Let me give you a bit of background. Currently we are using an ERP software in which we have to record some data that comes from another system. At this moment it's impossible to have access to this ERP database, so all the data recording must be done trough a very badly implemented UI. What we are trying to achieve is to automate all this data recording with a bot that cliks on the buttons and menus of the ERP user interface and writes all the information that comes from this other systems.
Do you know how can this be achieved? Or at least where can I start to look at? I'm at a complete lost at the moment.
Thanks for the help.
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I am trying to figure out a way to create a secure data entry process using Microsoft Office (cannot use Azure by the way). The obvious way is to use Microsoft Forms, but the form would be too large as there are over 150 data points that need to be entered.
I have instead created an Excel file that has the ability to load responses to a SharePoint list. This works as long as the list is public and viewers have contribute privileges. The downside to this is that the data is not secure and anyone can view the list. The data has phone numbers, ssn, passports, etc. I tried to make a work around for this by creating a flow that captured any new entries and moved them to my personal private SharePoint list, then deleted the original. This works great, but after testing with my colleague it seems that anyone can join the first team and make an identical flow to that team to capture data themselves.
Is there a way to accept data from anyone internally while also preventing them from accessing the data? I am capable of using SharePoint, Teams, Power Automate, and Access to accomplish this. I am less familiar with access but have used it before. I'm just not sure how secure it is.
I'll be happy to provide further information as needed. Thanks
You could consider Access forms, and then have the tables reside on SharePoint.
You can then say base the form on a query, and in that query you could provide (have) the user name included as part of the query where clause (thus a user removing or changing the forms filter will only provide a view of their own data.). However, such uses if they fired up Access (or even Excel) could wind up with seeing all rows in the table and not what the Access query restricts the data to (the one user).
Unfortantly with Access desktop? And like most desktop software? Well the goal and design and history is that of allowing ease of data editing and viewing. So, just like when you walk into a bank, and wait in line? Well, when you get to the teller, they will fire up a access form based like system and pull up your account information. And any and all tellers can see/view and pull up that data because that is what the software supposed to do, and do well. (get at any customer data).
Now, flip this problem, and create a user web banking system, or even a instant teller. Now the problem is backwards. The software's goal is not ease of editing data in a table, but ONLY allowing the user to see THEIR data. So a very different kind of problem.
It is very (beyond very) to note that web development tools do not out of the blue or automatics restrict data to JUST the one user. It is YOU the developer that makes that choice. So, if we could press a button and have a access form converted to the web? Well, then that access form would do its job in life. That job is to allow you to edit all that data in a table. Not just YOUR data.
For example, have you ever written a Access application that JUST displays each users own data? I am betting not! It is hard to do. (because the roots of Access is ease of editing data). As noted, I cannot stress that web development tools do the SAME thing. They can let you edit data. The editing of data is thus a software issue and development issue. The data system or Access or even SQL server? They just hold data. It is YOUR software that has to decide that ONLY data for the one user is to be displayed.
Now so very often web systems ONLY show YOUR data. But that VERY common case is due to the nature of web systems, and that your not a bank teller, or a company employee, but that of a consumer of that system. And each consumer now is 100% opposite of what most software systems do naturally (that is get data from a table).
So, I can't stress this concept enough. That concept is that web software and systems do NOT make this restricting of data choice for you. It is your developer tools that MUST have this ability and ALSO the choice of how you build such systems.
Web systems can do this data restricting data better for several reasons.
One big reason? Well, most of the time you adopt some kind of security and logon system.
Thus, parts of the web site now are restricted based on your logon system. (hey, maybe you use Facebook logons). So web systems have a very good and wide and broad system of supporting some kind of logon system. For desktop software? not so much.
But EVEN with that very robust and type of security system and logon system?
You the developer STILL have to make the choice of what data they see. Maybe it is traveling salesmen on the road. And thus every user of that web system still has to be able to edit, view and add customers to that system. This common case is not really different then a typical Access form to edit data.
So only SOME types of web applications need that restricting of data to JUST the one logged on user. But, because web systems have that "better" logon system? Then you the developer can thus now use that logon to restrict data with greater ease then what desktop software dev tools often offer (say like access).
So, a lot of this will come down to the web tools used. If you pulling data with Excel, or Access? Then it considerable more difficult to pull JUST data that belongs to a given user. And your software will require designs from day one with these restrictions in mind.
Again, at the risk of repeating myself?
the tools don't' make the data restrictions for you. If you need secure data for ONLY the given user, then you simply have to adopt a set of developer tools that allow this concept in mind. And that tends to mean the tools you use do NOT by default allow users to directly edit or link to some big table of data that contains all users data.
This is also why say a program written in VB6, or now vb.net can be more secure then Access. (because those tools by default don't provide forms that are designed from day one to edit all rows of data). So, the UI does not present default forms and things that gives users the ability to edit all rows. As a result, then the software can now control what records the users sees, and since they don't' have some default form that allows viewing of all rows.
It thus becomes more practical to write software that only dishes out their own data. But again, and I can't stress this:
The choice of what data to display is a choice of the software developer - not the database nor the web development tools.
It thus stands to reason then you have to chose the appropriate tools that will allow you to write software that restricts the data in a manor you require.
General questions on SO in regards to what flavor of ice cream or what dev tools to use tends to be frowned upon, and is quite much against the general rules for solving software and code issues you have and post on SO.
But, if you come from say Access with VBA skills? Then I would suggest adopting the free verison of Visual Studio and go with vb.net + asp.net web forms. Web forms are close to end of life, but they are by far and away the best choice, the least effort (coming from Access) and will give you a robust security model in which you can restrict data on a per user basis.
I would not duck tape and try to cobble together such a system with office tools, since they are not really designed for that type of data restricting you need. So, go with some good quality web tools like Visual Studio (free version is fine) and use SQL server (free version again) is really the way to go here. If you need a truck in place of a car, then get the right kind of truck, and don't try and use a car for that transport of goods, or in this case build a secure web database system.
For fun and maybe for profit, i want to implement the following:
scheduled or manually triggered process that logs into all my bank accounts
process knows bank site structure, and goes through "cashback/partner deals" pages
all deal information is collected in one place and in one format
when i'm going to buy something, i can quickly see if any of my cards has a special offer for that place. so that i can pay with the card that offers the best deal. ideally, this should happen on my android phone. that doesn't imply a standalone app though, e.g. you can search inside an email or googledoc or anything.
any ideas on implementation? don't limit yourself. suggest crazy things, as long as they work.
PS i did look for an existing website that offers something similar, but they all seem to focus on cards themselves rather than on specific deals for stores.
Depending on the bank website, your code may need to be able to execute JavaScript to interact with it. Take a look at CasperJS for the web scraping part.
I'm brand new to Dynamics CRM and have been asked to see if this is a viable replacement for the employee tracking software we're using now (AlexSys Team 2 Pro). We're not so much of a sales based company as the tutorials i see for CRM focus on. I know CRM is more for customer relations and sales tracking but i also know it's highly customizable and can do what i need it to do. I need something that keeps track of how many new tasks have been created and how many have been done and to show a graph or a report with the results. I've looked at some PluralSight videos and some windows videos but they all seem to focus on and really push the use of its sales side usability. We do sell our product here (i work at a software development company) but we need something that isn't focused on sales and is usable to management for tracking progress. So for example, lets say im aksed to do 4 things(tasks), I do 2 of those things and am in the process of handling my 3rd. I'm not a sales agent, lets say im a programmer, I need CRM to be able to show my manager that I had 4 new tasks, completed 2, and if possible to show that im in the process of working on the 3rd. AlexSys Team gives you different options for what state the task is in, such as In-Process and Completed but it does poorly when it comes to reporting. Are there any good places to learn how to do that in CRM, we are not using a partner and will not have someone coding this or changing this for us, i will possibly be the one working on that so i need something that can help show me how to customize it without constantly talking about sales. Im off to watch more PluralSight videos but maybe a user here knows of somewhere better to learn from or maybe just a specific PluralSight video i may have missed. Thanks for any input.
Dynamics CRM is as you've discovered very customisable and will almost certainly meet the requirements you've described. Whether it is the correct choice only you can decide.
YouTube is a really good resource for CRM videos, you can also take a look at the CRM 2011 Technical Training Videos on Channel 9 produced when the product was first released. These give a high level overview of CRM 2011 technical capabilities.
You may want to look at the basics of Activities ( in particular Tasks ) and Queues. Make sure you're clear on the usage of Status and Status Reason and how you can customise them. For reporting you can either use the built-in dashboard capabilities or create your own SSRS reports using BIDS that can be hosted within CRM. The process of producing these reports whilst subtlety different will be easily understood by anyone with some some basic SSRS skills.
I'd recommend enlisting the help of a partner in the first instance even if it's to just verify your initial design. The overall cost of their time in relation to the install and running costs of CRM won't be too significant and they may even be able to save you some money.
I'm not sure of a better place for videos, but I can speak to CRM's ability to serve as a rapid application development platform and the areas it excels. It allows you to create new fields and entities (think Database Tables) without touching a database, as well as customize forms, roles, and security with 0 code. You can also sign up for a free months trial online to setup a quick Proof of Concept.
There is so much that it can do, and do quickly, that your company may be better served to seek outside help, resulting in a better product, delivered quicker, with less overall costs than trying to do everything "in-house".
I'm looking for a way of programmatically exporting Facebook insights data for my pages, in a way that I can automate it. Specifically, I'd like to create a scheduled task that runs daily, and that can save a CSV or Excel file of a page's insights data using a Facebook API. I would then have an ETL job that puts that data into a database.
I checked out the oData service for Excel, which appears to be broken. Does anyone know of a way to programmatically automate the export of insights data for Facebook pages?
It's possible and not too complicated once you know how to access the insights.
Here is how I proceed:
Login the user with the offline_access and read_insights.
read_insights allows me to access the insights for all the pages and applications the user is admin of.
offline_access gives me a permanent token that I can use to update the insights without having to wait for the user to login.
Retrieve the list of pages and applications the user is admin of, and store those in database.
When I want to get the insights for a page or application, I don't query FQL, I query the Graph API: First I calculate how many queries to graph.facebook.com/[object_id]/insights are necessary, according to the date range chosen. Then I generate a query to use with the Batch API (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/batch/). That allows me to get all the data for all the available insights, for all the days in the date range, in only one query.
I parse the rather huge json object obtained (which weight a few Mb, be aware of that) and store everything in database.
Now that you have all the insights parsed and stored in database, you're just a few SQL queries away from manipulating the data the way you want, like displaying charts, or exporting in CSV or Excel format.
I have the code already made (and published as a temporarily free tool on www.social-insights.net), so exporting to excel would be quite fast and easy.
Let me know if I can help you with that.
It can be done before the week-end.
You would need to write something that uses the Insights part of the Facebook Graph API. I haven't seen something already written for this.
Check out http://megalytic.com. This is a service that exports FB Insights (along with Google Analytics, Twitter, and some others) to Excel.
A new tool is available: the Analytics Edge add-ins now have a Facebook connector that makes downloads a snap.
http://www.analyticsedge.com/facebook-connector/
There are a number of ways that you could do this. I would suggest your choice depends on two factors:
What is your level of coding skill?
How much data are you looking to move?
I can't answer 1 for you, but in your case you aren't moving that much data (in relative terms). I will still share three options of many.
HARD CODE IT
This would require a script that accesses Facebook's GraphAPI
AND a computer/server to process that request automatically.
I primarily use AWS and would suggest that you could launch an EC2
and have it scheduled to launch your script at X times. I haven't used AWS Pipeline, but I do know that it is designed in a way that you can have it run a script automatically as well... supposedly with a little less server know-how
USE THIRD PARTY ADD-ON
There are a lot of people who have similar data needs. It has led to a number of easy-to-use tools. I use Supermetrics Free to run occasional audits and make sure that our tools are running properly. Supermetrics is fast and has a really easy interface to access Facebooks API's and several others. I believe that you can also schedule refreshes and updates with it.
USE THIRD PARTY FULL-SERVICE ETL
There are also several services or freelancers that can set this up for you at little to no work on your own. Depending on where you want the data. Stitch is a service I have worked with on FB-ads. There might be better services, but it has fulfilled our needs for now.
MY SUGGESTION
You would probably be best served by using a third-party add-on like Supermetrics. It's fast and easy to use. The other methods might be more worth looking into if you had a lot more data to move, or needed it to be refreshed more often than daily.
Could you please let me know if can I test an application simulating multiple users in QTP ?
If yes, how can i do this?
Please illustrate with the right steps or point me to some useful documentation.
You can still use QTP as a GUI handling client with connection to LoadRunner.
Very detailed explanation could be found here:
http://motevich.blogspot.com/2007/11/execute-qtp-script-from-loadrunner.html
simultaneously user testing is possible in QTP ?
No, Only one QTP user can run at a time in one computer. If you try to open other QTP user also in the desktop it will show only one.
More details please - what exactly would you like to do?
If you mean simultaneous user testing with QTP as a proxy for load testing, no, it is not a good tool for that. You will want a real load testing tool (Rational Performance Tester, OpenSTA, JMeter, LoadRunner, et al).
If you are talking about scenarios where you need to have QTP running on 2 machines accessing the same record(s), or something along those lines, then yes, you can do this with QTP. QTP has no special handling for this, but it is fairly straightforward to set up a mechanism to do this.
For example, if you want to create a record with user A and modify the record with user B, you could have a common file that contains the record id. User A would write the record id to this file after creating it, and user B would read the record id from the file before modifying it.
See Graphical Virtual User (GUI Vuser) Licensing for LoadRunner. Essentially you have QTP scripts that you can execute as a part of a performance scenario. This is a well known solution going back to the dawn of LoadRunner, where first it was a bunch of XRunner Sessions on Unix workstations, then came GUI Virtual Users on WinRunner and the latest incarnation of GUI Virtual Users is QTP only with LR 11 and above. Speak to your rep about short term or permanent licensing of GUI Virtual users with your LoadRunner environment.