I'm Really Not Qualified

[Brandon Gohsman]

Hey everyone,

This is not Perl related so feel free to bail at this point.

Still here? Cool. I have undertaken a fairly large project for my company
(because no one else here wants it) for which I am really not qualified. For
lack of a better term, I am setting up a sort of groupware for our company
of 13 employees. There will be no chat clients or crap like that. The
primary function of this will be a better calendar/scheduling system than we
are currently using with more robust project scheduling tools.

Back Story:
To date, we have been using FileMaker Pro for anything and everything that
is database related. We do time tracking, estimates, correspondence and
scheduling in it. Our environment consists primarily of Macs (since we are a
graphic design house) and a handful of PC’s. So far, FileMaker has allowed
us to do what we needed to do and do it across the two platforms and do it
inexpensively. But we now want it to do much more and it simply isn’t
capable of keeping up.

My company does print design as well as web/interactive design. Print design
is much more scheduling intensive due to the various stages of production. A
typical print job includes loose color proofing, film, plating and offset
printing. It may also include embossing, folding and assembly, etc. A
different vendor may be responsible for each stage of production. You can
see how a simple letterhead/business card project can quickly become a
management nightmare if you aren’t on your toes.

Part of the problem with all of this production craziness is that our
production manager and project leads are running all over the place as
details and problems are developing in their jobs. We all have cell phones
and PDAs but they are pretty useless at the moment because they don’t link
up to our data. FileMaker has one tool called FileMaker Mobile for getting
FileMaker data onto a handheld, but it does not support multi-user databases
and several other features. Basically, it is useless to us.

So, one of the solutions we looked at was Microsoft’s Exchange Server. It
will do about 80% of what we want right out of the box, which leaves me
either having to write the other 20% and find a way to glue it to Exchange,
or just start at ground zero and build our own solution from the ground up.
So here is where I am at the moment:

I am planning to install Microsoft’s Small Business Server suite, which
includes Exchange, SQL, etc. This instantly gets me syncability with
handheld devices through Outlook (as well as cross-platform support) and
covers the majority of the functionality we need. The one major thing that
Exchange doesn’t do (at least not out of the box) is robustly handle project
scheduling in a way that is useful to us (job numbers, people involved on a
project, shifting an entire schedule ahead a week, etc.). It also has to be
able to print reports that match our graphic standards and other
correspondence materials.

To get the scheduling and production management tools that we want, I am
using PHP and MySQL to build a web-based module. This is where things get
icky because I need to somehow link it to Exchange using PHP’s LDAP or
something similar so that data can be synced onto the handhelds as well as
edited, created, deleted, etc. and then reconciled (safely) during the next
sync. Multiple people may be making changes to the same project at the same
time; some on a PDA, some from a workstation.

Has anyone in the group ever had to deal with this sort of scenario? I can
handle setting up Exchange and building the online tools that we need. But I
have no experience with LDAP or Active Directory so getting my custom app to
work and play nicely with Microsoft just might kill me. My day-to-day job is
that of web/interactive designer so I don’t usually deal with anything
beyond the scope of a website or whatever I can cram onto a CD. Being a
web/interactive designer has made me the “technical guy” in the office so I
end up shouldering this sort of thing.

Any ideas, cautions, suggestions, insults, condolences etc. are welcome.

Thanks,

Brandon Gohsman
Square One Design
560 5th Street NW, Suite 301
Grand Rapids, MI 49504

T 616.774.9048
F 616.774.8003
E brandon at squareonedesign.com <mailto:brandon at squareonedesign.com>
W http://www.squareonedesign.com <http://www.squareonedesign.com/>

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