Possible to Setup Alert - Remind You of Upcoming/Current Events/Da

C

Curtis Stevens

Is it possible to set it up in Access so you can have a pop up reminder when
an event or date comes true? For example, you have a contact that needs to
be followed up on December 1st. You have that data inputted into a field in
your table. Is it possible to create a program that will read the data in
that field and when any one of those dates come true for any contact in the
database, it will pop up a reminder for you?

Thanks
Curtis Stevens
 
D

Dirk Goldgar

Curtis Stevens said:
Is it possible to set it up in Access so you can have a pop up
reminder when an event or date comes true? For example, you have a
contact that needs to be followed up on December 1st. You have that
data inputted into a field in your table. Is it possible to create a
program that will read the data in that field and when any one of
those dates come true for any contact in the database, it will pop up
a reminder for you?
Click to expand...

Yes, but bear in mind that the database needs to be open in order for
that to happen. So if this is a line-of-business application that is
normally open all day long, that's fine. If not, you'd do better with a
specialized scheduling application, or even Outlook.
 
C

Curtis Stevens

Yes, but bear in mind that the database needs to be open in order for
that to happen. So if this is a line-of-business application that is
normally open all day long, that's fine. If not, you'd do better with a
specialized scheduling application, or even Outlook.
Click to expand...


Thanks Dirk,

Any direction or help files that can show me how to approach/create this
program? I need some direction.

Thanks
Curtis
 
D

Dirk Goldgar

Curtis Stevens said:
Thanks Dirk,

Any direction or help files that can show me how to approach/create
this program? I need some direction.
Click to expand...

You'd need two things, primarily. First is a table to hold the
scheduled items. The fields in this table would include the message,
the date or date/time after which the message should be displayed, and,
if the message is to be displayed periodically (every Monday, or every
first of the month) any fields necessary to define the period of the
message.

Second is a form that will be opened, hidden, every time the application
starts. You can have this form be your startup form (hiding it after a
short period), or have it be opened by your startup form or by an
autoexec macro. Assuming that you want to check for scheduled items
more than once a day, you would have the form's TimerInterval property
(on the Event tab of its property sheet) set to the minimum interval at
which you want perform the check -- once every minute, or every 5
minutes, or 15, or every hour ... whatever you think appropriate.

You'll also have an event procedure for the form's Timer event. In that
event procedure, you'll open a recordset on a query that returns all the
records from the Schedule table that have ScheduledFor (the date/time
field) <= Now(). Those are the items that are due. You loop through
the records in the recordset, display the message for each record, and
either delete it (if it's a one-time message) or update the ScheduledFor
field with a new date/time (if it is a periodic message). When you've
processed all the records in the recordset, you'll close the recordset a
nd exit.

I believe that's the gist of it. The user interface is up to you --
you'll need a form for scheduling items, and maybe a form to use instead
of MsgBox() to display the scheduled messages. If you had this latter
form, you could use it to allow the user to reschedule the message --
"Tell me later."
 
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