What should I buy?

[TinaP]

I've been tasked with a project that requires something more robust and secure than Excel macros. In the distant past, I wrote projects like this using Visual Basic. Since Visual Basic has gone the way of the Pony Express, it's not an option. I was thinking about using Visual Studio, but there are so many different options I don't know what to purchase.

The request:
Create a comment/complaint tracking log where employees can enter comments/complaints, but cannot see or delete previous entries. I would be the only person writing and maintaining the software but everyone in our organization should be able to use it.

I know we can purchase software to do this tracking but we are a small organization and the Powers That Be don't want to invest tons of money into a tracking system that would be bloated with features we would never use. On top of that, it would be a good exercise for the programming lobe of my brain.

Can anyone make any suggestions about what software to purchase to create the tracking log? I don't even understand enough of the pricing model to attempt a guess as to what I should buy.

 

[Kyle123]

How big is your organisation? You may qualify for the community edition, it may be used commercially under the following terms:

Organization licenses. If you are an organization, your users may use the software as follows:
Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test your applications released under Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved open source software licenses.
Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test extensions to Visual Studio.
Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test your applications as part of online or in person classroom training and education, or for performing academic research.
If none of the above apply, and you are also not an enterprise (defined below), then up to 5 of your individual users can use the software concurrently to develop and test your applications.
If you are an enterprise, your employees and contractors may not use the software to develop or test your applications, except for open source and education purposes as permitted above. An “enterprise” is any organization and its affiliates who collectively have either (a) more than 250 PCs or users or (b) more than one million US dollars (or the equivalent in other currencies) in annual revenues, and “affiliates” means those entities that control (via majority ownership), are controlled by, or are under common control with an organization..

Failing that, assuming Visual Studio, you'd want Visual Studio professional - you can PAYG at $45 per month, or buy the "Standalone" @$499

 

[RedBeard]

One of the following might be of interest:

http://osticket.com/
https://www.zendesk.com/support/features/free-ticketing-system/
http://www.cdesk.in/
https://www.bugzilla.org/

 

[Joe4]

Since Visual Basic has gone the way of the Pony Express, it's not an option.

Not sure where you are getting your information from.
Despite many "rumors" to the contrary, there are no plans to get rid of Visual Basic in the near future.

 

[mole999]

access back end, and updated records flagged not to be viewable, then you have the full log

 

[Rick Rothstein]

Not sure where you are getting your information from.
Despite many "rumors" to the contrary, there are no plans to get rid of Visual Basic in the near future.

I think he was referring to the "real" VB (the compiled version whose core is at the heart of VBA), the one that Microsoft abandoned in favor of what they originally called VB.NET and later misleadingly changed to simply VB. In case you didn't detect it in my "voice", this is still a sore subject with me.

 

[Smitty]

You might want to take a look at PowerApps. If you're already a Microsoft shop, it should be pretty reasonable, and from what I understand, it's robust and relatively easy to use.