>Okay, we have an idea for keeping track of our media contacts in ebase
>that will involve a lot of customizing, and I wanted to open it up for
>any feedback/suggestions before I get started. This is just a brainstorm
>we had in a meeting; let me know if it's completely crazy. :) I would
>appreciate any hints, warnings, etc. anyone may have. :)
>thanks,
>Rachel
This all sounds possible, but as you suggest, very complicated. A
simpler alternative might be to continue as you have with each
individual in a separate record and use the contact flags to mark all
but one of them with a "do not contact" flag. All the ebase scripts
and procedures that rely on a single person in a single record
(email, for example) will continue to work. You just have to remember
to add the contact flag to your search when you fax a press release.
This would be similar to excluding the "do not mail" flags when you
do a general mailing to avoid sending mail to someone who has
requested to be excluded from your mailing list.
>
>The Problem
>-We have found that we have multiple contacts at many media outlets and
>so are sending duplicate faxes, etc.
>-We need a way to keep track of emails, contact names, etc for several
>people at one station, without duplicating the faxes.
>-We could just have a fax number listed for one of the contacts and have
>several different records that are all people at that station, but would
>rather have all contacts in one record
>-We also don't want to alter the data entry/home layout to hold more
>than 2 contacts, as that is not really needed for anything but the media
>folks
>
>The Idea
>-Use one of the spaces for a custom layout to create a media contact
>layout
>-The home layout/data entry 1 layout would have our main contact for
>that station, and all the usual info
>-A custom layout would include space for up to 5 other contact names,
>their position, their direct phone line if we have it, and their email
>
>The Problems/Things to Do
>-Would need to customize the email output script to look for emails in
>that custom screen as well as the Email 1 field so it would send them to
>our email client as well
>-I have built a report that lists a contact, their position, station,
>phone # and fax to use as a call sheet to follow up on press releases.
>This would need to be customized to contain the additional info in the
>custom screen as well
>-Need to add a button to data entry/home screen to go to additional
>media info layout
>-Planning to build into the custom finds, for example, TN Media Email,
>which would automatically search for TN media with emails, either in the
>Email 1 field or any of the new ones.
>-Need the layout to be searchable; wondering if there is any way to
>program it so that searching for a name in the name line and the media
>tag would also find the name if it were in one of those extra lines on
>the custom layout
>-Linking the main info (in data entry layout) to the custom layout
>(maybe the business/org and record number would need to be on both
>screens?)
>
>
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Dave Shaw H4 Consulting
tel: 206-954-7526 fax: 206-625-1338
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