A company that supplies temporary personnel for concert and event operations — manning spotlights, stagehands, etc. — with offices in 3 cities needed to upgrade their application and database for managing their operations. They had been using Microsoft Access and synchronizing their data between 10 people, but kept getting data corruptions and the database size was expanding beyond Access’ useful limits.
Because their operations were scattered in two states and their employees sometimes needed to access the application from the event location, we gave the client the choice between a Web application and a Windows application centralized on a Citrix-based infrastructure. They chose the Terminal Services platform and we used VB.NET and SQL Server to develop an application to track subcontractors, venues, events, estimates for events, and invoices as well as create payroll checks, handle check garnishments, and provide numerous reports for payroll taxes and business decision-making.
After about 10 years, they had us add a web-based component allowing them to enter data from their phones while they were working large music festivals.
Search for events and then select an event and edit the information about the different event sessions and subcontractors and the hours the subcontractors worked. Then print the invoice for the event and the report preview window allows the user to quickly export the file to PDF, which can be e-mailed to the client. An event calendar is also provided as a way to quickly find an event. Numerous business decision reports were also provided. A web interface that acts like Google Sheets to let users view an entire day’s activities and enter worker names and shows their current show status.