Microsoft® Access Consulting - R.K. Cooney

Personnel Management

Client
Large Mid-Western City Fire Department

Scenario
The department had outgrown the DOS/DBF based program that was being used for personnel management.

Solution
An application was developed to manage and report on the daily scheduling of personnel assigned to each battalion in the department. This included daily station and vehicle assignments as well as scheduled time off. Functionality beyond that of the DOS based program was added to manage sick time and generate pay reports. A module was also added to create, manage and analyze personnel evaluation reports.

Architecture
Microsoft Access 2000 front end connecting to a Jet(Access) database. The .mdb files are hosted on a central server and copies of the front end application are opened from multiple remote locations via Windows Terminal Server.


Contact and Product Management

Client
Chemical Procurement Company

Scenario
A Small company specializing in the procurement of chemicals used in the BioTech and Pharamacutical industies for their clients needed a way to manage their business.

Solution
An application was developed to manage product, supplier, and client information. A key feature was the easy creation and management of message templates for customizing and sending product inquries to multiple suppliers via email.

Architecture
Microsoft Access 2000 front end application connecting to a Jet(Access) database.


Import Data From Various Sources into a MySQL Database

Client
E-Commerce Website

Scenario
Company needed a way to integrate product information coming from their suppliers with their database.

Solution
An application was developed to automate the import of product information data from various suppliers into the database used behind an E-Commerce website. The information from suppliers came in a variety of formats including Excel spreadsheets, comma seperated value text files and .mdb files. Once received the data in the various files had to be massaged into the format used by the website database. This included cross referencing with pricing markup and shipping cost data. A process that previously took hours to do manually using Excel spreadsheets was reduced to minutes.

Architecture
Microsoft Access front end application connecting to a MySQL database.


Customer and Facility Management

Client
Recreational Skate Park

Scenario
A public skate park located on Long Island in New York needed a way to track visitor and membership information.

Solution
Working with the director at the time, I developed an application according to specifications provided via email.

The Information tracked included:

Forms were built that provided a simple button driven interface to all functions of the application.

The main form, used day to day by the attendants, provided an easy to use search function to locate returning visitor information. Recording names, entry times, and fees were all managed via a tabbed interface on the same form.

Reports were created for:

Administrative forms were provided for the management and maintenance of the database.

Architecture
Access frontend application connected to a Jet(Access) database.


Information Management

Client
Car Dealership Parts and Service Department

Scenario
The service department of a car dealeship located in Harrisburg, Illinois was looking for an easy way to lookup fluid types and capacities for vehicles they sold or serviced. The current method was to flip through charts or the pages of various maintenance manuals.

Solution
An application was developed to facilitate easy entry and lookup of information based on a vehicle's year, make and model. Because someone would have to manually enter all the information from the manuals into the database before it could be used, a key requirement was the ability to enter information once and relate it to multiple vehicles.

While the client was quite happy with the end product they were interested in finding a way to search the information from multiple computers without the need for Access to be installed on each machine. To accomplish this an HTTP application (HTA) was developed. A form that could be run using only the Internet Explorer web browser provided all the same search capabilities as the original Access based form.

Installing the HTA application on each computer was as simple as copying a txt file over the local network.

Architecture
Microsoft Access 2003 front end application used for data entry.
An HTA application using VBScript, ADO and Jet OLDB for searching and reporting.
Data was housed in a Jet(Access) database.


Custom VBA Programming

Client
Public Golf Course/Country Club In Durant Iowa

Scenario
Members of a Counrty Club wanted to replace the subscription golf handicapping service they had been using with a custom Access application. The person who volunteered to take on the project needed help with the programming needed to calculate and update member handicaps.

Solution
Using information from the USGA Handicapping System Manual custom class modules where written to calculate member handicaps and update the database with the information.

Password protected forms were created that allowed members to enter their own scores and edit their member information. Forms were also created so that all members could view the most recent scores of other members. The routines to update the handicap information can be run from a password protected administrative form whenever needed.

Architecture
The application was built using Access 2003 for the user interface connecting to a Jet(Access) database.


Custom VBA Programming

Client
An Integration Solutions Provider and MIS Applications Consultant.

Scenario
A major guitar manufacturing company needed a way to automate converting sales information into work orders. The consultant hired by the guitar company to provide a solution needed help with programming required for a major component of the MS Access based application that was being developed.

Solution
Using information and requirements provided by the consultant, custom class modules were written to convert data imported from the guitar company's enterprise system. The data needed to be massaged into a format that could be used as a source to print labels that provided information for the custom milling of guitar bodies. A task that previously consisted of hours of manually transfering data from sales orders and visually matching options to machine codes was reduced to a simple point and click operation.

Architecture
The application was built using Access 2002 for the user interface. Data was imported from a large enterprise information system into a Jet(Access) database.