Tracking of Tasks at Remote Locations between Users

My project entails the tracking of tasks for users between remotely located offices. The interface for tracking needs to be integrated into their daily applications (100% MS Outlook, although other applications can be looked at), so that it can form part of their daily work flow. User ablities are challenged, which is why I state that solution needs to integrate into their daily applications (again i am open to ideas and suggestions). The remote sites all have access to the internet BUT there can be problems with connections and therefore any solution that relies on near 80% or more uptime to the internet, will need creative, convincing and good solutions that it can carry when the internet might go down. (Timezones play a part here and matience staff might not awake when the connections crash). I am a developer myself and have some solutions in mind that utilise replication off SQL or Access Database and the use of outlook, but I am not sold that i have the right idea, so I am open to any suggestions ## Deliverables Alright, now I can try to sink my teeth into the problem for you. TASKS FROM TASKS The users typically get given tasks which are generated from tasks that other users have performed. In designing the solution we can be flexible or strict (at this stage since the idea we are developing will be considered by myself as throw away prototype (ie we are going to use this project simply to prove the idea not neccesarily to run forever on it) with the way task generate from each other.... if I can put it another way, we can define a task set that the moves strictly from A- B- C depending on the criteria or we can simply allow a "management user" to define a task set based on criteria that he can select. Given that a more flexible approach is likely to be more time consuming in development, this is not a mission critical requirement at this stage. TASK CRITERIAS Tasks are time stamped with a start and end time. When the end time is reached or is near certain possible actions need to follow:- * The user needs to be alerted that the end has been reached. * If the user can choose to o Respond to the alert o Delay the alert o Cancel the alert o Ignore the alert * In each case where the user is alerted and there subsequent follow up choice the sytem would need to generate and or record that response. In some cases it would then lead to the system alert other users ie I am finished my task, now it is your turn to take over this task. or I have delayed my task, be aware there could be a problem or I have cancelled my task, be aware there could be a problem or your task is now also canceled or Ignored my alert, be aware there could be a problem. * Because there are multiple users in different locations and there is a management esculation tree ie tasks that are running late might need to be esculated to the appropriate manager, the system needs to take this into account when creating new tasks ie it may have to place that task where it is automatically raised in front of a user on at different location. COMMUNICATION WITH TASKS At present there is a vast amount of email communcation that accompanies each task, ideally therefore the task needs to integrate with that communication so that both sets of information are not lost. EG user elects to cancel a task and this esculated to the manager. The manager needs to easily access the underlying information that explains why the user cancelled the task which is normally found in the communcation between that specific users and other users assigned to the same task. TASK SUMMARISATION In almost all cases users are assigned a vast number of very similar tasks. Therefore the interface needs to present the user the tasks in a summarised fashion, where critical (tasks that are running late) are highlighted in some manner. The detail for each task can be hidden and simply brought to the foreground in response to a user action (eg a click) and also the flow of communicating tasks between users needs to follow the same pattern. EG when a user signs off on a batch of tasks, it is better for the summary of the batch to be presented to the user than each task.... not sure if I am making myself clear here. ALERTS MUST BE PROACTIVE The reason why I stated that the projects will probably need to integrate into the users daily applications (here I suggested Outlook) is that users do not have time to go looking for their tasks. The tasks for now that need the users attention need to pop up in front of him or her to deal with and keep returning until something is done.... bascially we want to avoid a user saying.... but it never told me what to do. Task and where it all fits in. I have focused on an used the word TASK here a lot. The fact is we are in the garment industry where we create styles for each garment that is produced. Each style is worked on by various people in different locations performing different tasks (design, customer co-ordination, production, import and export co-ordination etc etc). Most tasks that each user performs impacts on others who are working on the same style and hence the need to co-ordinate between all the different users. I have looked at using MS projects but left is for now simply because I have not taken the time to fully understand the product and for now feel that it cannot address the more specific needs that i have, however I could be wrong and if you are MS projects genius and think that this is easy with MS Projects I am all ear and eyes. I simply mention MS Projects to give you the developer an idea of the problem that we are trying address. MS Projects DOES address certain aspects of what I have described such as been able to assign tasks to different users, setuping task flows and alerts for late tasks etc, however it is the intergartion with other applications which is important (and perhaps I do not understand), so that the user is not required to "go to Projects" to find their task or vise versa "Go to Outlook" to find their correspondence.... they simply DO NOT HAVE THE TIME TO JUMP AROUND.... trust me it a very dynamic and challenging enviroment that these people work in. I have already developed using MS Access (With Replication), Outlook (VBA and VB Script) a solution which i have not taken to completion, which I am more that willing to share with you and explain so that it might give you a better picture of the problem we are looking at. The reason i want to involve a developer is that I do not have the time or interest to develop and implement a solution. I feel that is a relatively short to medium term project ie 3-6 months where most of our time might be spent fully understanding and fleshing out the specifications carefully. I do not feel that development is that difficult, as just overcoming some of the clumsyness that can be found in pre-existing packages if what I envision at this stage is the solution we are looking for. Implementation is going to a long project since, we have to overcome user change resistance, but that is my problem not yours. Ok look forward to hearing from you * * *This broadcast message was sent to all bidders on Monday May 19, 2008 8:46:25 PM: I am happy to post some of the work which i have already done on this project, for those that are interested. Some other points which i failed to mention, which are important. There are 3 applications that fall outside of what i would think is the core application here. They are ALL MS-Access applications. They all "generate" the first steps of tasks for various users, so it would a requirement that I will need a DLL, ActiveX or some component that I can plug into these Apps which can act as task generators. 2 of the Apps could also act as Task terminators but for now that would be nice to have and not a neccesity. For those thinking of the bigger picture, eventually we would intergrate all the above applications into a singular whole, so as to improve user effciency.... hopefully that might answer the question about this being a throw away prototype. * * *This broadcast message was sent to all bidders on Wednesday May 28, 2008 4:34:48 AM: Hi All, Sorry for my tardiness on this bid. I have got a bit caught up in some other work and have had to leave this for a while.... however I will be back on this from tomorrow and I will respond to everyone's questions. I am busy preparing a flow chart and some additional information which I hope to publish this weekend. I am going to ammend the dates on this project to allow everyone a fair chance to catch up. * * *This broadcast message was sent to all bidders on Tuesday Mar 23, 2010 1:01:18 AM: I have after a long long break re-opened the bidding process.... this time we are going to do it. Look forward to your responses and getting down to it. Chinese and Indian programmers particularly welcome. * * *This broadcast message was sent to all bidders on Wednesday Apr 14, 2010 11:43:50 PM: I think that we are still in the discussion phase and for now I would like to keep the bidding open so that we can conclude our discussions properly.