Programming Question - Is this beyond my expertise?

Web Design
#1

I have a question about a project I was assigned today - and if I really possess the skills right now to actually do it.

First, let me give you a little bit of background about where I’m at in my skill level. I use InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator regularly for my work. I primarily design for print, but have experience with UI design and managing my company’s wordpress. I have an intermediate understanding of how to use html and css to build webpages with more beginner level knowledge using javascript.

Today I was asked to make a program that allows users (people working at my company mainly) to search for locations that are using my company’s products. For example, if someone wanted to search for all locations that house a certain product, all of the locations would be displayed (and this is where the graphic design comes in) on an interactive map. Users could refine their search to display products in specific states, cities, etc.

Right now my company uses a software that can do this same thing, called SAP Business One. Although there is a way for people to find out the same information using that software, it seems like my boss wants me to make something custom and specific to our company. I’ve done a little researching on what it would entail to take on a project like this and I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is beyond my expertise (I’m someone who makes flyers, brochures, web pages). So I’ll end with a few questions hopefully someone can answer:

How would one go about doing a project like this?
What steps are involved?
What software is needed?
Is this a one-person project or does it require a team?
Based on my career background, do you feel I could take on this project?

#2

Could you expand on that?

You don’t mean something as simple as:

https://cse.google.com/cse/

#3

SAP Business One is somewhat customizable (based on my two minutes of research), but whether or not it can do what your boss wants done in the way he wants it is another question. I don’t know enough about SAP Business One to say.

If he wants you to build an independent application, separate from SAP, it sounds like this would require querying the SAP database, which I assume is SQL compliant. Even if this is easily doable, however, you’d need to build a separate server-side application to make sense of the data and serve it out as web pages. This would require some advanced skills in server-side language programming, like JSP or PHP. In other words, based on what you’ve said, this is a job for a computer programmer, not a graphic designer with an intermediate knowledge of HTML and CSS.

There must be a person where you work who’s in charge of the system. What does he or she say? This person, better than anyone, should know what can and can’t be done with it. Perhaps if there is such a person, you could just design and code the front-end interface and he/she could handle the integration of the data into what you design.

1 Like
#4

Just from reading your post, I would say it’s a bit beyond your skill level.

They have an API, so It wouldn’t exactly require any server side knowledge (just processing object responses and querys on the front-end), but will be some intermediate to advanced OOP Javascript at the least.

I would personally use Python for something like this, though.

1 Like
#5

Thank you. Yeah, I realize now it’s definitely a job for someone more skilled in programming.