[epics]

Good morning everyone, very long time reader and i often use the things i learn here to help others really appreciate this website.

Now onto the topic, i've been searching around for a program or option that would automatically email files either sent into a folder / directory or simply email all contents of a folder at the end of a day / week. the reason i need this is because of the field workers i have working out at the business I am working at.

details on the situation below;

We usually have 3-4 field engineers / pool maintenence men, and i have them fill out their work orders / invoices right there at the pc, then at the end of the week (friday) i make them hand over the laptops and i manually place them into the office pc / quickbooks. i'm wondering if there is a way to get around this (or idea on how to rig something else) to work in my favor here. I'm avoiding dispatching software since it seems to be too costly for my business to afford at the moment.

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do they have internet access in the field? do they usually have access at specific times? do they take the laptops home with them at the end of the day or leave them in the office?

[dsenette]

do they have internet access in the field? do they usually have access at specific times? do they take the laptops home with them at the end of the day or leave them in the office?

[epics]

do they have internet access in the field? do they usually have access at specific times? do they take the laptops home with them at the end of the day or leave them in the office?

Yes, they have internet access occasionaly and i do my dispatching through microsoft outlook, theyre connected through a USB client called Clear (not Clear-W). When i say occasional i mean their services cuts out from time to time so theyre never connected 100% of the time,

Yes, they occasionally take the laptops home. Sometimes i leave them in the office charging or overnight if there are technical issues / quickbooks work to be done.

The laptops they use are Toughbooks cf-52 and rugged cf-52 types.

[dsenette]

ok, well there are a couple of options that i can think of.

one way would be to set up an FTP server in the office, then install an FTP client on each of the laptops (like filezilla or cuteFTP or whatever), then after they complete a job, they get on the intertubes and manually dump their files into the FTP server (you could even set up a user for each technician to keep them separated on the server)

option #2 would STILL involve an FTP server in the office, but you could use a program called syncback to do the ftp for them. with syncback you could set up a job that would copy the files from the laptops to the FTP server any time they start the job (at the end of the day) or you could schedule it (however if it's scheduled you'd have to schedule it at exactly the right time to ensure that the laptop is on and connected).

this option could also work if the laptops always come back to the office. basically at the end of the day they bring the laptops in, connect them to the network and leave them on. the job will run and dump the files to the server at this point you wouldn't need FTP as syncback could just be set up to do a normal file transfer across the lan instead of via FTP

[epics]

sounds perfect, i could even use that for dispatching work orders it sounds like, you wouldnt happen to have a bookmarked guide would you on setting up an FTP server, if not i can find one. Im also considering hosting two websites for our 2 businesses. so in the process of buying a server i could also buy one for the FTP host youre speaking of. (also learning about the hosting too).

[dsenette]

well, most web hosting places will actually allow you to have an FTP server set up on the hosting site, which would actually be more secure since the FTP server would be outside of your building (which would reduce the risk of someone hacking your network and getting to certain information), in all probability you could have the FTP system on the same system as the website. you'll need to confer with your webhost for this (i don't do much with websites so i don't know what's fully available but i know that most webhosts offer FTP access)

if you did want to host the FTP internally, check out filezilla server, it's free and easy to set up.

[epics]

I was hoping to host it on my own since it would seem it will cost me 50 + dollars a month to host two websites online.