[Odb-help] Replies on the 0.9.3b version, and to two questions

[Rich Cowan]

Dear ODB users:

   We are beginning to receive feedback on 0.9.3b.  There have
been 68 new downloads (this does not include people who
upgraded from within the software) since the release of ODB on
the 10th of this month.  Here is some feedback we received:

-rich cowan


1) Leah Flagler wrote:

"One great difficulty for us, was the lack of place to put a person's
   title.  Good Luck with your wonderful work!  Thank you."

Well, actually, ODB does provide a place to put a title.  The
catch is that you have to turn the feature on.  To do this, go
into the Wrench area.  Then:
-- Click on Modify Settings
-- Scroll down to showtitle?
-- Turn it on, and click Done.

A very important thing we are now realizing is that there are people
who don't think that ODB does what they want, when it actually
does do it.  We still feel that it is a good idea to leave about 20 or
30 advanced features "off" by default, because if we turned them
all on the software might seem overwhelming for people who have
not used database software before.


2) Mary Regan wrote:

To: odb-help@democracygroups.org
Subject: Love those new search features!
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:16:35 -0400

We at the Cambridge Eviction Free Zone downloaded 0.9.3b
today, and we love the new search feature that allows us to
look at a particular tenant's record, and then find others
at the same address or similar street as that person.  We
organize tenants and immigrants, and this feature makes it
_so_ much easier to find other tenants in the same building
or street, so we can contact them (and put them in contact
with each other) to organize for better housing conditions
and fairer rents.   As we input more neighborhood and
electoral information in the database, we will be able to
use the "having the same type","in the same ward", "in the
same precinct", "in the same congressional district", "in
the same state house district" to target outreach to
particular neighborhood and electoral districts.
Thank you ODB for building a great tool for organizers!

Mary Regan
Housing Organizer/Administrative Coordinator
Cambridge Eviction Free Zone
55 Norfolk St.
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 354-1300
efz <AT> flashmail.com


3) Finally, Merrill Gay wrote:
>Rich,
>I have to admit it's been a while since I've even looked at ODB.  Is there a
>way to import a bunch of records (ie the local voter list) without having to
>type them all in?  My next question. Is there a way to match an existing ODB
>data base (my parents group list for example) with another list (say the
>voter list for example) so that I could either see which of my parents are
>voters or conversely who on the voters list are parent activists?  I recall
>having to export my ODB file and do the merging in other software in the
>past.  Is that still the case?
>Merrill

The answer to the question about importing records is unequivocably
"yes."  Often you have to massage the data using a spreadsheet
program like Microsoft Excel, and then save the information into a
text format, with a Header Row (comma or tab delimited merge file)
before your ODB import.

What this means in English is that your data will look like this
when it is ready to import into ODB.

Bob     Jones   Greenfield      MA      01033
Mary    Rogers  Salem   MA      01802
Theresa Conant  Seattle WA

The answer to your "next question" is that once you have a file
in ODB you can then try to import the other file into ODB.  When
you do this, all of the new records will be added to the original
database, and you will be asked, for each duplicate, if you want
to skip it.  When you are done, ODB will generate for you a
list of duplicates, i.e. the people who were in both lists.

This feature works pretty well, but if your goal is not really
to combine the lists you might want to do this on a copy of
your database.  For example, you can make a backup of your
database by choosing Backup Database from the "?" menu.
Then when you are prompted to save a copy of your backup
somewhere on the network, just save it to a folder on
your desktop called "test data" or something like that.

Then you will have to switch out of your normal ODB database
and into the "test data" database.  The process for doing this
is documented in the user guide:  there is a Detach Current
Database button in the "Wrench" area that allows you to
do this.  The manual provides the default password (which
is needed).  Or you could (as described in the manual) just
install ODB a second time, so that you can set up two
icons on your desktop, one for your main database, and
the second which will open up another copy of ODB pointing
to your test database, containing the merged information.
We will be providing additional options so that ODB can add
info to the database for the people flagged as duplicates, but
even once we add that feature we expect that quite a few users
leave that off, as it is more reliable to do that manually on small
to medium sized lists.

We have designed this to be fairly straightforward, but of
course it is sometimes useful to have someone walk you
though this.  On the main ODB page there is information
on how you may obtain telephone support.