Need to create a contact management database

[Connie]

I want to create a database to hold info for prospective
clients.
I'm thinking I will have a table for
Prospects (will contain Company name, address)
Contacts (will contain names of person to contact at that
company & phone number)
Calls (I want to document all calls made to a particular
contact)

What would be the best way to set this up?
Should I make Prospects the main form & Contacts & Calls
subforms?
I also want to make sure that only information that
pertains to a particular record is displayed. For example
if I'm in the Prospects form & I want to see contacts for
that prospect, I don't want to be able to see contacts for
a different prospect.

 

[Graham Mandeno]

Hi Connie

I guess you've worked out that you need a one-to-many relationship between
Prospects and Contacts, and another between Contacts and Calls. (You might
also like to think about what happens when a Contact works for two different
Prospects, or moves from one Prospect to another.)

The design of your UI (forms) depends on your personal preferences.
Certainly, the form/subform structure is a very good way to present this
kind of one-to-many relationship.

I suggest you have a main form based on Prospects with a tab control. On
one tab page you can show and edit information about that prospect. On the
second page, put a subform based on Contacts, listing the details (editable)
af all that company's contacts. On a third page, list all the Calls made to
that prospect, showing enough information top allow filtering and selection
(date/time, contact name, caller, abstract should be enough). In the footer
of this subform, add buttons to view details of an existing call record, and
to add a new call. These buttons would open another form, at the selected
(or a new) record.

I hope that's enough to get you going