[AccessD] Word/Access question

With Access 2007 you could use InfoPath XML forms that can be mailed
back and forth then automagically update an Access database table via 
Outlook.
It is an Access 2007 Tool called "Data Collection via Email"
I believe Martin was looking at this last October.

Arthur Fuller wrote:

>Preface: there are no stupid questions, only stupid people. Sadly, I fall
>into this category.
>
>I'm doing an Access app, for a WAN with issues (nuff said). It may
>frequently occur that the remote users cannot, for one reason or another,
>hit the DB residing at HQ. In this event, the client would like the remotes
>to fill in a Word form and email it.
>
>I'm imagining this app deployed as follows:
>
>1. a local FE installed on every remote, all of which point to the BE
>available by satellite, if and when the technology is working. Apparently
>this is intermittent. I know nothing about this part of the app.
>
>2. In the event that the satellite connection is unavailable, it has been
>mandated that the remote user should be able to fill in a Word form and
>email that. (Precisely how I am to handle said emails and integrate them
>into the system has been conveniently overlooked, but like George Smiley, I
>plod on.)
>
>3. In the absence of a reliable connection to HQ, then I don't see how this
>can work without a local copy of the DB. I am certainly not against that,
>but it drags in the replication technology -- which I have used and love,
>but it costs hours to set up and every time I mention hours Client says
>"Cheaper", and when I mention "Cheap" Client says "Not enough
>functionality", or something like that.
>
>4. On the Up side, there is no danger of collision on rows from the remote
>users. Each remoter has her own bailiwick and no other remoter will ever
>touch (or even see) the contents of her bailiwick. So that part is cool.
>
>I guess that I'm just wondering about the best way to handle this stuff
>given a WAN whose connectivity is shaky at best. I have done some WAN stuff
>previously, but connectivity was not a problem then. Now it is. I suppose
>that replication may be an answer. I've been there and done that and I'm
>pretty good at that approach, but that was then, and I had somehow assumed
>that technology had got beyond what I did in 1998. Maybe not. Maybe that old
>way is the way to go.
>
>Arthur
>  
>

-- 
Marty Connelly
Victoria, B.C.
Canada