RuralGuy]

I'm no expert but your drawing looks like a pivot table. They are supported by Access and you might want to look into them.

 

[iago18]

To draw that picture seems quite difficult and impractial. I think it would be better to create a line item report for this.

Take your table where you link 1 person to 1 computer at 1 time. Then create a report off this that groups records by Day and Hour. For each Day/Hour grouping list the people using computers and note which one.

The other option is to create a cross-tab query. It will be more in the format of the drawing you made. Access has help documentation on how to create these special queries.

 

[muffinimal]

Thanks RuralGuy & iago18,

I hadn't thought of Pivot-tables, but they're not really what I want, the same goes for the crosstabs (although I had never heard of these). I did try the latter though, to find out what it could do.

I tried messing around with reports and I must say that I am not unhappy with the results. I did get some nice results, although I don't think they are good enough.

I am not sure what you mean with 'line item reports', iago18. Is that an 'official' Access-name for such a thing? I am using the dutch version of Access and I am bit reluctant to install the english version for several reasons...

Anyway, grouping by day and hour and showing which computer is quite nice actually... But what I liked about my picture (I knew I had to spend more time on it) is that a table like that can instantly tell you what is going on on any time of the day. It is quite easy to see, in my picture -for example- that at 10.30 two computers will be occupied and that later, at 11.00 John will leave and that Maria will then be the only one that stays behind...

This line items report thing really sound cool. If this would enable me to get some kind of time-line horizontally instead of vertically, I'd love it! But I guess the world won't be that nice to me...

 

[iago18]

To get a horizontal report like the one you're describing can only be done with a cross tab query as far as I know. The 'line item' report I was referring to is just the vertical group-by report you've already played with. What I'm not sure about, is if you can make a visiual report out of the cross-tab query results. If you could, that might be the way to go.

Good luck.