Access and Project (Access 97srb)

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My wish is to to use project to lay out the hours for each task of a job in an engineering jobbing shop and use labour data from Access ([which I already collect] Date, Employee, Job#, Operation Type, Hours Used) to update Project and then use project to graph forward projection of man hours and machine usage.

I am interested what versions are needed to be able to do this and the cost of someone to write it for me or set a price on what they already have done. I currently have Project98 and Access97.

I simply do not have the knowlege to do it , but I feel that it is the only way to do what we require. 98% of our jobs are 1 offs and so manufacturing type software is useless for our type of work and I have never seen Jobbing shop software that will do what we need.

Regards Allan

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Allan,

I wrote a document that did something very similar to this a couple of years ago using Access 97 and Project 98. Let me see if I can find it and post it for you. Basically, you take the data from access and import it into MS project using MS Projects mapping features. As long as the setups are correct, it should work fairly well. This does not require a lot of programming but was a quick way to get hours worked into Project without having to be a programming wizard.

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Allan,

My apologies, I have not had time to search for the document. Have you figured this out on your own?

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Gary,
This whole idea for me is in the “It would be nice, let’s get some information” stage at the moment. As I mentioned in my original post, I do not have the programming skills needed to do this, I just know it can be done.

We used to use Project 95 and 1 guy used to sit all day updating the job status for the 50 or so jobs in the shop. The machine usage chart was used but it was felt that the time needed to manually input was not worth the results. (Considered “non productive” time)

I hate to seem like a freeloader, but I was sort of hoping that if you turned up the document you spoke of, that I could use that as the basis of my project and hopefully modify it from there. (I hope!)

I have been able to understand an example I got to input into word from access and modify it slightly to fit my requirements, but I would not have been able to write the procedure myself.

I have also discovered that the copy of Project 98 that is on my machine seems to be corrupt, and due to a company restucturing, I have no idea as to whether I can get hold of the CD to restore it.

I was waiting to see if you came up with anything before pestering the IT dept as to the whereabouts of a CD.

If it is beyond me, then a price for doing it would be my next question.

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Allan,

Sorry, have not turned up the document yet. …. Recently moved and still trying to get my computer back on line and find old data that is still in boxes. I will try to locate the document this weekend.

Jon is right, the programming for linking between Access and Project is challenging. The application I had completed doesn’t actually link Access and Project. The writeup reviews how to take data from a Non-MS Project System (in this case an Oracle Based Accounting System), create a text or .csv file from the labor distribution files in Oracle, and then use this file to load MS Project. We had a number of clients that were trying to get actual hours and costs from the accounting system to Project and wanted a quick and cheap way to do it; this worked fairly well. Project has its own timesheet system that can be reviewed for programming ideas as well.

I also wrote a functional requirement and detailed design document to do this but will see if I can find this as well.

To review, I will see if I can find the document(s) and post it for you this weekend. Good Luck.

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Allan,

How’s it going with the project? I found an electronic version of the document which may help. I need to purge some information out of it before I can post it. Sorry for the delay in finding it. Will try to post the doc as soon as possible.

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Allan,

I forwarded the doc to you via your email as it may be too big to post. (Too much graphics….)

Hope this helped.

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I haven’t seen your email yet. try also abelcher@powerup.com.au

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Allan,

I sent it again. Let me know if you don’t receive it.

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Gary,

Ive had a foulup here. Checked my private email while at work and your send with attachment was there, but it kept stalling at 99% downloaded, and when I got home it didn’t show up at all in my mail.

Would you mind trying one more time to my private address

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Allan,

… Sent it to both addresses.

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