Can this request for a Contact Db me done in Outlook, Act or a custom DB

[pputzback]

It started as a question on whether I knew if anyone was doing
something simlar to this request. I am a VB programmer not an Office
developer.. My I would think this could be done and should be done with
a contact management software. Can outlook do this or would Act be
better. And which could be implemented the fastest.

Thanks.

(1) standard name, address, DOB, email, phone number

(2) "type of entry" - eg. medical student, alumni, preceptor, faculty,
resident - and some way to both change this as well as select multiple
- for example we meet a medical student who enters our database - that
student then becomes a resident, then an alumni, and as an alumni is
also a preceptor.

(3) medical school attended and year of graduation (so we can pick out
all soon to be 4th year students for example for a promotional mailing)

(4) year of graduation from our program if a resident/alumni

(5) "type of contact" - this would be specifically for medical students
and recruitment follow up - we would want to know where have we had
contact with this student (e.g. recruitment fair, jr clerkship, ICM,
HME, Community Electives, interview, etc.) - this too we would need to
be able to select multiple

(6) Some way to archive contacts we are no longer using - for example
someone who interviewed with us but did not become a resident, a
medical student who we met at a fair but has graduated and did not have
additional contact with us, etc.

What is the best way to accomplish such a database and what help could
we get to create it??

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The "best" approach would be the one that your users can work with most efficiently. The back end often matters least of all. If the users are in Outlooik all day and your organization uses Exchange as its mail server, you can do everything below with a custom Outlook form published to a public contacts folder.