Building A Project Tracker Based on Existing Tables

Question

So my company is experimenting with switching from OneNote and Excel spreadsheets to QuickBase for tracking all of our data. So far, I am loving the potential this has to streamline our workflow! But I have hit a small snag in coming up with a solution that I was hoping the community could help out with.

We have a huge list of contacts for each state, and depending on the "event" or job, we will need to contact certain people on that list and note who/when we contacted them. Previously this was accomplished on excel by just creating a few columns for "Contacted", "Status", etc. This got very messy on a sheet primarily just meant for contact info.

So my question is this: If I have a table of these contacts in QB, can I somehow build something to duplicate that table of contact info, but also add some of those tracking metrics? I would love to attach it somehow to when I make a new "event" in that state, which I have a form for events as well. Basically I just need something to track whether that contact has been contacted PER EVENT that isnt super cluttered, but still is connected to the state contacts table somehow.

markshnier__you · Answer

Sure, this is no problem. You already have a master table of contacts which is perfect. You need to create a new table sometimes referred to in Quickbase as a Join table or a Many to Many join table for Event Contacts.

So create that table and initially don't add any fields to it. Then create a relationship where one event has many event contacts and be sure to pull down the look up field for the event name as you're very first look up field and it will become what is called the reference proxy for the event.

Then make a relationship where one contact has many event contacts and pull down the first look up field as the contact full name.

Then on the form for events, you will want to put an embedded report of those event contacts, showing the full name of the. And similarly it's possible on the contact record. Do you want to put an embedded report of events showing all the events that contact has ever been involved with.

Then you can also decide if you want to add any fields to the event contact, which are not look up fields from the contact or the event itself. For example, you may have a date field of the date of the contact.

bradyakers · Answer

I'm not sure if I completely followed or not - is this correct? (Attached screenshot). If so I would have to manually establish the relationship for each contact per event correct?

My background isn't in databasing or anything like this, I'm just learning QuickBase as I go haha! Trying to help improve some things around the workplace!

markshnier__you · Answer

Well, I made the assumption that you wanted to manually select which contacts you wanted for that event. So you would be sitting on the Event record and clicking the Add Event Contact Button. So adding one record manually for each event contact. There is a way to limit the drop down for the event contacts choices to limit to just the state that the Event is in.

Is that workflow good enough? Typically, how many Event contacts will be selected for each Event? There are ways to make the selection of the contacts quicker once we get the foundation built.

Did you want a button to add all the State contacts to an event in one click?

bradyakers · Answer

Manually would be a bit problematic, as we have over 1,000 contacts in some states. All State contacts or a filtered type of contact would be fantastic!&nbsp; We work with state, county, municipal, and school boards.&nbsp; But depending on the event, we may only be talking to counties.&nbsp; Or get everything from the state.

markshnier__you · Answer

How many contacts are typically selected for an Event?Also are the contacts coded by County?&nbsp; There are ways to limit the choices to just a state or just a county.

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