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
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
