Hi all,

Like to hear some experiences on the following:
A customer asked me to think about efficient and effective hours accounting to register in Baan for their service team.
Options I can think of:
-Webtop via UMTS or other links
-Excell uploads
-Citrix connection?

Anybody with bright ideas how to do it fast and cheap?

Thnx
Hutje

Hi Hutje,

Is this for BAAN IV or BAAN V?

In case of BAAN IV will the hours registration go via tssma or tihra?
Is there also a requirement for other cost types like material (spare parts)? or is it just for hours accounting?

I have seen a couple of different interesting solutions in this area and will be able to help you with this.

Regards,

Edwin

Hi Edwin,

Sorry, post was incomplete, here's the rest:

Baan version = BaanIVc4
Oracle DB
Initially hrs accounting via hra is key, but most probably materials allocation/consumption will be dragged into the same solution as well.

Thnx in advance for your info

Hutje

Hi Hutje,

Thanks a lot for your reply.
I forgot to ask whether BAAN IV Service was already used by your customer.
Can you let me know this as well?

Regards,

Edwin

Only:
(Common)
Finance
Manufacturing (incl. PCS)
Distribution
(Tools)
Hrs. acc. is done in tihra

Hi Hutje,

Thanks.
I am wondering whether it would make sense if the service engineers should start using tssma or perhaps another field service remote solution so that you will have a scalable solution for the future as well in case you want to bring in the material allocations and consumptions.

You can come up with a quick and cheap solution right now to satisfy the immediate short term needs or do things the right way and come up with a solution that would work for your customer for the long term ("Onbeperkt Houdbaar" as we would say).

Any way, just building a simple web site where service engineers can log on to, enter their hours and submit them to BAAN IV would already do the trick.
If you need any help with this then you can contact me at edwin@baanboard.com.

Regards,

Edwin

Great trick edwin!

If there are requirements that the service staff have to have (read) access to Baan data, this still wouldn't mean that edwin's cheap and elegant solution would be out of question.
If the needs for actuality of the the data aren't to high you could still grant access via http to read data dumped from Baan to mysql last night. *g*

regards

Norbert

Norbert,

Thanks.
I believe the real challenge is to update BAAN IV from the website and not so much being able to read the data out of BAAN.

Regards,

Edwin

PS Interesting 'signature' by the way

funny thought: a vacuumcleaner with a "start" button to push on in case you sucked your guinea pig through the hose

Another option, although maybe a bit more expensive, is to use the mobile device interface from a Dutch company TriOpSys, namely iMOS. It's quite complete for normal service engineers, and, via the interface I've developed, it updated either hra or hrs with the hours, completely handles tssma, and can be easily modified to update projects (tp) as well.

Maybe worthwhile to look into!