Data sharing between contacts and accounts in Outlook BCM 2007

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I was under the impression that once you LINKED a contact to an account, any
changes made to either the contact of the account would be updated in the
other. I've imported a few hundred contacts and due to mapping issues, the
addresses are screwed up and I'm finding myself having to make the
corrections in BOTH the contacts and accounts... TWICE THE TYPING, HALF THE
FUN!

 

[Joe]

I was under the impression that once you LINKED a contact to an account, any
changes made to either the contact of the account would be updated in the
other. I've imported a few hundred contacts and due to mapping issues, the
addresses are screwed up and I'm finding myself having to make the
corrections in BOTH the contacts and accounts... TWICE THE TYPING, HALF THE
FUN!

Sorry, the Business Address fields for a Contact have nothing to do with
the Business Address fields of the linked Account. The linkage is almost
nothing really, just a means to jump between Contact and Account easily,
and to display all the Contacts in one Account.

You'll need to do something externally, through ODBC to the SQL Server.
If you have a consistent error in addressing due to mapping, as you say,
you may be able to fix that with a query or two run in MS Access on the
SQL database. Alternatively, you could delete the faulty Contacts and
create them again without the error. Not trivial, but it may be quicker.

Importing is a pain, especially as it isn't easy to work out which
fields do what initially. It's worth having a standalone BCM database
set up on a workstation and to try out importing a few records before
doing it into a live production BCM.

 

[bblank]

Thank you Joe... while I know just enough to be dangerous, when you said,
"...externally, through ODBC to the SQL Server" you might as well changed
languages to Chinese! So much for believing the ad hype telling us how great
OUTLOOK w/ BCM is and how easy it is to use. Thank goodness the calls to
India are on Bill's dime!

 

[Joe]

Thank you Joe... while I know just enough to be dangerous, when you said,
"...externally, through ODBC to the SQL Server" you might as well changed
languages to Chinese! So much for believing the ad hype telling us how great
OUTLOOK w/ BCM is and how easy it is to use. Thank goodness the calls to
India are on Bill's dime!

Well, some things *are* easy, and they don't show you the rest. The big
problem is that MS makes a gigantic and hugely expensive CRM system, to
which BCM bears the same sort of relationship as Works does to Office.
Works is very nearly, but not quite, useful...

OK, BCM stores its data in an SQL server, which can be accessed by any
software which can talk to an SQL database, not just BCM. Probably the
most useful to normal mortals is Access, which many businesses have but
don't know what to do with. Apart from its own primitive single-file
database type, Access can also talk to other databases using SQL. It
also has a simple visual SQL query generator, which allows a great deal
of updating (and damage...) to be carried out very quickly. Excel can
also do something like it, but is much less convenient to use, as Access
is specifically designed for this kind of work.

ODBC is a bodging layer, where many different kinds of database front
ends and back ends can be nailed together. Every Windows PC has an ODBC
manager, where you can set up a link to many types of data storage. Once
you have made an ODBC connector for the BCM database, you can use any
ODBC-aware application to connect to the data.

This is where you get hold of someone who knows what he is doing, like
Luther. The BCM database schema to me seems overcomplicated, and I still
haven't found good documentation for it. Unless you fully understand
what is stored here and how it can be safely changed, you can do a great
deal of damage and wreck the system completely. Many changes must be
made to more than one data table at a time. BCM enforces this, but of
course another program which can alter its database will not be aware of
those constraints. I have more than a decade of relational database
experience, I'm reasonably fluent with Access and other SQL applications
and I'm still picking very slowly and carefully around the edges of BCM.

 

[bblank]

Hey Joe, where are you and what do you charge!?!?

I read your post and am afraid that if I open Access and try to "noodle" a
BCM database, I may as well just uninstall BCM now and save me the time I
might invest in trying to get to the bottom of this problem (there are
others, trust me!)

I was able to find and display a "Developer" tab and am wondering if IT
might be a solution to some of my problems. Apparently this developer
section will allow me to design the forms used to better suit my purposes...
again any feedback would be appreciated.

In the meantime, I'm supposed to receive a call from a "level 2" tech early
this afternoon - I view this as being one step closer to one of Bill's
private gurus and am having trouble typing tis with my fingers being crossed!

Bruce

 

[Joe]

Hey Joe, where are you and what do you charge!?!?

I read your post and am afraid that if I open Access and try to "noodle" a
BCM database, I may as well just uninstall BCM now and save me the time I
might invest in trying to get to the bottom of this problem (there are
others, trust me!)

I was able to find and display a "Developer" tab and am wondering if IT
might be a solution to some of my problems. Apparently this developer
section will allow me to design the forms used to better suit my purposes...
again any feedback would be appreciated.

No, I don't know anything about that yet. I've done a little preliminary
poking about, but I'm waiting for my client to dig into the standard BCM
and tell me whether it does what he wants out of the box. I suspect that
may take some time: if you've never used this kind of product, you not
only don't know what it does, but you don't know what you need it to do.

In the meantime, I'm supposed to receive a call from a "level 2" tech early
this afternoon - I view this as being one step closer to one of Bill's
private gurus and am having trouble typing tis with my fingers being crossed!

Best of luck.