Hosted forms for PDAs, phones and PCs

magic5 Hosted Edition enables you to replace your paper forms with easy-to-use yet powerful PDA forms. Benefits include :

• Reduced turnaround time between completing your work and submitting your 'paperwork'
• No need to type up paper forms or re-enter data
• Capture customer signatures and authorisation
• Reduced printing, paper and stationery costs
• Online access to authorised reports for your clients
• A smart, professional image for your business
• Fast, consistent, uniform entry of data

magic5 Hosted Edition allows you to easily define your own forms. Typically these may be a job sheet, a timesheet, an invoice, a stock/part usage form, a proof of delivery form, an inventory, an inspection, audit or assessment.

You don't need any experience of programming or to be a technical guru, as long as you've used the Internet you'll be fine !
Or, if you want a quick start or some advice, just ask us and we'll get you up and running quickly.

Generally you'll want to use things like tick boxes and drop-down lists where possible. This makes the forms fast and easy to complete.

You create your PDA forms using an account we give you on our hosted web site. To help with completing forms you can also setup customers and locations, and general purpose lists for drop-down boxes and multiple choice questions. You can create further accounts, allowing your colleagues to complete forms on their PDAs and clients to login and view reports that you've released for them. You may wish to use the "Job Dispatch" module of magic5, allowing you to log and allocate jobs using the magic5 web site - PDA users can receive their job lists, view all relevant information, complete the associated form and obtain customer sign-off. Forms completed on the PDA may be supported by an unlimited number of photos, and all photos will become part of the completed report. Depending on how you like to work, reports can automatically be e-mailed to whoever you like, or maybe you'll grant online access to your clients. In addition, you may wish to output data to a Microsoft Access database, allowing spreadsheets to be created easily.

Costs are based on a one-off setup fee and then a monthly, per user subscription. More details

You need to have a PDA running Windows Mobile (versions 2003, 5 or 6). You'll probably want to send and receive forms and data over the mobile phone network - this would be charged as data traffic by your network provider. Companies such as O2 have data packages available which give very large data bundles for less than £10 per month.

The fundamental advantage of magic5 Hosted Edition over magic5 Personal Edition is that your completed forms are stored in a central database, allowing access to them over the internet for yourself, colleagues and clients. Any of the following requirements would indicate that the Hosted (or Enterprise) Edition might be more suitable for you than magic5 Personal Edition :

• you have more than one or two users
• you wish to create multiple form templates
• you wish to allow online access for your clients and colleagues
• you wish to use the job dispatch module
• you would like to use PDF report generation rather than Word-compatible .rtf reports
• you would like to automatically output data a Microsoft Access database, spreadsheet or third party system
• you would like to have upgrades to new software versions
• you would like to use photo capture
• you would like branding of the PDA software

We can help with the migration of your data from Hosted Edition to Enterprise Edition.

No. If you wish to purchase then please e-mail us. Once we receive a Purchase Order or other authorisation from you we'll create an account for you, allowing you to create your forms, additional accounts and any lists that you need (please ask us for any help you need with this). Please allow up to 3 days for the creation of your account (it usually takes less time than this.)

Yes. If you register for our free trial you'll see a set of forms relating to job sheets, proof of delivery etc. You can take one of these forms "as-is" or use it as a basis for your own form.

We don't supply PDAs as there is no way we can give you a cheaper deal than people like the network operators O2, Orange, Vodafone etc. These companies offer Windows Mobile PDAs along with their phone contracts and that is usually the best way to acquire a PDA (especially if you're interested in e-mailing completed forms over the mobile phone network and hence need a data package anyway). If you need something more rugged than one of those PDAs then you might want to look at Motorola (who now own Symbol), Psion and, as a halfway house, Otterbox.