Automated order entry

[RobPolley]

I have a table of "orders" with a 4 digit numeric customer id and a 4 digit numeric product id. For all the customers who have bought product "1234" (I want to specify the product at run time) I want to give them product "5678" (which I also want to specify at run time).

To give it to them, I need to create an order. So if customer 4561 ordered product 1200, I need to enter another order for customer 4561, and this time for product 1300. It probably doesn't matter, but when I do this, it will be for about 100 customers.

I'm not at all an x-basic programmer, but would like to learn (and I am reading Xbasic for everyone now.)

1. Can this be done with action scripting?

2. If X basic is required, what are the essential steps?

I'd just like help getting started; I enjoy working through it, but I really need to get this done.

Thank you!

--Rob

[Al Buchholz]

Re: Automated order entry

I have a table of "orders" with a 4 digit numeric customer id and a 4 digit numeric product id. For all the customers who have bought product "1234" (I want to specify the product at run time) I want to give them product "5678" (which I also want to specify at run time).

To give it to them, I need to create an order. So if customer 4561 ordered product 1200, I need to enter another order for customer 4561, and this time for product 1300. It probably doesn't matter, but when I do this, it will be for about 100 customers.

I'm not at all an x-basic programmer, but would like to learn (and I am reading Xbasic for everyone now.)

1. Can this be done with action scripting?

2. If X basic is required, what are the essential steps?

I'd just like help getting started; I enjoy working through it, but I really need to get this done.

Thank you!

--Rob

Sounds like an append operation....

[RobPolley]

Re: Automated order entry

Al,

I thought so, too, but I can't quite figure out how to get the product number to be appended, because it's not the same as the product number which currently exits. My only thought is that I can leave it blank, then do an update on any record in which the item number is blank, setting it to the product number I want to give them.

Thanks for your response.

--Rob

[Al Buchholz]

Re: Automated order entry

Al,

I thought so, too, but I can't quite figure out how to get the product number to be appended, because it's not the same as the product number which currently exits. My only thought is that I can leave it blank, then do an update on any record in which the item number is blank, setting it to the product number I want to give them.

Thanks for your response.

--Rob

But how do you know what product number to assign in the update operation?

perhaps a cross reference file that contains the original item number and the item number to addon.. then use a lookup() or a mapped table...

[Davidk]

Re: Automated order entry

So you already got a table with Customer Id and an Product #?

Or... are you taking orders and want to pull up a Customer Id and then enter the Product # for what they ordered.

Then... when you're ready to process the orders, you want to pull up all the customers who ordered "1234" and then enter a "fullfilled product #" 5678.

Is that the flow?

[RobPolley]

Re: Automated order entry

David,

Thanks for your reply.

I'll try to restate:

If 45 customers ordered a product, say, product id 345, I want to create another order for all 45 customers for a free product, say, product id 567. I MUST create a new order for each customer, so i have to "copy & paste" the customer ids and then for each, enter the product id of 567.

Thank you.

--Rob

[G Gabriel]

Re: Automated order entry

Your latest explanation needs a little more clarification:
Do you have to wait until 45 customers make the first order before you initiate the second one?

Or do you initiate the second one after each customer?
It makes a little bit of a difference on how to code it.

Is this more like: order a burger and get free fries (this time), next time you order a burger you get free drink?

As Al said, it's an append operation, but how to go about it depends on further clarification from you.

[RobPolley]

Re: Automated order entry

G,

I was using the sales/order analogy because I thought it was helpful. Probably time to tell the real situation now. I teach kids to swim. Each week of lessons has a class id. When we have to cancel because of bad weather, I need to enter another registration for each child, but this time I use the class id that denotes a credit, rather than a lesson. Thus, this all happens after they've registered.

I used a fake table to try an append operation in many different ways. Every time, it said it would append only the filtered number of records, but then copied every record. I could not get this to happen correctly.

Instead, I've created a temporary table and have used a copy operation to copy the swimmer id's to it, only for the subset of kids that took lessons at the time the class was canceled. Then I use another operation to update the class id in the temporary table to the id that indicates a credit, rather than a lesson. Finally I do use an append to transfer this data back to the original registration table. I have attached the operations to buttons, and have it set up to ask me at runtime which class id I want to copy. It's a 3 step process, but very quick and works nicely. There are "a million" little improvements I have already begun to think of. The great news is that in the meantime, Alpha has enabled me to avoid reyping the id numbers to create these credits; I just had to figure out how to best go about it.

But, I still welcome your thoughts, and am trying to learn xbasic, mostly through studying it and reading XBasic For Everyone.

Thanks!

--Rob

[Al Buchholz]

Re: Automated order entry

Rob

You can use the append and generate the records that you need.

You should concentrate on why the append filter isn't working as expected.

Perhaps a sample of what you are doing is needed.