[Odb-help] Questions form ODB users -- Answered!

Tue, 18 Nov 2003 12:18:32 -0500

Good morning -- 

  Here are a few more questions from ODB users, all of them answered!
  More news later this week...

-rc

1) Tom asked about sharing ODB on a LAN, and also a browser-based
version of ODB.  The answer to his question about sharing ODB is tha
of course, you can share ODB on a LAN.

I can report that one organization is doing fine with 10 users on their
windows LAN, and their database contains 25,000 people.

As for a browser-based or TCP/IP based version, the problem is that such
a version will be slow, so if we are going to create such a thing we want to
do a good job and optimize the database access to work with MySQL.
Our priorities are determined by the survey we did, and by available
funding.  Right now a higher priority is creating a version of ODB that
allows linkages between people and groups.  I am happy to report
that we now have our first user of the "alpha" version of this new version
and so far, so good.  (It will be about 6 months before we start rolling that
out to existing users, because we have to add features and create new
support materials for it first.)

>Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 12:56:12 -0800 (PST)
>From: Tom Arnold <thomas_l_arnold ...at... yahoo.com>
>
>I'm evaluating the use of ODB for our group. It would
>be a HUGE benefit to have a web based version that
>could be accessed from anywhere, since we have
>volunteers around the world.
>
>In the meantime, I've noticed the documentation refers
>to having multiple users of ODB. Can multiple people
>on the same local area network access a single ODB
>database, say, stored on a server drive? Or do people
>duplicate the database and wind up with different
>(skewed) versions of the data?
>
>I understand that using MySQL is an option for the
>future, and I think we'd be interested in that. In one
>sense, the ideal for us would be to have a
>browser-based version of ODB (maybe written in PHP, or
>Perl, or Java or such) so that there is no application
>installation required. But if that's not likely, then
>how hard is it to get MySQL access hosted in a way
>that we can just run ODB in a client mode, accessing a
>remote db? That would solve the "one database" issue.
>
>=====
>Tom Arnold
>Summit Media Partners
>Visit our web site at http://www.summitmediapartners.com

2)  How do you sort and print results by Zip Code?  And how many records can
we have in the ODB application displayed at a single moment of time?
>> Sameer
>> Internet Development
>> University Of Massachusetts Dartmouth

ANSWER A:  
>1) click on select records...
>2) click the search button immediately
>3) answer "yes" (to select all records)
>4) click the top of the "zip code" column in the search results to sort
>5) click ok
>6) click print...

ANSWER B:  ODB will default you to about 1,500 results maximum.  If you
want ODB to display more results, you have to do this:
 1) Click on the Wrench
 2) Click on Modify Settings...
 3) Scroll down to ResultLimit
 4) Change the value from 1500 to a larger amount (try 5000).
 5) Exit ODB and restart

3) From: "Charles Brennick" <brennick@n...>
Subject: membership dues

Hello,

I am in the process of setting up the ODB system for my nonprofit.
 Our members pay a yearly fee to use our services.  When I enter
a members name I put in the date they last paid their membership
fee in the donations field.  

I was wondering if there is an easy way to determine when membership
dues are due.  For instance,  I would like to be able to perform
a query (or press a button) that displays all the members that
paid last August (2002) and now must re-new their membership
this year.  Can ODB automatically notify me when a member needs
to pay their yearly dues?  

Thanks
Charles

ANSWER:  You can use date ranges when search on the "Membership Expiration"
date or on the "LastGave" date, under the record selection tool.

Example:

8/1/02...8/31/02  could be used as the LastGave to find all people
who last gave on that date.

You could enter the text:

<1/1/2004

in the Expires field to search for all the people whose membership is going
to expire by the first of the year, or has already expired.

4)  From: "Barbara Mosby" <bamosby@a...>
To: "'Rich Cowan'" <rich@organizenow.net>
Subject: RE: Download trouble
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:41:57 -0500
x-mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2727.1300
In-Reply-To: <A63853B0777B134D8C6EE37B025BF39F03B2DE@comp-srv-01.comp.local>
Status:   

I downloaded the ODB but the encoding is not readable.

ANSWER:  Your PC is not set up to automatically download "EXE"
files, which is the format that ODB is delivered in.  Please see the
help sheet at:

http://www.organizenow.net/odb/downloadhelp.php

which addresses the steps you can take to fix this problem.