Can I use Zoho Creator to accomplish what I need?
This is my first post on the Zoho forums, and I apologize for its extremely abstract nature and the length! My entire knowledge of databases (admittedly quite limited) has come from troubleshooting various software packages that utilize MySQL and editing a database directly. I have never actually designed a database in MySQL/Access or anything like that. Needless to say, I would have difficulty designing a custom database to fulfill my needs.
In either case, I digress.
I am interested in using designing a scheduling and notification system for my organization, a local Little League in the town where I reside. I have come to the Zoho community in hopes that someone will be able to help me decide if creating a database in Zoho Creator is a suitable option for my needs and if what I am trying to do is feasible within reason, and relatively easy to implement. Several colleagues of mine have recommended that I "use a database", so I've been searching for a good database solution as my next step.
I am in charge of scheduling the umpires for all the baseball and softball games for the Little League organization; the umpires are teenagers ranging from 13 to 19 years of age. As you can imagine, getting all these kids to remember their assignments is a nightmare!
We traditionally have constructed a schedule using Google Spreadsheets, and then email the spreadsheet in Excel format to the entire umpire distribution list at the beginning of a bi-weekly schedule. That serves as the only "notice" an umpire receives that they have been assigned a game to umpire. If the game is two weeks down the road our younger umpires often forget, do not write it down, etc. Therefore, my first goal when setting out to "move things to the cloud" was to find a way to send umpires a notification the day before their umpire assignment.
The second goal has proved to be more difficult in my initial analysis. Our Little League has a contingent of League Directors that "patrol" the complex on a randomly generated schedule. Since we have roughly 20 directors, each director needs only to be "on duty" once a month in terms of the number of days games are actually scheduled at the complex in the course of a month. The "Director on Duty", as we dub him/her, is responsible for ensuring that umpires are indeed present for their games and are assigned to the right fields prior to the start of game time. We would like to be able to send the Director on Duty an email when they are scheduled that includes the most up to date umpire schedule, either in its entirety or only the games for that evening. In a scenario where I am the Director on Duty, for example, on the morning when I am scheduled for duty I receive an email with an attachment (or even a link) containing the umpire schedule.
Ideally we'd also like to handle our pay vouchers (timesheets, if you will) online, and a place where coaches can submit feedback about the teens that umpired their game. These are less important requirements to incorporate into some form of DBMS, as I can easily achieve this using a simple Google Form. (Although it would not be as integrated!)
If anyone is particularly interested in helping, the following is a link where you can view the Google Spreadsheet that we currently use to schedule games, as this may give a clearer picture: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0ApwuBOK2eulwdGNnWUItSWs0QWk4TXVwMkM1b2pMX3c&hl=en&single=true&gid=4&output=html
My question remains, does anyone believe that these goals are attainable considering the background information that I have given? Furthermore, what kind of time is required to setup a solution like this, should it be possible? I very much appreciate anyone who takes their time to read this post and give any feedback that they might have!