I am thinking of buying a PDA to replace the diary, but I am unsure if it can do the things I require. I, m a pro Builder and thought that if I can enter the hours my team are working X the houly rate at each particular job and have that info summarised weekly or monthly it would save a bit of time going back to the diary and also not having to buy a new diary each year. That info could then be uploaded to my computer. Is this feasible or am I being lazy? any help would be appreciated.
Cheers John
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I know there are a number of project time trackers for the Palm platform. You might want to poke around on one of the Palm software repositories and see if there is a program that meets your requirements. Then get a Palm emulator for your PC, download the program and try it out.
John-"...if I can enter the hours my team are working X the houly rate at each particular job and have that info summarised weekly or monthly it would save a bit of time going back to the diary and also not having to buy a new diary each year."
John what your describing is exactly one of the primary things we use PDAs for and it does save time and helps towards collecting more accurate and therefore more useful timecard information. I created a Filemaker based desktop application for keeping track of, organizing and reporting timecard information and using Filemaker Mobile I am able to put the timecard databases on my PDA and on the PDAs that some of my employees have so a lot of time transcribing data is saved.
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The other thing that proven to be a plus is the Activity Notes field you see at the bottom of the screen. It gives the troops a way of explaining the activity in more detail if they so choose in order to tell me:
and all that information then has a timeframe stamp attached to it helping to make our project logs a lot more detailed. For instance in the screen above the employee could have noted in the ActivityNotes field that the lumber yard delivered the hardwood for the project within that 8:20am to 10am time frame while he or she was working on cabinet part fabrication.
I think it would take you a while to get used to transferring the way you do things from a hard copy log to a PDA ( learning Graffiti the palm handwriting style takes a while) but once the switch is really made and ingrained in your thinking you wonder how you ever got by without it. It's funny today is Sunday and earlier when I went out for coffee I realized I had left my Palm at home and I felt like I was half dressed.
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THanks for the comments, do you think a cell phone combo can do the same thing? I know their are a few on the market that combine a phone and pda. Carting a phone and pda can be a bit annoying.
cheers Johnhttp://www.johnwalkerbuilders.com
John- "...do you think a cell phone combo can do the same thing? I know their are a few on the market that combine a phone and pda..." Yes I do although my brother who almost went that way brought up a good point the other day. Sometimes you want to talk on your phone while looking through data on your PDA which means you have to use your phone as a speaker phone when doing that which is not always convenient. It also depends on what your cell phone service provides. Right now we use Next el which last time I looked didn't even have a Palm OS PDA/Phone combination although they do have a Blackberry one.
Besides in my particular case I think I would prefer to see us using a Camera/Phones rather than PDA/Phones. The guys could use the camera to send me photos of conditions or problems they encounter out in the field and perhaps save me a trip here and there and that seems more interesting and important to me.
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Thanks Jerrald I see your point re: looking up data whilst on the phone, I think I might buy a pda and get used to using it to see what it can do for me. The rate that mobile phones are being updated it may be better not to get locked into the combo technology just yet.
Many thanks for all your comments.
Cheers Johnhttp://www.johnwalkerbuilders.com
Jerrald,
I was going to reply that I didn't think it was possible to keep track of crew time on a pda. I have found nothing that does it efficiently, ie. better than taking the data off the time cards.
For me it is the holy grail of time keeping. Can you direct me to a product? Preferably try before you buy?Tom
I found that once my troops got used to the routine and saw how the timecard data was being used they really started to enthusiastically get into it so I think ultimately how you organize analyze and use the data is a lot more important than how you collect it. I still have one guy who is just never going to use a PDA or a computer for anything. He stills fills out a paper timecard and I have to transcribe it entering the data into the data base but at least the solution I made makes that part faster and easier.
If you want to check out what I developed click 360-Timekeeping and tryout the demos of the desktop applications. Unfortunately the "runtime" versions of the application don't work with FileMaker Mobile (yet) but if you happen to already have a full version of FileMaker (5.5 or greater) it does work with FileMaker mobile on either the Palm or Pocket PC OS. I also have a newer improved version of the application on the way too that I expect to have ready by the end of September but I'm not sure I'll have a workaround for the using "runtime" versions on a PDA ready by then.
There is other stuff out there too but give me at least until the end of the day tomorrow to run down my notes find the URLs.
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