Creating a Communication log/database

[lnin05]

Hello,

 

I'm a novice FilePro user and am creating a database to use.

 

I have created a database with my contacts and now need to figure out how to create a table to track my communication. I have to make 2 calls a month to each person in my database and track the date the call was made, a date for a message left, if I left a message and if I did speak to that person I need a place for notes. This would be on an ongoing basis, I've been doing this on an Excel spreadsheet, but would love to be able to do this from FilePro.

 

Would I need to create a new table and form a relationship with my contact table???

 

I hope this makes sense...

 

Thanks!

 

Lisa

[AHunter3]

Would I need to create a new table and form a relationship with my contact table???

 

That's exactly what you do. You create a new table, you relate it to your contacts table by some unique identifier in the contacts table (we like serial numbers, most of us) linked to a field in the new table that will represent what contact that call was pertaining to, let's call it Contact ID.

 

Contacts::Contact ID = PhoneCalls::Contact ID

 

 

there is a checkbox on both sides of the relationship where you can enable record creation via this relationship; you want to enable that on the PhoneCalls side.

 

Now you can make a portal on your Contacts layout and by doing so click in the bottom-most (always empty) row and start typing and it will create, on-the-fly, a new PhoneCalls record associated with that Contact. If you create a Creation TimeStamp field, and set it to auto-enter the creation timestamp, you will already automatically be stamping those PhoneCalls records with the date and time you placed the call (or at least the date and time you make the record, I assume you'd make the record as you are making the call).