Hello all
After trawling the web (and finding everything except what I need to know), I thought that you guys (and girls) would be the people to ask.
Basically, we have had PC upgrades along with some long-awaited new programmes - both of which will hopefully be the answer to our prayers and streamline what we do as much as possible.
At the moment, I have an Access 2007 database which has various pieces of data flowing to and from it. On a daily basis I pull an extract of the max date's data into a shared Excel file which is then kept on a shared drive. Our business then updates their comments against their areas on the shared file, which is then uploaded back into the database and a weekly response view is created to measure feedback percentages.
I know that this isn't the most elegant method of achieving the end result, however not all users within our business have access to Access, due to a restricted number of licenses. Also some of the issues we have experienced with users of the shared spreadsheets have been remarkable - hiding 295 rows of data to see the 5 rows they need as opposed to using a filter which is already present; or incorrect formatting copied from external spreadsheets to ours causing type mismatches and data loss when trying to bring back into Access for the weekly view. Thankfully a lot of these issues have been addressed through micro-training of the factors, and some background coding - although this isn't as watertight as it could be, due to the requirement for a scrolling page, being able to use filters, update specific columns - all whilst being shared.
When I heard about Infopath, I immediately thought that this will be of huge benefit to us as it will allow the whole process to become much more automated and restrictive for error-causing factors. So that I'm not getting ahead of myself and building false hope, I was wondering if the following is do-able via Access and Infopath:
1) Daily max date's data extract from Access master table is apportioned by Infopath (by business area) into bespoke editable Outlook forms sent out, which will ultimately come full circle and update back into the Access master table? (NB. With about 300 rows of data spread over 50+ different business areas per day, automation here is a must!)
2) If the automated Outlook form reaches an out-of-office reply, is there a way for it to be automatically forwarded to another recipient? Or could it recognise the recipient's designated deputy from their out-of-office reply, and forward it to them automatically? If not and the recipient set up a rule to auto-forward the daily Outlook form to their deputy, could another user (not on Access/Infopath's recipient list) still submit the form and it would update to Access ok? (NB. We have an auto-number for each row of the Access master table, which could be used as an identifier).
Things such as URLs to mp3 call recordings, validation drop-down lists, etc should be relatively simple I'd imagine. Also tabbed Outlook forms would be a great, though not absolutely vital, addition due to multiple occurences per business area being able to be contained in the same email.
Many thanks,
Joe