Hi all. I am new to this site and pretty much everything in here is still Greek to me but I learn fast and I have a strong desire to build a good working app for my department. I am a Corporal for our University Police Department and I thought it would be great to develop an app for our department that would link to Penal codes and Traffic codes for easy reference to start with. Before I begin though, I would like the forum's opinion. We only have 15 in our department, should I invest the time and effort to create this for 15 officers or should I work on making this a department app that is accessible to our students that will help them in asking questions and finding maps to our university? I want to invest my time wisely but I am not sure I am ready to go "big time" on my first go around.

iOS. I'd do adhoc distribution so you can just make accessible to folk with an iPhone in the department. Google Play not so much an issue. Who knows, you may have more people wanting the app afterwards. You are on the right road, you have an app idea and are in the right / best place. Welcome to BT. Dive in, look around, you ARE in the right place for this.

This sounds like a great app for Buzztouch so I wish you luck. Here are my thoughts: If there isn't any sensitive information I don't see why you couldn't frame the app as being just a general reference for anyone who was interested, so maybe putting it on the store would be beneficial, and then any new officiers can download it at will. Additionally, you could have locations of the nearest university police station which could be valuable to students, and other numbers for emergency contact. Good luck!

Good ideas plknudson.

I am gonna like it here. Thanks a bunch.

I guarantee you will. You do good work during the day, you'll do just as good here. Good luck and post back with any stumbling blocks you encounter.

Hi @ncc6206, Welcome to buzztouch! And thanks for being willing to post on your first day! I agree with everything said above, particularly with @plknudson. I think your app could be an awesome outreach app from your department to the students at the university. There's always been that authority-student adversarial relationship, and an app from you could help bridge that. Here are some things I think would be great to include: * Contact information for the department, including a quick way to contact you to report an incident * Social media interface (FB, Twitter) to keep students up to date * Map to your location and/or safety areas on campus (if there are any) * Information on penal codes and traffic like you suggested * Maybe a Police Blotter of sorts to bring repeat traffic to your app I'm getting excited just thinking about the possibilities! Please don't hesitate to post even the simplest question in the forums. Sometimes you'll be amazed at how fast people reply! Welcome! Mark

Thanks Go! Wish I could 1 plus all of you all for your advice. I will work on mapping out what I want to see in the app and ask some students what they would want to see as well. I will DL eclipse and Xcode later tonight so I can start creating some of the menus as practice.

You could always "Thumbs Up" the stuff you like! Not sure if the feature works or not, but lots of people will give you some great advice in this forum! Make sure you check out the documents that are found in buzztouch.com/resources. I have a step-by-step guide on setting up your Eclipse environment that should be helpful. There is also a guide on what you need in order to get started. Hope they help! Mark