Re: [MS_AccessPros] Design question

 

Actually, the one set is for the party committee and the other is for an individual candidate. Because we have non-partisan elections, it is considered bad form to be directly associated (endorsed) by either party. So the candidate asked to keep everything separate but the committee chair is open to helping the candidate and all agree I can merge records AFTER the election. Welcome to small town politics. 

Another example was the state level politician who gave us access to HIS contact Excel sheet for our precincts but ONLY for a single fund raising event. Again, I found a lot of his names were already in our database but I wanted to identify what he gave us. 

My goal is to generate a single, reusable database where I am updating one set of records. I had always planned to merge the two sets of contacts but I'm starting to realize I need to do that sooner rather than later. (Duh). I may run into this situation again with the next election so I need a reusable solution. 

I like your idea but I need to more than a single source.  So I can identify the party records, the candidate's records, and the state politician's records.  Somebody is going to want to know how many records we got from the state politician that we already had (for example).

Thoughts?

On May 3, 2015, at 3:22 AM, John Viescas JohnV@msn.com [MS_Access_Professionals] <MS_Access_Professionals@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Jan-

As long as the candidates aren't running against each other, I would do one set of tables and add a column to indicate the contact campaign source.  If they are running against each other, then you must maintain separate tables!

John Viescas, Author

Microsoft Access 2010 Inside Out

Microsoft Access 2007 Inside Out

Microsoft Access 2003 Inside Out

Building Microsoft Access Applications 

SQL Queries for Mere Mortals 

http://www.viescas.com/ 

(Paris, France)

On May 3, 2015, at 12:11 AM, jan.hertzsch@gmail.com [MS_Access_Professionals] <MS_Access_Professionals@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I needed to keep the sets of contact records separate for two "clients".  Think of it as the contact lists of two candidates in the same 3 precincts. I knew I was doubling my work when this started but I kept them as two databases at the start.  As you might imagine, I have a fair population of contacts (voters, donors, volunteers) who are common to both so I now want to create a single database but I still have to be able to process Candidate A contacts from Candidate B contacts.  

I already keep a field called "Tags" in each of the Contact_table(s). My plan is to simply add a tag for Candidate_A and one for Candidate_B. When I merge the two Contact_Table(s), I will add the appropriate tags.  I am trying to think this through but I THINK it will allow me to only extract Candidate_A's conacts.

For example, I envision a query that 

includes

•  Candidate_A, 
• Donors, 
• Volunteers 
• 
  

but excludes 

• Deceased, and 
• Moved records. 

Good design? Bad design?  Thoughts?

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Posted by: Jan Hertzsch <jan.hertzsch@gmail.com>

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