I need a solution and a database built.
Mike Taylor
Questions asked by developers and subsequent answers (so far)
Q: In your ideal solution what would you like to happen?
A: We would like to be able to download the sales from Costar into the excel document and then put them in a Database file for all in the office to use. Word doc will follow
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Q: The samples (Word doc and Excel spreadsheet) given, are they in the exact layout as all the others will be ? In other words, all spreadsheets will have the same tab-sheets (and the sheets have the same names) and all the data will be in the same place ? Same with the word doc, the data that needs to be inserted will always need to be in the places this doc has it.”
A: To the word “exact” the answer is no. However the basic format is similar. For example, the units of comparison for offices and retail properties ($/SF) are not the same as for apartments and hotels ($/unit). Same issue for rent comparables. The templates have to be broad enough that they can accommodate all options, understanding that not all will be used in every appraisal. But all appraisals will generally look the same and have either a Cost Approach, Sales Comparison Approach, or Income Approach.
I get the sense that your developers don’t know how to link the word and excel docs in the macros? It is a function that we have been doing for 10 years. This is critical to setting up a master template document and eventually to using a data base. If they do not- I can have you talk to one of the guys here in the office who knows how to establish the links. Hope this helps
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Q: Is there a 'base' report where the same tables / paragraphs always exist and get replaced by data in the spreadsheet ?
A: just tables as in the template you have
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Q: The work that was done by the programmer you contracted previously, are you utilizing that at all currently?
A: No- he is a former partner and he was unwilling to meet our requests.
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Q: My question to you Tim is, are you married to your current method of using the Excel dump, or would you entertain a PDF “Print Report” if it were a better option ?
A: needs to be in excel- a pdf does not solve the problem of the sale being available to others in the office as they will have different reference numbers. i.e. the sale might be Sale 1 in one report and Sale 5 in another. If pdf cannot change.
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Q: Does the database only need to integrate with Excel or are there other programs
that need to be involved?
A: Only Excel- we link from Excel into Word doc.
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Q: Which product from CoStar are you using?
A: Their Sales and Rental product for all of Arizona- all property types
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Q: Would more than one appraiser be editing an Excel file at any given time?
(one appraiser per appraisal?)
A: no- each file is retained in the individual appraiser’s job file but on the
same shared drive.
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Q: Do you use the data downloaded to build a report and that is all the data is used for (and any business analysis comes through looking at the report) - or do you spend a lot of time examining your data in order to make other business decisions that don't require the Word report?
A: we do not use the Costar download- but that is the goal, to be able to download from costar, then have the data fill our individual excel work sheets.
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Q: What kind of solution was it that got abandoned - do you have details of it? How/why was it too complex - for them as users?
A: He made it much more complicated than it needed to be and both sides got frustrated and we stopped- and no I don’t have a copy.
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Q: Does the initial data from the resource company (Costar) have a well defined format or schema?
A: Yes but we have to recreate it to match our format. That is why we need a data base so we (don’t) have to retype every sale we wish to use