User Specific Variables and Preferences

[Cassetti]

This has been on my mind for some time, I hope i put this into the correct forum, please move into appropriate section for this topic.

I am rebuilding the database (currently planning stage) for my entire company. There are lots of places to set user settings and such that could help out. Example: There is a table with a whole list of procedures on how to do various tasks at the company (how to process an order, how to open a support ticket, etc)

I want to relate the procedure to the user based on the user's current layout name (names will be properly formated to include what department the layout relates to).

How can i set up a relationship so that scripts and lookups pull from the correct user record.

I have looked around for any sample database for user preferences or anything like that, and have turned up with nothing

Thanks in advance!

[Tim W]

Hi Cassetti,

What you describe sounds like context sensitive help more than user preferences. In your procedures table define a contextId field and access the procedure instructions via the contextId.

Hope that makes sense.

Tim

[Cassetti]

Well, thats one example.

Here's another one:

What about if i want to have some sort of permissions based table.

What about say, variables. If i want to store text or variables for one user, how can i recall those settings from a lookup.

The only way i would be able to, is if for every major table in my database, i set up a field called "get(UserName)" - set that up as a lookup - recalculate as needed, and relate that field to the table with the user preferences/variables.

But thats a lot of work, i would think that there is another way to do it. some sort of special "sort by" command or something when setting up the relationship.

[Tim W]

Truely to broaden the usage, a user preference table will do the trick. Setup a separate table (UserPreferences) with a record for each user. In accounts/privilages under the user's privilage group setup the access for the table to be where Get(AccountName) = UserPreferences:UserName. The user will only be able to access their preferences so a reference to the preference table will be their information. Create a relationship from the UserPreferences table using the X operator (which is a Cartesian join), allowing the fields to be accessed by the other table without a field match.

HTH

Tim