Which program to create my project?

[yoda_pooh]

My principal has asked me to create a performance tracking application for my school. I have done some work in this area, usually with Excel. Instead of a tracker for my class, it is to be school wide and will track information over several years (ongoing), rather than running the course of a single year such as I usually do for my class.

Some features I would like to include are:
Entering Student Names
Entering Grade 1 Teacher, Homeroom, Standardized Test Scores
Same as above for Grades 2 - 5

Analysis I would like to include:
Graphing a whole grade
Graphing a Homeroom
Graphing all students who had particular teachers
Graphing a particular student's progress from grade 1 - 5
Graphing a group (students with A's, B'sm etc. or all students who previously failed, etc.)
Graphing other things that we think of

Would Excel, Access, or InfoPath be my best bet for this? Or, is there another suggestion? I realize I may have to use a combination of apps. My main experience is in Excel but I am keen to learn other apps.

Teachers will input the data for their class during the year but I will be collecting the data to due the analysis and share the results.

Thank you

 

[SydneyGeek]

This is mainly a database type of problem. I would recommend that you get your hands on a copy of Access, get a decent book on the subject, read up and then start planning the database structure. Resist the urge to build anything until you understand how to put the tables together properly, otherwise you will end up fighting and swearing at the database.
Do it right, and you will have a powerful tool. For the reporting, much of it can be done in Access. I prefer to create graphs in Excel using Access data; it is quite easy to link the two so that you can refresh your spreadsheet.

To get started, go to this site.
In the right column, download the free resources titled
Access to Excel Report Partners
and
PowerPoint Presentation and Sample database

Also, get his book -- available from the MrExcel store.

Denis

 

[yoda_pooh]

Thanks for the tip. I may be in trouble with this database since I was just on the website and couldn't find the resource "Access to Excel Report Partners" on the right side of the screen.... That is until I realized i was looking on the left side.

Ahhh, coffee, where are you this morning?

 

[Fencliff]

Here's an idea, how I might look into building it.

For the input front-end, I would use InfoPath, because the forms are really nice and easy to use.

InfoPath communicates nicely with MS SQL Server, so I would keep the back-end in a SQL Server database, simply because it's more robust than Access, which easily runs into problems in multiuser environment.

For reporting I would use Excel, reading data using ADO from the central database, and building refreshable report workbooks, taking advantage of the charting capabilities it offers.

This is the cool thing about working on the MS/Office stack - all the programs integrate nicely, and you can use the best tool for each purpose.