Considering designing a project manager in Access. Is it worth it?

[June7]

Use combo or list boxes to aid in selecting items.

[ssanfu]

From your first post:

1) Enter records of maintenance completed
2) Enter records of regulatory inspections completed

Looking at your table structure, how do you indicate if an inspection is a regulatory inspection? Maybe a Y/N field? (regulatory if checked?)

What does an inspection involve? Can a vessel have more than one engine? Are inspections only on an engine?
Any chance of posting the spreadsheet? (change sensitive info, vessel names, etc)

...just my thoughts while following your thread...

[shariq1989]

1) Oh, we arent throwing in any inspections that are not regulatory. Our job is just to track reg inspections and the engineers handle the less official ones themselves. But good question .
2) What does an inspection involve?
Going down a checklist and making sure everything is in order. Or just waiting for Coast Guard and having them inspect.
3) Can a vessel have more than one engine?
Yes, it'll be a one to many relationship. Almost all vessels will have four engines.
4) Are inspections only on an engine?
Like I said in 1), we arent throwing any machinery inspections in there. For machinery, we are just tracking maintenance hours. And maintenance will be on a lot of different machinery. As you will see in the workbook. Other than engines, it'll be on reduction gears, bearings, etc.
5) Any chance of posting the spreadsheet? (change sensitive info, vessel names, etc)
Here you go. I deleted a bunch of stuff on there but still should be in working condition. ForForum1 is the maintenance tracking and ForForum2 is inspection tracking.forforum.zipforforum2.zip

[shariq1989]

I can't figure out how to lookup fields for "VesselInspectionID" in TblInspectionHistory. To pick that, I need to pick a VesselID and an InspectionID. Which are both autonumbers. So I need sort of a double lookup, I guess? Selecting the VesselName and InspectionName to give me the corresponding VesselInspectionID is what I want..

[June7]

The RowSource for combobox would have to be a query that joins VesselInspection to the Vessels and Inspections tables so that the related names will be available.

[shariq1989]

Trying to create forms right now and its very frustrating because I thought it would be simpler.. Started with the most basic one: To manage vessels. It would be a split form which shows all vessels from TblVessels, with an option to add a new vessel using a button. I guess I am just going in over my head. Any good form tutorials? Most of the ones I am finding are super basic with no buttons...

[June7]

The more 'user friendly' the more code is required. The alternative is to learn how to use the intrinsic Access tools such as the navigation bar at the bottom of forms and allow user to open objects from the navigation pane. Will this be a one-user db?

All the 'Add new vessel' button should do is move the focus to a new record. I haven't used the split form design. My initial exploration of the form when first introduced was not positive.

Post your attempted code or provide db for analysis.

I am sure tutorial available somewhere and a Google search will hit some.

[shariq1989]

Yea, the problem is that I was considering creating management level and worker level forms, where my boss could easily edit all records without messing anything up and workers could only add new records. I wanted everything to look polished, while presenting all the information in the db in an efficient manner. I guess I should come up with what I want all the forms to do and then go from there.

[June7]

The same form can work for both user groups. Use arguments of DoCmd.OpenForm to control how it is opened depending on the user.

[shariq1989]

I'm gonna scrap all my forms and go back to the drawing board. I missed the part where using lookup fields is a sin and now I gotta figure out how lookup tables work so that I can build forms around them.

[June7]

Okay. Probably good idea to start new thread if you encounter issue.