Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
We are designing a survey application with the following features
The users will be able to select questions from a set of predefined questions.
Each question has a question type defined which dictates the type of answer (multiple choice, DB look up, free text etc)
The user can create a hierarchy of sections with multiple questions with in each section.
The responses of the survey will be stored to an SQL server database.
There is also a requirement to generate an output document from each survey response.
We are planning to implement this application using ASP.net.
I am looking for suggestions which will help us reduce the development effort. Is there any commercial/open source application which we can customize for our needs? is there any ready-made components which helps creation of dynamic ASP.net pages? I am only interested in application which i can host locally, as this has to be integrated to an existing application.
This may not be an exact fit, but worth looking at: Surveymonkey.
Unless feedback systems are your business's core competency, you'd be best off using a third-party system. Building a survey system is not as easy as it might seem, especially when it comes to reporting. Sure, you'll be able to bang out some simple reports without too much trouble, but every change wanted by a customer (or your boss) is time you'll be dumping into your survey and reporting engine when it could be spent on your actual business. Do yourself a favor and outsource that headache to a third party.
If your needs are simple, a freebie site like SurveyMonkey would be just fine. If you're looking for something more sophisticated, such as support for phone surveys, more advanced reporting, etc., you'd need to pay for a more advanced service, such as (cough) the one I work for.
http://www.codeplex.com/WebSurvey
looks like a good place to start
Try Zodiac.NET Survey Engine. It can be integrated direct in your ASP.NET website. No much work needed.
NSurvey used to exist for this, but I think they've gone solely commercial. If you can dig up the last open source release, it might be a good starting point.
Otherwise, don't build it. Subscribe to Wufoo
Another option would be to have users use InfoPath or Adobe Designer to create the survey forms that are distributed to survey takers (either by e-mail or web-site).
With InfoPath, you can have the responses call back to Web Services that you have written. Or, with both the packages, you can have the responses e-mailed back to a particular address and the XML that is sent can be parsed and processed.
Related
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
We are developing a web application using C# and Angular.
The client and the server communicate with JSON to send datas.
My problem as a fronted developer is : When they change the model's variable's name, the client doesn't still work anymore.
Example :
if the model is:
public class Person
{
public string name;
}
In the Angular Application I use exaclty the same structure when I receive the JSON:
<h1>{{myJson.name}}</h1>
And sometimes the back-end developers change the variable's name, I need to return to update the client side, and I loose big time in debugging with that.
Any tutorial or blog or something to know what's the best way to use data between server and client ?
Thanks a lot !
If the external shape/behavior of code changes, then any code which uses it must also change. This is the definition of a "breaking change".
I suspect the ideal way to avoid this problem is to have a set of automated tests which validate the code. If someone makes a breaking change, tests will fail. At that point the build is considered "broken".
If possible, it may be worth implementing a kind of "check-in rejection" system where the source control doesn't allow a check-in of a build which fails to compile or fails tests. This is native functionality in TFS, but may not be a feasible option for many systems.
Failing that as a technical barrier, at that point it's pretty much a team-enforced barrier. Someone breaks the build, they are responsible for fixing it. Sure, sometimes that person has left for the day or maybe there's some other reason why you or another team member needs to "clean up after them", but it should be clear from the source control history that they broke the build.
If you're spending a lot of time fixing things which other developers broke, that's less of a technical problem and more of a team dynamics problem. Automated tests bring visibility to that problem. Developers shouldn't be able to check in code with failing tests, either through a technical barrier or a social one.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
I am tired of having to manage projects manually. We use subversion for version control, but ultimately, I want an app that can:
Send out notifications to clients on the progress of their projects
Allow clients to log in and see screenshots of projects
Keep track of money paid, as well as invoice due dates and how much is outstanding
Allow clients to post any queries regarding the project in an area
Manage several projects
I currently use
SubVersion
WHMCS --> would be great if it could integrate into this
Any suggestions would be great? Or might I have to write an app like this myself?
Redmine
Redmine is a flexible project
management web application. Written
using Ruby on Rails framework, it is
cross-platform and cross-database.
Redmine is open source and released
under the terms of the GNU General
Public License v2 (GPL). Features
Below are some of the main features of
Redmine.
Multiple projects support
Flexible role based access control
Flexible issue tracking system
Gantt chart and calendar
News, documents & files management
Feeds & email notifications
Per project wiki
Per project forums
Time tracking
Custom fields for issues, time-entries, projects and users
SCM integration (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs)
Issue creation via email
Multiple LDAP authentication support
User self-registration support
Multilanguage support
Multiple databases support
Go Redmine site
You should definately check out Gemini. This has loads of awesome features and can do all of the above (plus a whole lot more). Also, we'll be bringing out some great new functionality on the finance side in the next few weeks.
Dave
I've been looking at Redmine: http://www.redmine.org/
As of now, I've only been looking at it for my 2 person company, and as it integrages subversion and other version control system directly into projects, I think it's an OK choise.
But as mentioned, I haven't used it in production like environemts yet, but it look well tested.
There is also a Turnkey version of it, which is ready to be used as a live CD or in a Virtual Machine: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/redmine
/Kristoffer
If you are looking for something that is hosted I would consider assembla.com. It has just about every feature you could want, and has worked really well for me in the past.
http://www.assembla.com/
We use PivotalTracker
Doesn't have all the features you mention, but it is useful for client interaction and project management.
You could write the app yourself, but you'd likely be better off just going with a SaaS! Believe it.
Your software needs are a bit ahead of what traditional project management apps offer, and it is likely you'll find many systems to be insufficient.
Warning: Just because most PM apps will be insufficient doesn't mean you should settle with multiple different apps. This will lead to double entry, inefficiency, and a list of other problems that come with apps that don't integrate properly. You're better off with something that combines everything you need into one system.
You could try WORKetc, they have a 14 day free trial and combine all the core essentials for web devs. CRM, Project management, collaboration tools, billing, support tools, email marketing, and even client logins (invite clients/contractors to check on projects you're working on related to them + they can collaborate).
WORKetc combines key tools so that it can be used to manage an entire small business. Combined alerts, reminders, calendars, to-dos, document sharing, and a bunch of other features. Worth looking into, other than that I'd recommend looking at the Google Apps Marketplace. Cheers!
It all depends on the size and scope of your projects.
I would say that JIRA is the best system available at the moment and if you only require a small number of users (<=10) then it is only $10 a month.
It's definitely the most complete system out there but obviously there is the hurdle of cost and getting it set up (there is a lot of initial set up to get workflows and things working how you like them).
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I need an ability to connect to different sources (minimum MS SQL and Excel) and EASILY create ad-hoq reports, on the fly. What is the solution for this, apart from Tableau (http://www.tableausoftware.com/)?
Thanks in advance.
I think you could consider GoodData (www.gooddata.com) - a cloud business intelligence solution. It's not free but definitely cheaper than Tableau, especially if you want to enable multiple users to create ad hoc reports.
GoodData enables you to create remote projects (= cloud based data marts) and provides a convenient user interface to instantly create or edit ad hoc reports or to organize reports into dashboards.
You can use the GoodData command line tool to connect to existing data sources and load them into your GoodData project, see https://developer.gooddata.com/getting-started/ for details or let me know if you'd need any help to set up your project.
Quick disclaimer: I work at GoodData and I've written some parts of the CL tool mentioned above.
Pavel
Maybe it's an old question, but I've recently came across the wonderful tool called Microsoft PowerPivot. It is just the thing I was looking for!
for combining several types of datasources and creating reports from them, I use BellaDati BI (www.belladati.com). They have a completely FREE personal version (with no functionality limits) after registration here http://www.trgiman.eu/en/belladati/product/personal or you can log in with Google account directly on https:/service.belladati.com
it handles XLS, CSV, XML, databases
supports joins of data sets
crates tables, pivot tables and charts with interactive drill down
exports of reports to csv, xls
...
It should be the suitable tool for you. The paid tariffs of this product are for bigger teams and companies.
Peter
Web Pivot Table is a great choice. It is web based and provides ad-hoc reporting functions to both CSV/Excel data files and OLAP cubes. You can use free edition for free and if you want to customize it and embed it into your web application, the price is far less than Tableau.
Here is Demo and Documents.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
We have a custom CRM solution that among several things handles our call-center. That is, each call-center operator gets a queue of people (potential customers) to call based on a number of configurable rules. For example, certain operators only handle certain types of users. Call queues are ordered by call-time taking timezones into account.
EDIT: Operators dial manually. We're currently not interested in automating this.
Now we want to replace this call-center subsystem because it has several bugs, its implementation is very messy and the original developers left years ago.
So we're trying to decide whether to build this ourselves from scratch or integrate another CRM (like SugarCRM) for this specific task only.
But I'm totally ignorant about SugarCRM. Does it provide such a module? Is the SugarCRM API flexible enough to handle different rules to select and order a call queue? We're a .NET shop so we don't want to mess with SugarCRM's code. Or is there any other similar CRM you can recommend for this task? Where do I start?
Thanks in advance
If you are a .NET shop, is there a reason you've not mentioned MS Dynamics CRM ?
While there is a cost associated with it, there is a huge amount of customisation you can do, and if, at some point, you decide to look at telephony, it'd be straightforward to do that too.
I have built CRM systems that integrate with a PBX based dialing system. We had a lot of success with home grown systems.
I would advocate a build from my personal experience for the CRM portion.
What you are asking about, however, is the Dialing side of the system. This can be built as well - the API's for the Dialogic cards lend themselves nicely to .Net implementations. Now that is going to take some work, and most cheap dialers have some decent functionality out of the box to do what we want it to do.
It is when you get to complex functionality that they give up the ghost and by that time you are already so far tied into them that going into a new system is not feasible. I have seen this happen over and over again too.
If you have decent talent on hand, I would advocate writing the dialing system as well if you see yourself having to handle issues more intricate than your basic off-the-shelf dialer can handle.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
I have a small classic asp site and I am concerned that a client may stop paying me. The site is on their server, so I basically want an "off switch" in the event they stop paying me. I couldn't think of a good way to do this as they have a tech person who has access to the server, so any code I write to stop the site would be easily found and changed in the classic asp site (there aren't many pages).
So we had thought of maybe obfuscating the 2 main class pages so that they won't be able to edit the pages easily and we still have code to stop the site functioning. My questions are:
What is the best option for obfuscating classic asp code (if anyone has done this before)?
Is there another option that maybe we're not thinking of?
Thanks for any help you can provide!!
I think your energies are better placed on setting milestones in your project that are tied to payments. This ideally is done in increments so that neither party feels at a disadvantage with regards to the amount of work done / amount of money paid.
Obfuscation is easily removed and decoded, generally.
Remote checking for a security license opens a security hole for the application, and also can be defeated relatively easy.
Putting in code that "self destructs" if some action or code is not removed is also not great practice.
Licensed software is a little bit different in this regard. It sounds like you're building a bespoke system that you will simply hand over to the client at the end. If that's the case, putting in mechanisms to disable that system that only you control is not a great way to build trust. They may be violating trust if they fail to pay, but your disabling of the website actually gives them an additional incentive NOT to pay you, and consider you as a programmer willing to put in a Trojan Horse into the code.
The real problem to solve here is not in code, but in project management. A social not a programming problem.
This is a hard problem, and a great one for StackOverflow. I wish you well in sorting it out.
You're in Australia right? You have a small claims court system? If you've delivered what you were obligated to code for them, you shouldn't have a problem collecting.
I'm pretty sure that programmers have gotten sued or even charged criminally for this sort of thing; the courts see it as "hacking" into a client's site and breaking it over a payment dispute. Be careful.
I believe the best way would be to simply have it call your own server for some critical piece of data. That way you can restrict that service if / when their subscription does not tally with your desired business model.
It does depend a lot on the site, but there will always be something you can return from your own server to keep the site active. Also this does give you the advantage you are not disabling their server but your own if it goes wrong.
hope that helps
There is a tool from Microsoft called Script encoder that encodes a script into garbage, though it's fairly easy to get the original back..
Why not put some of the business logic into a VB6 component? That's valid optimisation and obfuscation in one. They could decompile such a DLL, but it's a lot of hassle.
More importantly, you need to consider who owns the code, regardless of what you do at this point. The link below is a discussion on code ownership in freelance situations (without a contract), and I think that the accepted answer defines the issues rather well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/111815/freelance-work-with-no-contract-who-owns-the-code