Is this a viable approach?

In my office we have a spreadsheet file on the server that gives details of mine and my colleagues whereabouts and estimated return-to-office time.

It is not a very good system because it can only be edited by one person at a time.

So I was thinking about writing a program that can be copied to everyone's PC that solves this problem...

The program would allow users to declare if certain people were in or out and the ETA by means of a textbox...

//before I go out on site I'd type this into it...
"adam out 2:30 bridge inspection"

//and then when I get back (around 2:30)...
"adam in"

//or if I want to sign more than one person in or out...
"adam, john, mike, out 1:45 meeting"
//so we'll all be out at a meeting until 1:45

Once that's been entered by the user, a class writes this command into a NEW file on the server in a directory called Pending.

Now, another program (Program X) can be thought of as the server app for this. X scans the pending directory and consolidates these small command files into the central file (maybe a small database or binary file or somesuch) which can then be disseminated to all the user programs as an updated list.

So, is this a sensible plan or is there a better way. Bearing in mind that we don't necessarily have control over executeables on the server so would it have to be a sort of website / asp affair?

I have no clue about ASP or XML so would it be easier to have an always-on PC in the office that is in charge of this processing?

The system will need to be able to cope with up to 100 people (maybe more later) without causing network traffic problems. The user program should be able to update the list every 5 seconds or less.

So is this feasible? Please let me know your thoughts on how you would approach this.

Many thanks
Adam

I would go with a local intranet website. Deployment will be easy, just roll out a site specific to the LAN. Maintence will be easy since its just in one location. If you aren't familiar with ASP.NET then it should still be easy since there are lots of examples and most of the coding is just VB.NET.

I''l give it a try.

I second the asp.net approach. You can do this very easily.

get a webserer.

Unfortunately this might not be so easy after all.

Our network is rather large (well over 1000 machines) and it is administrated by a subcontracted company and thus I don't have admin rights on the network. There is no LAN as such as far as I can see.

I might be easier to hook up one of our ancient P300's to a nearby patch terminal undercover of darkness and get that to run the server app as a pseudo-server and keep it as a dedicated PC, running nothing else but WinNT4 SP6a and my proggy. It'll have little more than network file access and string parsing to keep itself busy.