On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 10:11:41PM +0100, Dennis Dryden wrote:
On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 5:10 PM, Mark Rogersmark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
Sorry for the terrible subject line, I can't think of a better one!
I've been asked by someone who organises charity bag collections for some software to help them organise themselves. Ie they send people out to drop empty sacks (or leaflets) through people's doors, then go back to collect them, and they want a way to basically manage that process to make sure areas get covered properly but not more than once, to record how many bags they get back out of each 100 empty bags they send out, etc.
Any suggestions?
Sounds like they need more then just software they need a whole system!
Exactly, you can't use software to fix something that isn't working to start with. This is a very common error/problem and is often the reason for major software projects failing.
I'm guessing your working as there a systems analyst though?What do you have control to change and whats the current setup? For example can they have a unique identifier printed on each bag/leaflet? Do they have the people to process them when they come back?
My first thought is to have something similar to a loan system and maybe have a unique barcode on each leaflet/bag. I don't know of any existing free loan management software but for the barcode stuff there is gnu barcode[1], kbarcode[2], libdmtx[3]. I'm guessing your going to be dealing with a very large number of bags/leaflets so libdmtx or another 2D barcode system is best or you'll run out of unique identifiers quickly. Libdmtx seems like a cheap option as you should be able to just use a webcam to read the barcodes although some scripting/coding will be required.
Dennis Dryden
[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/barcode/ [2] http://www.kbarcode.net/ [3] http://www.libdmtx.org/
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