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  1. #1
    theviking is offline Novice
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    Access Dashboard Design Feedback

    Developing an application for local auto repair maintenance shop. Designed a dashboard view of sorts as the opening screen and included a daily schedule calendar on the form. Since Access doesn't make dynamic form design easy, we built in a web page for this purpose and included it as a custom ActiveX control within the parent form. Worked out pretty well and while you can still tell it's not a native form, don't think most users would pay enough attention to notice.



    One of the drawback of Access, is that it usually looks and acts like Access. There is only so much flexibility you have in the UI design which can be challenging at times. Curious what others are doing to develop more modern interface designs that have a bit less Access-based look and feel. And of course any feedback or suggestions are welcome.

    Dashboard view

  2. #2
    CJ_London is offline VIP
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    most of my apps look and work like web browser/pages but also take advantage of the client based nature of access. But it is good to see some alternative design ideas.

    In my experience designing dynamic forms is not that difficult - certainly no more difficult that using other development tools. Best to avoid the templates and wizards as they can start you off from the wrong place. In your attachment the schedule form with 'merged' vertical fields is easily achievable if that is the bit you were struggling with. The only potential issue would be if client name or job title was long enough to wrap and you wanted to see the wrapped text.

  3. #3
    theviking is offline Novice
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    Thanks Ajax. If you have some examples of your form designs, would like to see them. Always looking to design our applications with a more modern look and feel. We only use form wizards as a starting point for admin screen and such where the layout isn't critical.

    The only easy way I see to have the scheduler appear with native Access tools is to build a crosstab query and display the results in a datasheet view on the dashboard from. But then I lose significant control over layout including the ability to show continuous blocks of time. Otherwise I was looking at building some functions to dynamically reshape the form. And even then I wasn't sure if we'd accomplish the intended goal.

  4. #4
    theviking is offline Novice
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    I'll give you another example for your input/feedback. This is a search screen where users can locate and drill down on records. I tried to use some split form designs here but the idiosyncrasies outweighed the benefits in my experience. We use native filter functions behind the column header arrows but also a variety of unbound controls on the form header to help facilitate record searches. Ideally this would be contained within a collapsible section but since we only have native ability to hide/unhide the entire form header and not individual sections, this will require some work.

    Curious how others are incorporating record search/filtering into their designs.
    Click image for larger version. 

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  5. #5
    CJ_London is offline VIP
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    yes you could use a crosstab - but you would need to populate the null values with something - perhaps a space - when blocking out time. Colouring would either be using conditional formatting or format fields as rich text. With regards headings you would just set the column headers or use a generic name such as Mech1, Mech2 etc which the form would have some code in the load event to change the column captions to the mechanic names - that would cater for the eventuality of more or less mechanics.

    The form would not look identical - the outline of each timeslot would be a problem.

    A better alternative might be using a report with columns rather than a form.Then you don't use a crosstab and can set things like borders in the detail onformat event

    Or on a redesign - put your schedule with times across the top and mechanics down the side and move your customers table to bottom left. I would also do away with the recordselectors, borders and alternate backcolor, or if you want to retain it, provide a different color for the booked time.

  6. #6
    CJ_London is offline VIP
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    re your search form

    per previous post do away with recordselector/borders/alternate backcolor. It's a personal choice but I think it looks better

    As a matter of good practice, don't provide a full list for users to filter - just give them the search options and apply to a criteria to populate the form

    so instead of

    form.recordsource="SELECT * FROM myTable"

    and to filter (for example)

    me.filter="CustomerPK=" & cboCustomer
    me.filteron=true


    you would have
    form.recordsource="SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE False"

    and to 'filter'

    form.recordsource="SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE CustomerPK=" & cboCustomer

  7. #7
    CJ_London is offline VIP
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    Another comment: My preference for your search form would be to put the results is a subform and leave a bit of space all around for effect - and set detail backcolor of the main form to the same as the header section. The benefits of this can be that you can simply change the returned data by changing the sourceobject to the subform plus your scrollbar will only be located where required and not up into the header. You might also want to consider moving to overlapping windows so you don't have that wide unused space on the right.

    Should be pretty quick to do.

    Take a copy of your search form and rename it say SearchSF

    open this form and remove header search controls, just leaving the column headers and perhaps footer section. Yo can also remove all code that does not relate to the detail section controls Save.
    open search form, change to single form, remove controls from detail section and column labels in header plus perhaps footer, depending on what you did above. Prabably want to set scrollbars to none as well.
    then drag your new SearchSF form onto the detail section and size accordingly
    finally in your code, change references to controls, filters and recordsets from Me. to Me.SearchSF.Form. eg from earlier post

    me.filter="CustomerPK=" & cboCustomer
    me.filteron=true

    becomes

    Me.SearchSF.Form.filter="CustomerPK=" & cboCustomer
    Me.SearchSF.Form.filteron=true

  8. #8
    theviking is offline Novice
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    We actually already use a function to dynamically build the record source based upon user input. But I like the idea of presenting a default false condition in some cases. Removing the record selector here makes sense as well. I've stared at it so long that I don't even notice them anymore.

    Employees do have specific calendar colors. It just wasn't turned on in my screenshot.
    Click image for larger version. 

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    Again, if you have any screenshots of some of your form layouts I would like to see some examples.

Please reply to this thread with any new information or opinions.

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