Daily Notices

[richmackie]

A Friday afternoon problem...

 

Recently started at a high school where the previous network manager implemented some quirky systems. One of them was a Daily Notices system. Basically staff log on to an intranet page and type whatever information they want to be distributed round the school (reminders about show rehearsals, that kind of thing) which gets stored in an Access Database, then exported to a PDF, then emailed to all staff every morning. Quite clever really as it needs no human intervention whatsoever but we want to retire the server it lives on next year so we're looking for a way to replicate it, ideally in Office 365.

 

Obviously we could use Forms, Sharepoint announcements or just a simple shared document but staff like receiving it as an email. I'm also thinking if we can replace it with something web-based we may be able to have it displayed on digital signage when we update that next year.

 

Somebody out there must have implemented something similar.

[TomHD]

If it works why fix it? Is it not possible to move the installation to a new server?

[richmackie]

A fair point. It runs on an ancient version of Access and uses custom scripts and macros, so if it ever breaks fixing it will be a nightmare.

[TomHD]

A fair point. It runs on an ancient version of Access and uses custom scripts and macros, so if it ever breaks fixing it will be a nightmare.

 

With that in mind I would migrate it to a new server, pray to a god that it works and if it ever does break worry about fixing or replacing it then