I'm an intern working on a project at work. My boss he doesn't have a technical background (nor does any of the other employees at work), so I don't really have anyone to ask.
Right now, we've got a bunch of excel files that contains data (shipping data). Usually, we take the data in excel and then manually transpose the data onto a map. For example, we might take a screenshot from Google Maps of "Location X" and then annotate:
- A red circle with a 10 in it placed on Building A corresponds to 10 shipments of ketchup at Building A
- A green square with a 5 in it placed on Building B corresponds to 5 shipments of apples at Building B
- A black arrow on Building C means Building C received the most shipments.
- and so on...
Some more information:
- There are about 30 different symbols in total
- There are > 100 locations. The address of the locations are given in the data file.
- Each diagram is for one particular week (or month).
I want to automate this process, making it as user friendly for the other employees at work. Here's my thought process on how to develop this app
- We only use Windows (Windows 7 in particular) based systems
- I want to develop a desktop app. in Visual Studio using either VB.net or C# (not sure which one is better).
- The app will take an excel file and extract the data from it. It will overlay any symbols on the image of the location.
- The location of the image can either be from a user inputted screenshot or taken programmatically from Google Maps (depending if Google Maps integration is possible).
My questions are:
- Is Visual Studio + VB.net/C# a good choice for this project?
- Will it be able to process excel files? (or I am going in a completely wrong direction).
- Is Google Maps integration possible?
- Any suggestions?
(Also, my boss said we can hire a contractor to do this work, but I'll really like to give this a try).