Mentor Mentee skills matching

[yraza]

Hello,
I have been asked to create a simple mentor/mentee matching system. Currently we provide a form to mentors who check off their skills possessed, then we provide a form to employees who want a mentor and ask them to check off a list of skills desired. We then throw that into Excel (where the checked skills are marked with an X) then one of us manually goes in and tries matching up a mentor to a mentee.

I suggested creating an Access DB where we can have a Mentor table and a Mentee table, have forms for each which would make inputting the data easier (we can even distribute the form to the employees) and then have a query that matches the skills up.

The criteria (for now) is that a mentee can check off 5 skills they want, a mentor will be deemed mentorable (?) for that employee if he/she possesses at least 2 of the desired skills. The point is to return a list of potential mentors and then our manager will assign it.



I have the table set up and a form set up. The table for both are pretty simple (First Name, Last Name, etc, then Skill 1 (checkbox), Skill 2 (Check Box), SKill 3 (Check box))

I am having trouble writing a query that would give me the result I want. Any suggestions? Is using Access even a good idea for this?

Thanks and appreciate your help!

[orange]

This is a no-no in Access (or any relational database).

I have the table set up and a form set up. The table for both are pretty simple (First Name, Last Name, etc, then Skill 1 (checkbox), Skill 2 (Check Box), SKill 3 (Check box))

You need to research Normalization.
Here's a tutorial that will help you understand table design, relationships and Normalization.

You may also research Junction Table.

Consider: additional tables.
tblSkills
tblMentorHasSkills
tblMenteeDesiresSkills

[June7]

Access is appropriate but need correct structure. The checkbox approach will be problematic for search/filter requirements. Consider:

tblEmployees

tblMentees

tblSkills

tblEmployeeSkills
EmpID
SkillID

tblMenteeSkills
MenteeID
SkillID

Now build a query that joins tblEmployeeSkills to tblMenteeSkills by linking on the SkillID fields.