Free Risk Management Training Video and PowerPoint

July 14th, 2010

I was recently asked to record a risk training session for the Australian Computer Society.  It was based around a PowerPoint presentation.  The video is to be used in a number of training modules for ACS.  We have made both the video and PowerPoint available for download.  It is best to run them together to understand some of the points.  If you run the PowerPoint full screen, you can avoid having to look at me for 30 minutes!!

PowerPoint – Click here.

Video –   Click here.

Microsoft Access History File

July 13th, 2010

There are a number of approaches to recording history in Microsoft Access.  We have recently been looking at how to apply them to an existing application.  The goal is to record who made what changes and when they made them.  Sort of an audit facility for Access.  Basically you want to capture:

  • New records
  • Changes to existing records
  • Deletion of records

It might seem a waste of time to think of it as three separate activities but you need to handle them differently for recording history.

  • New records only have an ‘after’ record.
  • Changes have a ‘before’ and ‘after’
  • Deletions only have a ‘before’

Here are the three main approaches.

  1. Use the OldValue and Value  of the control triggered by a BeforeUpdate event.  This works where you are adding or updating a record.  Use the OnDelete event to capture deletions.
  2. Create a temporary table of values before you carry out any changes, then compare it with values in the table after update.  Write the differences to a history file.  This is good where you are doing a bulk update.  For example, if you have a price list, and are updating all prices from a particular supplier by x%.  You create a copy of the price table before changes, then compare it with the table after update.  Write the differences to a history file.
  3. Create custom writes to a history table for particular events.  An example may be where you are creating a copy of a record such as a user profile.  You copy all the values of an existing person to a new person record.  Once established, you might make modifications to the person record.  In this case you create a specific SQL statement to write the new record details to your history file.  Another example might be where you are updating some system parameters that are held in the registry.  They are not in Access so you need to capture the current registry entry, the changes, and write them to a history file.

Another consideration is that history files can get big.  Given you are capturing everything from integers to memo fields, the first instinct is to cater for the biggest.  You make the old value and new value fields memos.  Unfortunately you take up the room for a memo in Access.  If there is one or five thousand characters, the space taken up is the same.  The trick is to have two history tables.  One has old and new values as text and the other as memo.  Run code to check the length of the old and new values, and if too big, write to a the table with the memo field.  For reporting purposes, you can combine the two.

In subsequent blogs, we will cover how to actually achieve what we are talking about here.  The purpose of this blog is to get a helicopter view of capturing history in Access.  Once you understand the terrain, you can better understand the wealth of information available from other resources.

Microsoft Access Tools

June 29th, 2010

If you are an Access developer and looking for tools here are two free tools that are worth considering.

The first is called “Crystal’s Database Analyzer for Tables”.  It creates a data dictionary.  The web site says:

“With my analyzer in your toolkit, you can get a handle on what you have in Access … structure, relationships, and what is each table structure? What indexes are defined? What relationships are set up? How many fields have information? How many tables have records? …? …? Compare one database to another, combine analysis from multiple back-ends for a higher level look, generate a list of BE tablenames for FE procedure to loop through and automatically link to, add fields for mapping imports and exports, create a field for new names so changes can be planned … and the list goes on.”

See more at http://www.accessmvp.com/strive4peace/Dictionary/

The second is a code tracker.  It is an Access add-in which tracks usage of code so you can find which code is being used, and which is redundant.  It can be downloaded from http://accesstips.wordpress.com/ Once again, from their web site:

“With the Code Tracker™ Beta Add-in you can you can record the use of every procedure and see how and when your code is being used in over 17 different ways. You can spot and eliminate procedures and modules that never get used, and you can see which procedures are used most often. You can see the flow of code use for your databases by sorting all used procedures by date and time.

This free Add-in is not a demo. It is a mda file so you can see all of the code and how it works.”

We have not had a chance to try either of them yet, but would be interested to see feedback on our blog.

White Paper on Effective Communication Management

June 25th, 2010

Communication is among the more important factors for success in project management. Communication is the fuel that keeps the project running smoothly. A research study has found that the three major factors related to an information technology project success are:

  • User involvement
  • Executive management
  • A clear statement of requirements

A failure to communicate is often the greatest threat to the success of information technology projects. All of these factors depend on having good communication skills. This white paper will highlight key aspects of:

  • Effective communication
  • Project Communication Management
  • Communication Process
  • Improving Communications Management

Click here to read more.

White Paper – Legal Concepts in Project Management.

June 3rd, 2010

This white paper gives an overview of legal concepts every Project Manager should understand.  It is written in plain English by a non legal person so is easy to understand.  It may not make you a lawyer but will allow you to get to grips with how the law interacts with project management.  Click here to read more.

Adding Bullets in Microsoft Access

May 17th, 2010

Ever wanted to add bullets in Microsoft Access 2003?  I have usually inserted a dash, but playing around recently found I could create a button to insert a bullet.  Here is the solution.

Assume you have a textbox called txtInfo. You need to track where the cursor is in the textbox.  To do this create a place to record the position.

Dim intCursorPosition As Integer

In the On Click and On Keydown events for the textbox do the following.

Private Sub txtInfo_Click()
intCursorPosition = Me.txtInfo.SelStart
End Sub

Private Sub txtInfo_KeyDown(KeyCode As Integer, Shift As Integer)
intCursorPosition = Me.txtInfo.SelStart
End Sub

Put a button on the form beside the textbox.  Call it btnBullet  Post the following code into the On Click event

Private Sub btnBullet_Click()

Me.txtInfo.SetFocus
Me.txtInfo = Left(Me.txtInfo, intCursorPosition) & vbCrLf & Chr(149) & “  ” & Mid(Me.txtInfo, intCursorPosition + 1, Me.txtInfo.SelLength – intCursorPosition)
Me.txtInfo.SetFocus
Me.txtInfo.SelStart = intCursorPosition + 5

End Sub

How it works

The On Click and Keydown events will have told you where the cursor was located prior to the button being selected.  That information is stored in intCursorPosition.  The first thing that needs to happen is to return the focus to the textbox.

You now construct the contents of the textbox by taking the text to the left of the cursor position, adding a return, adding Chr(149) which is a bullet, adding two spaces, and finally adding the text to the right of the cursor position.  The rest of the code is to put the cursor after the bullet and two blank spaces.

White paper on managing project documents

May 11th, 2010

Project documentation management is a balance between ensuring all information is written down, and not swamping everyone with too much information. This paper talks about how to manage project documentation and gives some tips to improve your control of documents. Click here to read more…

New Release of Business Analysis Software

May 10th, 2010

Project Perfect has released version 3 of our Method H software. The software enables business analysts to capture requirements from users using the Method H process. The new release includes a tabbed screen to record inputs, outputs, functionality, data, business rules and notes. This is in addition to the standard Method H screen. Based on current exchange rates, the software is available for about US$31.
For more information, click here

Microsoft Access Help Function

April 30th, 2010

Traditionally if you want to create help for an application, you would use Microsoft Access help file. Each field needs to be set up to display a section of a Microsoft help file. We have created a different approach. The help is contained in a table within your application and uses native Access functionality to display. There is no separate help file. This means:
- You don’t need separate tools to create a help file
- There is no separate help file to create and maintain
- You can allow users to update the files themselves if you wish
To illustrate the help function, we have created a sample database. To download click here. The web page also provides information on how to create it within your own application.

New Build of Project Administrator

April 20th, 2010

Project Perfect has just released version 5.1 build 12 of our project management software Project Administrator.  The product has been changed following a problem experienced in Windows 7.  Windows 7 does not support one of the main fonts used on the PA screens.  This caused some overflow of text, and some text not fully displayed.  It has been rectified in the new release.

Download a trial from here.