Membership Applications

[Rod Plastow]

There have been a number of posts recently about membership-type applications
and sending emails.

For some years I was an embassy warden and had to keep track of registered
nationals, maintain their email addresses, capture certain statistics such as
dependents, forward embassy email notices and manage a history of all
correspondence, etc., etc.

I solved my requirements with a hybrid Access-Outlook implementation.
Outlook after all is the ideal repository and organizer for personal details
and email (I had to define a few new user fields and a modified 'Contacts'
data entry form) whereas Access wins hands down when it comes to ease of form
design, dialogues and the like. I used Access VBA's object orien(ta)ted
functionality since I had no data stored on the Access side and retrieving
data from Outlook is a 'wee bit of a pain.' So all data (excluding emails)
was retrieved at application load and stored in the various objects and
collections.

Such a solution is not for the faint-hearted or the newbies but I found it
ideal. Keeping my records up-to-date, generating personalized emails,
forwarding embassy notices within seconds was a breeze. Yes, I had to suffer
the 'A program is ...' messages generated within Outlook but the benefits far
outweighed this inconvenience.

I would hesitate to recommend this solution - at least the OOP concept - if
the membership is very large; you don't want to be instantiating thousands of
objects when you may only be dealing with one or two.

I offer this post to stimulate feedback. Has anyone tried anything similar?

Rod

 

[Rod Plastow]

I told a lie. I've just been reviewing my application and I had one table on
the Access side that contained text templates for standard emails - but even
then I remember I was considering moving these to Word or finding some
convenient place within Access to store and maintain them.

Rod

 

[zvi krochmalnik]

There have been a number of posts recently about membership-type
applications
and sending emails.

For some years I was an embassy warden and had to keep track of registered
nationals, maintain their email addresses, capture certain statistics such
as
dependents, forward embassy email notices and manage a history of all
correspondence, etc., etc.

I solved my requirements with a hybrid Access-Outlook implementation.
Outlook after all is the ideal repository and organizer for personal
details
and email (I had to define a few new user fields and a modified 'Contacts'
data entry form) whereas Access wins hands down when it comes to ease of
form
design, dialogues and the like. I used Access VBA's object orien(ta)ted
functionality since I had no data stored on the Access side and retrieving
data from Outlook is a 'wee bit of a pain.' So all data (excluding
emails)
was retrieved at application load and stored in the various objects and
collections.

Such a solution is not for the faint-hearted or the newbies but I found it
ideal. Keeping my records up-to-date, generating personalized emails,
forwarding embassy notices within seconds was a breeze. Yes, I had to
suffer
the 'A program is ...' messages generated within Outlook but the benefits
far
outweighed this inconvenience.

I would hesitate to recommend this solution - at least the OOP concept -
if
the membership is very large; you don't want to be instantiating thousands
of
objects when you may only be dealing with one or two.

I offer this post to stimulate feedback. Has anyone tried anything
similar?

Rod