Beginning Access™ 2007 VBA

14.1. Design Specifications

You learned in Chapter 1 and again in Chapter 13 that before you ever write a single line of code, you should carefully plan your application on paper. After detailed fact-finding regarding the purpose of the customer service application, you come up with a list of requirements. The application will be designed for use by customer service agents who receive incoming calls from customers. The application will allow the agent to retrieve the customer's account information quickly based on one or more pieces of information provided by the customer. For example, the customer may provide all or part of a home phone number, a first and last name, and/or a customer number. The Search screen will allow the agent to retrieve the customer's account record. The Search screen will implement ad hoc queries against the SQL Server database based upon the search criteria input by the agent. After the customer record is located and selected, it will be displayed containing such information as customer contact information, current service plan, and transaction history. Users also need the capability to open the View/Manage Customers screen independently of the search screen for all customers, not just for the selected customer.

Three use cases are shown in Figure 14-1. Users can execute a search to locate a particular customer (U.C. 1.1). Users can also clear the search results (U.C. 1.2). In addition, the application enables the user to open the View/Manage Customer ...