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What is the best strategy for developing a system that would largely duplicate what could be done in MS Excel?

We have a web product that is used for project management and planning. Each "project" in the tool is available to all participants in this project.

Now, before the existence of this product, a lot of work was done / managed using spreadsheets, and it was not visible to everyone, so to speak, it was necessary that the main functionality / data was visible to everyone and also be able to export to Excel when it necessary (i.e. when submitting a report or sending to higher versions or if there is no access to the web system, etc.).

So, now we are developing the upcoming version of the product to make it “social” so that everyone can see what is happening and manage / plan as they move. The question is, what is the best strategy we can use to prevent duplication of what excel already does, works fine on a web system.

So here is what we came up with:

  • Duplicate functionality i.e. create a matrix structure for table-based content, and javascript will calculate the results that can be passed to the server when the user talks about it (or after some timeout. added later :)
  • Just use the front-end to collect data, but there is no numerical calculation - everything is exported to an excel sheet that will perform the calculations for you. However, knowledge of the calculations / numbers is critical to the visible for the whole part, as it contributes to management / planning!
  • You have a kind of excel internet plugin that can speed up the development process - effectively help us perform the calculations and pull out the results that will be used in the web application. The problem is that I don’t know any solutions like this! Any help / pointers / links would be greatly appreciated.

Sick points keep development time / development costs low - each solution becomes cheaper, so to speak. Basically, we need a construction with a mathematical engine where numbers are entered, the results are calculated, and we can use this for a project (in a tool). There must be some way to get numbers from users, calculate the final results / ratings and update the content in the web application. Export to excel (which will have similar functionality for the above reasons, as well as for further sensitivity analysis, if I may say so).

What is the best way to approach this problem? We are open to Javascript / JQuery solutions or CSS3 / HTML 5. No Flash or Flex though.

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2 answers

I believe that you can use the Microsoft Office Excel web application (# 3) for this.

Here is a link - an example of implementing an Excel web application. However, I’m not sure about the environment you are developing and about the costs of getting this web application, but this may be an option for you.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/embed-an-excel-spreadsheet-on-a-web-page-FX102602477.aspx

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Option # 1 can be very simple or very complex depending on what you really need to calculate. If you need only a few different calculations, it’s easier to realize yourself. Html already supports a matrix-like structure.

I don’t know any Excel-like plug-ins, but if they exist, I think it would be harder to implement them than just setting up the matrix in the user interface and writing a few functions that you need.

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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/1392266/

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