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[Kookai]

I need someone's idea regarding my database.... anyone please

[jzwp11]

Your private message:

We usually received and send a Letter, Memo, Transmittal, etc from different companies.
If its transmittal it usually has attachment that i need to record such as drawings and documents (reports, design report etc) Drawings or Documents that are attached to a transmittal has a unique reference. And i will received the same drawing/documents everytime but with different revisions. So, basically what im trying to eliminate is typing in the drawing/document reference from time to time.

Whether it is a letter, memo, transmittal, report, design etc., you are dealing with documents just different types of documents.

I looked at your database and had some questions.

You have 2 organization tables INC and DEL, since these two tables have the same structure it would suggest that you should have only 1 table. You can add another field to distinguish INC or DEL (what do the INC and DEL mean?).

Are the documents related to a construction project which is then tied to an organization?

Are the documents related to certain stages of a project?

You receive and send documents, do you conduct actions relative to those documents?

Is there a specific process that must be followed for each type of document?

[Kookai]

1st - Just to clarify documents such as report and drawings are being submitted through transmittal.

2nd -InC - Incoming (FRom) and DEL (which our Company Consist of Different Departments)

3rd -yeah, the documents that we received is from different companies

4th - No, i just want to have a register of incoming & outgoing documents that we received and sent from/to other organization(companies) regardless of what stage it is

5th - Yes, there are letters,memo,transmittal that we need to respond

6th - Yes, for a letter,memo is the same approach we received and send it to contractor either for information, comments, review, or action.then i need to log what is the response letter or memo that we received or sent (if its responded, i want the Response status to show that it has been responded)

For a transmittal - its different. We received and send it to contractor but have an attachment like drawings or report. these drawings/reports have a uniques reference. and we will received the latest revision each time (i just want to update the revision and the revision date, status to show that it is the latest or superseded)

Is my dbase design a mess?? coz ive realized that in my dbase i will type in again & again the aLD ref, DEL Ref, subject rev no. rev date... etc etc...

[jzwp11]

I wasn't clear on what DEL means. Do you mean that it is DELivered to a particular person within your company? Relative to the INC, do you care what person in the other company from which the document comes or just the particular company?

Is my dbase design a mess??

Since you are trying to model the movement of documents and the documents can have related documents, the design to handle this is a little less intuitive than other applications.

What will become important is how you identify the documents. How do you identify documents now in your current system which I assume is a manual system?

[Kookai]

DEL is our company.... yes we do care where the incoming document comes from... and who is the recipient.

YEs...

Note: we dont classify letter, memo and transmittal as documents.... its just serve as cover to which the documents are attached.

[jzwp11]

Thank you for the additional information.

Note: we dont classify letter, memo and transmittal as documents.... its just serve as cover to which the documents are attached.

Even though you don't officially classify the letters and memo's you do receive them, transfer them (to people in your organization), and do other things with them, so how do you keep track of them now?

[Kookai]

log it in to excel spreadsheet, which is kinda stressing... :-(

[Kookai]

What do i do with my dbase now???

[jzwp11]

I am working on a revision to your database and will post it with an explanation, but it might not be until tomorrow. I still need to think through some items based on the information you have provided.

[Kookai]

Thank u very much... im working on it also and still trying to figure out how it will work.... sorry for taking much of ur time....:-(

[jzwp11]

Not a problem; glad to help.

[jzwp11]

I thought that the best way to handle your application was to treat each document equally. Rather than having special tables for specific types of documents, all document information is stored in 1 table and there is a field to identify the type of document. This gives you the most future flexibility since it is probable that you will other documents in the future. I also set up 1 organization table, whether it is your company, contractors etc., they all go in the same table. I also assume that an organization can have many contact people and that a contact person can have may contact methods (phone #, fax #, cell phone #, email etc.) In order to streamline the document revisions, I assumed that all documents can have many revisions. Based on your description, most of your documents will have only 1 revision, but the structure I provided can handle 1 or many, so it gives you maximum flexibility and does not depend on a particular type of document. Since a document or more precisely a revision of a document can be related to other documents (also with revisions (transmittals with attachments), I set that up as well (tblDocumentRevisionRelations). I decided to handle things you do with your documents/revisions with a basic transaction table, so when you receive a document, you create a transaction record. When you provide/send the document to someone, you create another transaction record, that way the complete movement of the document is tracked.

Please review the attached DB and the how the tables are structure as shown in the relationship window. Please post back with any questions.

[Kookai]

Hi,

thanks i will check and if i have some question ill let u know thank u very much :=)