Automatic Flagging

[terricritch]

Hi
Does anyone know if it is possible to use an access form and have a field automatically flag to another system - ie via email or directly into Word - if data is entered into the field. We are currently looking at setting up a monitoring system and if issues are highlighted, admin staff need to be made aware without having to trawl daily through hundreds of records. Also this would have a very high number of users and high number of records so would an access database be the best option?


Any advice greatly appreciated.

[RuralGuy]

This link may shed some light on the subject: http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/email.htm

[NTC]

A helpful answer depends on what is meant by aspects of your post:

* "a very high number of users and high number of records " - please define 'high' , also are these users all co-located on one LAN?

* "having to trawl daily through hundreds of records" - definitely that is the reason to use a database in avoiding this by writing queries instead

* "have a field automatically flag to another system - ie via email or directly into Word " - Access can generate an email or export to Word, but it isn't entirely clear what you need....particularly around the word 'automatic' because of course nothing is truly automatic in that everything needed to be coded at some point in time. If you mean untended where no human is at all involved then no, Access is not a running service, it is event driven. But if a human is going to check, perhaps daily, for events and have them autogenerate emails/word docs - this type automation is a routine use of Access.

Hope this helps.

[terricritch]

Thanks both
It is a little vague what we are doing at the moment. Basically we are looking at a form where if an issue is raised admin staff are (preferably) emailed to notify them of issues raised. As the process grows during the year, the number of users could be over 50 and the number of records over 1000 so doing a trawl through would get very difficult.

[RuralGuy]

Having you system send an email when a user, using a form, makes a change should not be a problem. I use CDO to bypass any Office security.