New to Alpha 5

[gezzer1520]

Hi, I have just bought Alpha 5 Platinium, but it's many years since I did any programming, so I wonder if someone would be kind enough to set me on the right track.... I've read the book & watched all the videos over the weekend, so I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.

The application is a simple legal workflow system. We send lots of letters and emails to clients and suppliers, and need to keep track of everything.

I have a clients table linked to an agreements table by field called client_ID Each client will have between 2 and 8 agreements. If the client_ID is 1000 then his first agreement will be 1000.01 and the second will be 1000.02 etc. The next client will be 1002 and his agreements will be 1001.01, 1001.02 etc.

I've been playing around with field rules to try to get that working, but not cracked it yet...

The other fundamental thing that's foxing me is how to do the letters.... I have setup a form that has the client details, with a sunform for the agreements. I can therefore select the client, and then select one of that clients agreements that needs a letter sending out. There are about 5 standard letters that we use regularly.

I need to store the date the letter is created, which letter it is, and a copy of the completed personalised letter.

I'm guessing I probably need another table for this, showing the latter type, and the date sent etc... or am I on the wrong track.

Finally, would you recommend using the the Alpha 'letters' feature or do a mail merge to Word. How could I automate the saving of the letters?

Sorry if these are stupid questions Many thanks Gerry

[Stan Mathews]

Re: New to Alpha 5

I have a clients table linked to an agreements table by field called client_ID Each client will have between 2 and 8 agreements. If the client_ID is 1000 then his first agreement will be 1000.01 and the second will be 1000.02 etc. The next client will be 1002 and his agreements will be 1001.01, 1001.02 etc.

I've been playing around with field rules to try to get that working, but not cracked it yet...

The client_id in the clients table will be a simple auto increment. The agreement_id in the agreements table will likely be a field rule event, Record event. The event you choose will depend on whether you want to see the agreement_id when the record is begun or just want the agreement_id set when the record is saved. The coding will look at the current client id, count the current agreements for the client, increment that count by 1, set the agreement_id to a concatenation of the client_id and the derived number (converted to character).

[gezzer1520]

Re: New to Alpha 5

HI Stan, Thanks for the reply. I understand the record event, but I'm not sure what code I need to count the records.... do I need to do this in Xbasic? Is it the reccount function I need?

Do you have any thoughts on the other question re whether to use letters, or mailmerge?

[Stan Mathews]

Re: New to Alpha 5

do I need to do this in Xbasic? Is it the reccount function I need?

If you do the record event coding, it will have to be xbasic. That's what we have available. Might be possible to do this as a calculated field instead. The function you want is tablecount() because it is filterable to the current client_id.

Do you have any thoughts on the other question re whether to use letters, or mailmerge?

Nope.

[gezzer1520]

Re: New to Alpha 5

Thanks Stan, I will have a go at that.