15.2. Access and Outlook—Sharing Data with Others

Within our Inventory Control application, users often need to communicate information between departments about inventory that has been ordered, allocated, or consumed. If the Planning department receives a rush order, it might not have enough material in stock to completely cover the job. It might need to communicate with the Order Entry department about possible delays with the order. The easiest way to handle this communication is to write some simple VBA code to send a formatted e-mail message to the Order Entry department. The Planning department can accomplish this directly from the Material Ordering form of the database, shown in Figure 15-2.

Figure 15.2. Figure 15-2

In order to communicate back to the Order Entry department that the order is going to be delayed, all the planner needs to do is click the Alert button to display the e-mail message as shown in Figure 15-3.

The e-mail to the Order Entry department contains the order number, the original order due date, and the expected material receipt date. There is enough information in the e-mail for the Order Entry department to contact the customers and inform them of the delay. Because the e-mail message is delivered directly to the Order Entry department inbox with Outlook 2003 desktop alert, the customers are immediately informed of any delays without having to open ...

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