Hi all

I've been staring at my screen and scribbled notes/ideas in a notepad for a few days and am drawing a blank.

I am creating a database and just don't know how best to do it in terms of structure.

Was wondering how some of you experts would go about it to get me going.

Firstly important bit - using FileMaker Unlimited 6.0, meaning any relationships will be between databases (not tables as in later versions) and secondly I am planning on hosting this to the web at a later date (if that makes any difference to the structure)

OK the database itself

I am creating a contact database. I see it as 3 databases

Company

Company contact names

Internal staff

I need to load into the database the names of 30 companies

Then the staff at these 30 companies

Then who in our company speaks to who at the other 30 companies

All contact details need to be entered

Several internal staff could be speaking to the same person at an external company

Internal staff could be speaking to several people at the external company

I also need the internal staff to be entered under 3 different departments

The companies need to be given a priority A, B or C

The final result would be to run reports or perform a search on the Internet to show:

Report by company

So I can see who works at that company and who internally is speaking to them

Internal Staff list

An internal staff member can see a list of who they speak to

External contact

We can bring up an external contact and see who internally is in contact with them

Priority lists

See reports of companies by priority

This is just the groundwork of the database - later I will need to add in more factors e.g.

A member of staff may be talking to an external contact for 1 of 3 reasons:

They cover the same work (e.g. invoicing)

They cover the same work type (e.g. accounts)

They know this contact personally

This needs to be entered into the equation

All I can see is relationships all over the place and I'm getting into a bit of a mess

I am sure someone will look at this and see an extremely easy way of structuring this - but that person is not me!!

Please help!!! Many many thanks.

Edited May 23, 200619 yr by Guest

First off, I know how you feel. This can be very confusing.

Are the contacts also considered to be the internal staff?

When you say internal staff, you mean only the people at your company?

You really should upgrade to 8, before you start this project.

Dave

Hi

Thanks for your reply.

No sorry the contacts are not internal staff - they are staff at other organisations.

But yes, Internal staff are people at my company

Believe me I would love to upgrade to v8 now, but unfortunately the powers that be are stopping this for now, for at least 5-6 months :

Thanks again

I have 8, I don't know if I can help you with 6. You might want to ask someone on here if it is worth your time to use 6, then upgrade to 8 later. It might turn out to be a nightmare.

Dave

Questions:

Have you looked at the Contact Database that came with your copy of FileMaker?

Take a look at some of the resource sites.

www.fmfiles.com

www.databasepros.com

there are others, but these should keep you busy.

Next question.

How much of this data is available in a text file, or an existing database.

Or,

Are you going to hand impute all of this stuff.

Lee