Ok I looked at what Access2007 creates and it looks like they use the word
xml schema so conceptually it would be possible
to build an email yourself (either using our email module or on your own),
just as long as you stayed with the same xml conventions.
Of course I'm not sure all the requirements for the user who gets the email?
My first test I sent it to myself and I tried using Outlook Express and
wasn't able to
fill in the form. So I assume the user who gets the email must have Outlook
2007? Not a very realistic senerio. This seems like one of those features
to try and get everyone in the world to use Microsoft Office 2007.
I would still vote for collecting information from users via the web. Even
if the user only has a text based email client they could copy and paste a
link
to get to the website to enter the information. If the web was a WSS or
Sharepoint site and you had Access2007 and could just link to the Sharepoint
list all the better.
So in summary email creation possible and not too difficult (use our product
to make it even easier), collecting data from users a bit more trouble but
possible.
Normal unsubcribing from a email blast is a small example of collecting data
from a user.
HTH,
Mark
RPT Software
http://www.rptsoftware.com
You could use our email module to create customized HTML emails to your
suppliers. In the email (because it's HTML you can have links
that point to your website to do certain activities (such as letting them
unsubscribe to the email or in your case provide some extra data).
example:
http://www.rptsoftware.com/products/email/htmltemplate1/index.html
This would involve having some web functionality and then somehow getting
the data that is collected on the website back into your Access database.
Note: the links on each email would be customized, so when the supplier
click the link it knows which supplier it is etc....
While possible I don't think processing the email replies is feasable (I
could be wrong)?
By just having the supplier use a web page to enter data you have control
over the quality and format of the data.
I know some people use some kind of sync procedures where the web database
gets ftped down to the local machine every night and then the main Access
database can read in the data. Or perhaps if you can get Sharepoint or WSS
involved on the web the Access database can just link to the Sharepoint
list.
The only other suggestion is possibly some of the email services have some
of this functionality.
Hope that helps a little,
You can test out the email module in a few minutes,
Mark
RPT Softwarehttp://
www.rptsoftware.com
message
- Show quoted text -
Ian:
In theory its possible - you can certainly get to outlook's inbox from
Access and extract information from the body of an email. Your
problem is going to be figureing out how to find the information you
are looking for in the email - every vendor will likely reply in a
slightly different format. You'd have to design something that could
deal with alot of variation.
Alternately, you could use outlook forms (outlook 2003 and earlier -
don't know what they call it in 2007, but its different). The basic
premise is that you design a form as an outlook message, the vendors
would fill it in and send it back. You then automate access to open
the message and extract all the data from predefined fields. Be
forewarned, designing outlook forms isn't nearly as easy as designing
Access forms and its a flat file, not a relational database model.
Also, it can be a major PITA to get the vendors to actually use the
form, but that's a different problem.
Good luck...
Tom
