Google Drive or Google Photos and using or showing images in a database (1 Viewer)

[voodoo_ca]

Hi everyone,

I have a database that has evolved over time to work for our business.
We went from basic information like appointments, to containing customers orders and more details.

One of the last things that we added was the ability to open a scanned document (PDF) to look at a customers particular order.

We are now starting to accumulate a number of pictures for each particular job and if you were looking at a customers particular order, it would be nice to see any images related to that particular job.

Originally, I was looking at a way to integrate them directly into the database, but after reading about sizing limitations, it wouldn't take long to overload things.

Next, I was looking at having a folder on a central computer for each customer and that would contain the images for that job. If you were looking at customer order 10000, you could click a button and open that folder. (This is similar to how I open the PDF's)

More recently, our installation crews have been taking pictures and uploading them onto Google Drive. This is a great resource for storage, and it allows the person who took the pictures to accurately label the folder so we know where the pictures came from - 3 weeks after the pictures are taken, it is much harder to assemble them and track where they came from.

I have been searching to see if anyone has mentioned a way to "integrate" things from either Google Drive or Google Photos, and I really haven't seen anything. Most of what I come up with involves Excel and hosting files online, not really photos and access.

The challenge with simply opening a folder or even a web address from a button inside the database, is that you don't really know if there are any pictures to look at - I would say 95% of the orders are older and before we started taking pictures on a more regular basis. It would much easier to see if there were any matching pictures (even a thumbnail?) before you went to look at them either outside of access or in a web browser. All of the images are currently going into Drive, but they could just as easily be moved into Photos if that would make things easier.

I am an intermediate user, so my actual programming skills are very limited... I understand this may limit what I can accomplish with my ideas.

I just wondered if anyone had any ideas or have done something similar.

Thanks for the help!
Chad

 

[Ranman256]

you would either store the actual photo in the db in an OLE field,
or
store the full path to the image (the google drive), and use code to open it in a web browser.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

I am very interested in this thread.

I have been using Google Drive for awhile, however I only recently discovered that I can Sync it to my PC.

It's useful for syncing your PC files to the Internet, however there is something you must bear in mind.

You are Syncing Google Drive to your PC, you are NOT Syncing your PC files to Google Drive.

Why is this an important distinction?

I put all of my files into the Google Drive folder so that they would Sync automatically. However I still had some files which would not sync automatically, namely the ones in "My Documents". (On Some windows versions it is called " Documents ")...

This was a minor source of annoyance because I had to remember to backup the my documents folder occasionally.

I looked into it for a better solution and I discovered that you can actually move your my documents folder to somewhere else.

I moved the "My Documents" folder to be within the Google Drive Folder and now everything backs up lovely!

I suspect that I could set up two PCs and share all the folders easily including the my documents one, so in effect I would always be working from the same set of files, whether I was at home or work. I haven't tried this yet so bare that that in mind!

I mention this because you can also share the "My Pictures" folder in the same manner. I think you could share one single Google Drive folder amongst multiple users in this way, so you would in effect have a network environment without a network!

I have no idea if this would actually work. If you do try it, I would be interested in knowing how you get on.

 

[voodoo_ca]

Am I right in saying that storing the image in the OLE would cause the database to reach its max size quickly? (I have many pictures - 8GB on Drive so far)

Because I have over 10,000 customers that could have pictures, I am trying to make this process as automated as possible.

For example, when we open a PDF, the database uses the customer order number - like 1000 - and that links to a corresponding file 1000.pdf.

That way, all we have to do is name the PDF files correct, and they open if they exist.

I am sure there is some balance in making it easier to view, while making it easier to implement.

Chad

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

The normal way to do this is to store the files in a folder on your PC and link to them via a UNC stored in a table.