DevonThink 3 versus Tinderbox versus VooDooPad

Posted by J J Weimer
Nov 24, 2019 at 02:58 PM

Ha! Banner was designed in the dark ages of 640x480 monitors and has remained locked in its UI approach since then. It is written to establish a fantasy-land, multi-screen flowchart with only ascii text input for the process that faculty and staff should use to manage student and finance records in academic institutions. I have heard that the same group of computer engineers wrote similar-looking software for nurses to monitor patients in triage and hospital situations.

But I digress. :-/

What is hear is that you want to develop a training plan for folks who have not been initiated to the system. You want it to be visual.

For this goal, I would suggest using Curio. It will allow you to capture screen shots of the Web browser input, paste them on a whiteboard, lay them out in a workflow, annotate and describe them, and hyperlink them to each other and/or to external resources.

Jeffery Smith wrote:
I realize that my challenge is sort of an odd one.
> >What I need to learn (and then teach others) is part of a much larger
>Human Resource system (named Banner) that is essentially a huge
>relational database with modules for Human Resources, Student Records,
>and Class Offerings, It is like PeopleSoft, but better implemented for
>higher education.
> >What I have are dozens of screens, some of which are HR screens, some of
>which are Student Record (enrollment) screens, and some of which are
>rules for how faculty will be paid based on which classes are linked to
>each instructor. So, I’m working within a pre-defined database to which
>I have to link records using multiple tables. What I need is some sort
>of visual system (or WikiLink system) until I get straight in my head
>which tables link to which tables, and which fields are absolutely
>essential. So, I’m teaching myself because the vendor of the software
>would prefer that I spend a week in another state learning en masse with
>others. That’s not an option because I’m serving as a consultant on this
>for the next 6 months. I actually had the system prepared and ready to
>implement when someone at the college pulled the plug on it at the last
>minute. That was in 2016, so I’m re-acquainting myself with the very
>complicated system 3 years later.
> >It is a difficult system to get set up and implemented because it
>doesn’t necessarily match up with the way things have been done in the
>past.
> >J J Weimer wrote:
>I am a bit confused about which parts YOU do versus which parts the
>>software app is to do.
>>
>>* Do YOU manually assign the faculty to the classes, or should the
>>software do this (through some optimization routines)?
>>
>>* Do YOU manually set up the payment rules for the classes in advance,
>>or is the software supposed to do this somehow?
>>
>>* What is meant by “runs a routine merging faculty with classes” ...?
>>
>>I have to think that what you want is this ...
>>
>>(Database of Faculty)
>>(Database of Classes)
>>(Database of Payment Rules for Classes)
>>(Database of Faculty Assignments for Semester)
>>—> payments required per faculty
>>
>>I have to imagine that a spreadsheet app could do the job using
>internal
>>cell functions and reference calls.
>>
>>Alternatively, I have to think that the datatool package in LaTeX might
>>do what you need (and give you a nicely-formatted PDF report to submit
>>with no greater effort).
>>
>>The FileMaker Pro app should be able to tear this up with no problem.
>>
>>Little that I know about it, someone is bound to say that you should
>use
>>an SQL variant database tool.
>>
>>Is this where you are going with what you need?