HTMLish based scouting

[jlmcmchl]

Originally Posted by bbradf44

So im not even sure if this is possible, but ill give it a shot and see what people think. This year we are running scouting in the stands through either MS Excel or Access so that it can be run through Tableau. Our current setup requires all 6 scouts to have forms to fill out while the 7th inputs them into the database, then an 8th person runs a USB flash drive back and forth to the pits whenever we want to update where we have the Tableau program running. I got the idea while in my web design class today, would it be possible to have an HTML form running on cell phones or other 3g/4g enabled device that when the submit button is pressed, it sends the data to the database that will be either on our team website or in the cloud, which i can then open on my laptop in our pit(usb tethered to my phone)? The html file itself wont be online(but maybe i could put that on our website too) but rather stored on each of the phones. Ideas/criticisms welcome

One issue here is I've never been to an event with a solid data connection. Your system is entirely dependent on that, and will cause headaches and frustration at game time.

Simpler, less dependent solutions I've seen were applications that store the data locally and then push the data to a local server by the push of a button. You're on a good path with using HTML and <form> tags, though. This would also eliminate the 8th person; the 7th person's job is handled by computers, making more people available for other important jobs at competition. Additionally, you can setup Tableau on the local server, and print out data for your upcoming matches to run down to the pits, eliminating extra time needed to process the data in the pits, while still making the data available for developing strategy.