Building new database for daily contact client management.

[stevekos]

Hello. This is my first post here.

I work for a not-for-profit organisation, in a program which is essentially a call-centre operation dealing with aged vulnerable clients living alone. We call them on a daily basis to check on their wellbeing, and arrange follow-up response as and if required.

We have approximately 1000 clients, called by volunteers from multiple locations based around the state. Some are called from the head office, and some are called from 'bases'. Most of these volunteers do not have access to computers, and call in each morning to confirm the calls to be made, then call back with the outcomes. They receive call lists each month by mail, and make manual changes to their call lists daily as required. This aspect of the operation works as well as can be expected in the current circumstances.

Currently we are running the daily calls schedule with Excel spread sheets, and although the system works fairly well, this poses risks for both stability and accuracy of data for all the reasons members here are very aware of I am sure. I am in the early stages of investigating building an Access database for managing the program.

I am engaged in online training which is progressing well, but there are a few gaps in this training in terms of our particular needs. In particular, how to manage scheduling of calls for clients going forward. In this respect it is a bit like having customers with standing orders going forward indefinitely. In our spreadsheets we simply deal with this by setting up each month in advance with columns for each day of the month, and populate the cells for each client with a yes/no field to indicate whether they require a call on any given day. This is managed manually and updated at the end of each month, and is modified as clients make ad-hoc changes according to their requirements and changing circumstances.

My question is, how do we deal with this in Access? We need to be able to produce a report for each 'base' featuring updated messages (which is straight forward) and any 'no calls' for the day which may be due to both pre-planned and ad-hoc arrangements.

Thank you for any assistance you can offer

[June7]

The spreadsheet with columns for each day is not considered a 'normalized' structure. In Access with normalized data, this presentation would likely be the output of a CROSSTAB query.

You might get some ideas from the MS desktop event management database template.

Here's another tutorial site you might find helpful http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/

Web-based tutorial might be productive (I've never tried) but really can't beat a book in hand.

[stevekos]

The spreadsheet with columns for each day is not considered a 'normalized' structure. In Access with normalized data, this presentation would likely be the output of a CROSSTAB query.

You might get some ideas from the MS desktop event management database template.

Here's another tutorial site you might find helpful http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/

Web-based tutorial might be productive (I've never tried) but really can't beat a book in hand.

Thankss for the link. Seems very useful.