Two good innovations for productivity lately.
1) Basecamp. I've tried different project management systems over time. Basecamp is pretty good. It's web-based. It allows unlimited users for a set number of projects. It takes care of to-do lists, calendars, discussions, and files. If you have more than 2 people on a project, I'd recommend it. $20 a month is a bargain. This isn't lab-management software, but is a good generic format for projects.
2) Filemaker + iPads. Data entry can be tough. Writing things down can be laborious and introduce transcription errors. For the new project, we've deployed a Filemaker database on the iPads for data entry. Depending on the task, there is a separate data entry window. Syncing can be a bit clunky, but it essentially requires moving the database file to a master computer and then importing the data. Still, this is a scalable approach that let's us record a lot of data and store it in a central database. A big improvement over past options and good enough for who it's for.
The iPad would be even better if we could use barcodes. Just not an option right now. Instead I introduced 4-character unique codes for all of our samples. Each iPad has a keyboard cover that facilitates data entry. Instead of entering long strings of numbers, a 4-character code is entered. Filemaker checks to make sure it is in the database to reduce any entry errors.
1) Basecamp. I've tried different project management systems over time. Basecamp is pretty good. It's web-based. It allows unlimited users for a set number of projects. It takes care of to-do lists, calendars, discussions, and files. If you have more than 2 people on a project, I'd recommend it. $20 a month is a bargain. This isn't lab-management software, but is a good generic format for projects.
2) Filemaker + iPads. Data entry can be tough. Writing things down can be laborious and introduce transcription errors. For the new project, we've deployed a Filemaker database on the iPads for data entry. Depending on the task, there is a separate data entry window. Syncing can be a bit clunky, but it essentially requires moving the database file to a master computer and then importing the data. Still, this is a scalable approach that let's us record a lot of data and store it in a central database. A big improvement over past options and good enough for who it's for.
The iPad would be even better if we could use barcodes. Just not an option right now. Instead I introduced 4-character unique codes for all of our samples. Each iPad has a keyboard cover that facilitates data entry. Instead of entering long strings of numbers, a 4-character code is entered. Filemaker checks to make sure it is in the database to reduce any entry errors.
No comments:
Post a Comment