Potluck Data Entry App

The creation of this app arose from the need for proper data maintenance in potluck order information. As a part of the Lotus Youth Council, I worked in creating food packets to sell back to our community both as an act of giving and a fundraiser for future charitable events. However, as a high-school student interested in applications of programming, I saw an opportunity to improve the existing system of data collection. Previously, data was entered straight into a spreadsheet, which presented an issue in usability, searching, organizing, and re-making data into other useable forms. I presented a solution to the executives which consisted of a simple frontend, that can be used online anywhere. When the spreadsheet was being used, a member of the executive team must call customers ahead of time to ask for pre-orders, which would then be entered by the member into the spreadsheet. With the new online form, customers can enter their order through the cloud without having access to any other customers' details. This helped streamline the process since it was no longer necessary that hundreds of calls be made to customers asking if they wish to purchase a food parcel.

The app is created through the usage of Google's services; the frontend is created through Google forms, the database is created through Google spreadsheets and the backend is made through Google's Appscript (Javascript). 

This was the all purpose order form used by the youth council. It is simple enough that a customer can use the form without any supervision to fill in the orders efficiently. It should be noted that while this frontend was being created, the adult council of our local temple asked me to make a specific version for their own fundraising purposes. This frontend can be found below.

What is unique about this form is that the adult council wished to conduct all preorders by calling their customers. In order to optimize this process, I asked for a database of the members of our local temple so that I can feed a random member to the user to call (The image above blurs the name). How this works is that the backend extracts uncalled individuals and their numbers and displays them on this form on opening.

                                         

This is done through a trigger placed on the opening of the form. Those who wish to see the spreadsheet will see that the individuals who are currently being called have "CALLING" on their status. This makes calling efficient since the callers no longer have to find uncalled customers through the spreadsheet. Both forms are for their own purposes, although the publicly open form is more flexible and stands by itself rather than the call form version which requires a backend of Appscript. 

On the day of the potluck, a sales form which was used to take record of the orders given at the event itself. This includes the preordered food parcels. This was done through the call form. As the call form is submitted, a trigger causes the information received to be reformatted and sent to the sales form so that it can be easily searched for on the day of.

The code for this is above. The data is taken from the call form submission and reformatted such that a single string summarizes the entirety of the order. This way, when a customer arrives, there is no confusion as to what they have ordered. This makes it so that the information does not need to be filled in again since it is already in the system. However, if the customer wishes to change their order, then the number of parcels can be updated simply by entering new numbers in the given fields, which will override the ones in the system.

Although priority was given to preorders, this new system allows for in person orders as well. All that is needed is for the other fields to be filled and the system will internally record the customer as not-preordered. This can give us a good gauge as to the ways customers prefer to order for a particular time of year.

As mentioned earlier, the adult council wished to have their own version. They requested to have a simple way in which to display information on sales, orders, profits and much more. To accommodate for this, I created a local host version of this app. 

This version is created through pure Javascript, HTML, and CSS. The goal was simple, to have buttons to quickly return information regarding the potluck. The image above displays the usage of the local host version to search for contacts; the other functions displayed can also be used. The app works through retrieving data directly from the spreadsheets and displaying it on an iframe. This was a convenient way to avoid looking at raw data and risk obstructing it as well as efficiently getting the information that is needed. As can be seen, the call and sales form can be accessed directly from the app. In fact for the adult council's next potluck, the local host version of the app was used to conduct the entire operation. The potluck was a success in that it made processes more efficient and user friendly.