Appointment "Book"

[Chris Ryner]

Can anyone offer me some insight as to how I might go about setting up an
appointment system!?
Or possibly some links, examples, samples, etc. Any help or thought would
be greatly appreciated.

I have a need for scheduling appointments (lengths in increments of 15mins)
with the ability to double and triple up also.

I am fairly knowledgeable with access I have built some fairly complex dbs
but I don't know where to begin with this one. Table structure is killing
me

How do I need to set up my tables? End result I want to be able to see at
least a days worth of appointments in a grid such as this.

time client name overlap overlap

7:00 Mary Smith
7:15 Mary Smith
7:30 Mary Smith Tina Wixom
7:45 Mary Smith Tina Wixom
8:00 Tina Wixom Harry Man
8:15 Jon Pub Harry Man
8:30 Jon Pub

Mary has a 1 hr appt at 7:00
Tina has a 45 min appt at 7:30
Harry has a 30 min appt at 8:00
Jon has a 30 min appt at 8:15

This appointment system is for scheduling only no billing needs to be done
from this. I want to make this as easy as possible to use (ie have the
clients record open, click the schedule button, popup a calender to pick
day, then show this grid and allow the appointment time to be highlighted
with a click and drag, a click of a confirm button would pull the clients
name from the clients form and fill in the grid) or something like that. I
would even settle for having to type in the start time and duration if
necessary but the key is to display the appts like the above grid so that it
is easy to see whats going on.
The reason for the overlap is .....
This is for a hairstylist and she can say for instance apply color and do a
haircut while the color is processing, or wax eyebrows while setting a perm,
etc.

IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE??? (I feel that everything is with the proper
beginning!!!)

 

[Daryl G.]

Chris,

I am not an Access expert yet, so I can't help with an answer, but the
following questions came to mind when reading your design

1. Under what circumstances would you want the system to display you
hairstylist time as booked?
2. Do your haristylist tasks have defined times to complete, if so can you
use that to fill in the end time (Ie Mary wants a perm starting at 8:00
automatically define
the end as 9:30) This would help with data entry
3. Can the tasks have defined do not overlap periods? (helping the system
display time as booked)

Answering those questions may help or not, just my thoughts

Daryl

 

[Adam]

Hi Chris,

I've been trying develop some 'scheduling' system going
for my (very fussy) Client who wants an easy Job Sceduler
system to work with the firm's db.

I've found the task to be quite enormous, and also found
that Microsoft Outlook would do at least a resonable job
in scheduling jobs. I then tried to build it so that the
jobs booked in Outlook would be linked to the db and
changes made in Outlook would be reflected in the db, but
I was unsuccessful as the following extract from Sue
Mosher will explain.

But, for calendars...have a look at these World Champions!

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/calendars.htm


Cheers Adam

***************************************************

Subject: Re: Outlook Calendar to Access 2000
From: "Sue Mosher [MVP]" <[email protected]> Sent:
1/25/2004 7:06:52 PM




The linked table method has major limitations, including
the inability to
show even all the reasonably important fields. While
articles have been
written on how to expand on this method's obvious
features, I've never been
able to duplicate the results. See
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/database.htm#linkedtables .

That page will also give you other ideas on how to work
with databases and
Outlook together. --
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers



message

Hello friends,

I have a linked table in an Access 2000 DB that is linked
to an Outlook folder titled "Job Booking Calendar".

The table in Access only has some of the fields from the
calendar such "priority", "received", "created", etc. It
does not show the fields that relate to the actual date of
the appointment on the calendar in Outlook. So if a job is
booked (using Outlook) for a certain date and time, that
information does not show up in the table in Access.

The most important thing that I am trying to do here is to
be able to manipulate appointment dates in Outlook which
in turn will be reflected in Access.

May I ask can I do anything about this?

Big heartfelt thanks for the assistance so far.

Adam

..






-----Original Message-----
Can anyone offer me some insight as to how I might go about setting up an
appointment system!?
Or possibly some links, examples, samples, etc. Any help or thought would
be greatly appreciated.

I have a need for scheduling appointments (lengths in increments of 15mins)
with the ability to double and triple up also.

I am fairly knowledgeable with access I have built some fairly complex dbs
but I don't know where to begin with this one. Table structure is killing
me

How do I need to set up my tables? End result I want to be able to see at
least a days worth of appointments in a grid such as this.

time client name overlap overlap

7:00 Mary Smith
7:15 Mary Smith
7:30 Mary Smith Tina Wixom
7:45 Mary Smith Tina Wixom
8:00 Tina Wixom Harry Man
8:15 Jon

Pub Harry Man

 

[Chris Ryner]

After speaking more with my wife (THE STYLIST) she says that way it should
work is to be displaying the appt grid and then click on the appt start time
and have a form pop up to ask the who, what questions. Example::::
Click on today, 9am and in popup form under client you add new client or
pick existing client from the list, then choose "perm" from the Services
drop down list. this combination would then fill the grid as follows:

845
900 Mary K
915 Mary K
930 Mary K
945 Haircut
1000 Wax
1015 Mary K
1030 Mary K
1045 Mary K

The PERM services would have a preset pattern like this to allow for say a
haircut at 945 while the perm is processing. She would also like the
ability to manual adjust an appt length also. As say a Haircut pattern
would take a 30min block but it is actually a 20min job. This leaves a
10min opening left while that perm is processing and a wax can be squeezed
in. So by manual adjustment you could show the haircut as 15min at 945 and
the wax as 15 min at 1000.

 

[Chris Ryner]

thanks for the links on the calanders some of them are close to being
adaptable to what i need to do.

thanks again

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

Why not just use outlook?

Since you are not doing billing and pricing stuff, why not just use outlook?

Outlook has a daytimer view, a month view, and all kinds of stuff.

 

[Tom Wickerath]

Hi Chris,

You might find a useful sample by visiting DBI Technologies web site
(http://www.dbi-tech.com/), and downloading their Solutions::Schedule 7.0 trial:
http://www.dbi-tech.com/SolSched7ProductPage.htm. This control is a bit pricey, but it
looks like it might have the capabilities that you desire.

Tom
____________________________________


After speaking more with my wife (THE STYLIST) she says that way it should
work is to be displaying the appt grid and then click on the appt start time
and have a form pop up to ask the who, what questions. Example::::
Click on today, 9am and in popup form under client you add new client or
pick existing client from the list, then choose "perm" from the Services
drop down list. this combination would then fill the grid as follows:

845
900 Mary K
915 Mary K
930 Mary K
945 Haircut
1000 Wax
1015 Mary K
1030 Mary K
1045 Mary K

The PERM services would have a preset pattern like this to allow for say a
haircut at 945 while the perm is processing. She would also like the
ability to manual adjust an appt length also. As say a Haircut pattern
would take a 30min block but it is actually a 20min job. This leaves a
10min opening left while that perm is processing and a wax can be squeezed
in. So by manual adjustment you could show the haircut as 15min at 945 and
the wax as 15 min at 1000.

 

[Chris Ryner]

Although I am not billing with this interface I am leaving that for future
expansion, also I already a client database in place including a service
history that I wish to incorporate.
I am a beginning programmer and I heard that linking to outlook is tough.