Sharepoint or recommend something else for secure date input from multiple sites?

[fuddam]

I have a client who has about 20-30 sites scattered through Europe where confidential HR data has been input monthly on to Excel, then sent to London for collation/analysis. LOTS of manual work.

the client now wants an Access 2010 database backend/master, and sites to input data on to browser form, which will then be pulled into Access manually, or ideally automatically.

the individual sites must not be able to see each other's data.

the client currently has a free version of Sharepoint (not about cash - is not on the approved software list) which they thought might be useful for the forms....?

Problem is that I know nothing much about Sharepoint, certainly not about how it handles permissions/security of data.

Any alternative you would recommend? We can't put the Access database on to Sharepoint, apparently. Would Sharepoint be appropriate for this task?

Any help appreciated

[scaryjim]

Don't know about sharepoint. Dealing with that many remote sites I'd do something web-based with SSL encryption and strong passwords. Sure, it's more upfront development, but you can easily use an SQL server backend and then drop out the required data for reporting in any format you fancy.

One of the clients at my day job deal with something similar, but with 2500 remote organisations throughout England. They use an in-house .NET / SQL Server web application for all the data input, and then output all the reporting and the client extracts in Access. So the techs are happy that they've got a robust and secure input environment, and the clients are happy getting their extracts in "Databases for Dummies"

[Tattysnuc]

SharePoint is more an intranet site - it absolutely does document management, but with SharePoint consultants costing up to £1k per day, you might find that a very time intensive and expensive route.

The output looks worthwhile. It might be worthwhile looking into MOSS or Lotus Notes even - MOSS is a cut down version of sharepoint to all intents and purposes.

Does your company have an ERP? If they do, then you might be able to get an app written for that, in whatever language your app is in.

Only when you've exhausted the "what tools do we already have" option, would I go down the developing a new platofrom to do this - you might find it a tad tricky to justify spending £50k on a SharePoint server and software to maintain.... a spreadsheet.

[fuddam]

lol, thanks for both replies.

client is having a HUGE HR database thing rolled out in 18 months (in theory) so this is an interim measure - which means <> the 50k budget.

They HAD lotus notes but think it's gone the way of the dodo.....

Hmmm....

[scaryjim]

What brand of developers do you have available? I'd definitely be looking to do something with available resources / expertise if it's going to be a short term solution. If you don't have any appropriate resource, then a web developer + a bit of integration consultancy for the exports is likely to the be cheapest option...

[Tattysnuc]

Well, Access is not multi-user AFAIK and SQL Server costs a packet, so you'd probably be looking at MYSQL.

You can upload Excel data into MYSQL to get existing data in, then develop a web interface to that.

I believe that MS Onenote may be appropriate but I don;t know much about the product to be completely honest.

[scaryjim]

SQL Server Express is free for commerical use and has more than enough features for running data driven web applications*, so it is an option: of course, choice of DB is likely to be down to choice of hosting platform - if you're hosting on Linux then SQL Server isn't really an option

* I'm assuming the client is envisaging a web application, as fuddam said "sites to input data on to browser form" (emphasis mine)...