Access Database Services

Overview

Access 2010 templates are accessible from Access Backstage and are ready-to-use and free database solutions complete with tables, queries, forms, and reports built for common scenarios. In addition to the templates shipped with Access 2010, there are numerous third party templates available at office.com.

Many times, you may find that it is much easier to customize a template to a customer’s unique needs rather than start from scratch. In this exercise, you will learn how to perform tasks related to template customization and save development time.

Consider the needs of a human resources manager who needs to track job applicants. A good place to start in a situation like this is to see if there are any templates available that you could use as a starting point. In Access 2010, the Contacts Web Database template serves as an excellent starting point for a job applicant tracking system. Since the purpose of this exercise is to get experience modifying web database objects, we will use the Contacts Web Database template as a starting point for this exercise.

How to do

1.2.1     Task 1 – Create an Access Table

One common customization task when starting with a template is to modify the structure of existing tables in the template to suit your unique needs. Besides generic contact information, a job applicant tracking system needs to keep track of the details of the jobs that are available. In the first task, you will create a new database based on the Contacts Web Database template and then create a new table called Jobs for tracking available job details.

1.     Open Microsoft Access 2010

2.     Click on Sample templates

3.     Select the Contacts Web Database

4.     Change the File Name on the right side to Job Applicants

5.     Click Create

6.     Check out the various items in the database. In particular, check out the four tabs:

a.     Address Book – shows list of contacts and details of selected contact

b.    Datasheet – shows a list of contacts in data sheet view

c.     Report Center – shows a list of available reports and currently selected report

d.    Getting Started – provides links to helpful information

7.     Close the Main tab by right-clicking on the tab and choosing Close

8.     Expand the Navigation Pane. The navigation pane is the pane on the left-hand side of the application window that shows objects in the database. You can hide/show this pane by clicking on the “>>” button in the top-right corner of this pane.

9.     Take a minute and review the Tables, Queries, Forms, and Reports in the database

10.  Create the Jobs table. The Jobs table is a table that contains fields for storing the details related to the available positions. For example, it will store the position number, position title, status, and creation date, a description of the position, and the department of the position. As you perform these steps, keep in mind that you are working with a web database. Using web databases imposes some limitations on the types of functionality you can use in a database so that the database can run on SharePoint. The benefit of starting with a web database is that you can publish the database to the web with one click. You will notice that the design experience for creating and modifying web database objects is a little different from the design experience for modifying client only objects. To design a web table, you perform the modification in datasheet view using the functionality exposed in the Table Tools ribbon tabs.

1.     On the Create tab, click Table

2.     Select the ID column, choose Name & Caption from the ribbon

3.     Set the Name and Caption to Position Number and click OK

4.     Click Click to Add in the next column and select Text. This process sets the data type of the field and highlights the column heading so that you can enter the name of the field.

5.     Name the field Position Title

6.     In a similar manner as steps d and e, create the following fields. The list below shows the name of the field followed by the data type in parenthesis:

a.     Date Created (Date & Time)

b.    Description (Memo)

c.     Department (Text)

7.     Create the next field using the Lookup & Relationship data type. A lookup field allows you to control the possible values for a field based on a list of possible values. Use a relationship field for establishing relationships between tables in a database.

8.       Select I will type in the values that I want and click Next

9.     Underneath the Col1 column heading, enter the following values: Open, Closed – filled, Closed – cancelled, Hold.

10.  Click Next

11.  Set the label for the field to Status and check Limit To List

12.  Click Finish. The following screen shot shows an example of the completed jobs table after entering a few records. Notice that the Status field contains the list of values you entered in step i previously. 

1.2.2       Task 2 – Modify the Contacts table

In addition to adding tables to a template, you often need to modify existing tables. In this task, you will modify the contacts table to store additional information related to tracking a job applicant.

1.     Under Tables, double-click Contacts to open the Contacts table

2.     Click on the Company column header

3.     On the Fields tab, select Name & Caption

4.     Change the Caption from Company to Employer. In practice, you could also change the Name of the field. Changing the name however, could break any references to the field in queries, forms, or reports. In the interest of time for this exercise, leave the name the same so that you don’t need to worry about breaking any references.

5.     Add new Column Initial Interview type “Date & Time”

1.2.3       Task 3 – Publish to SharePoint 2010 Access Services

1.       Navigate to Backstage via the File tab and click Options

2.       Select Current Database and then choose Main to be the starter Web Display Form for the web user experience and click OK. (Follow any subsequent prompt instructions accordingly.)

3.       In Backstage view, click Publish to Access Services.

4.       To confirm your database is web compatible, click Run Compatibility Checker. (There should be no errors since this lab’s exercises use web compatible objects. If you receive errors, fix them and continue. If you are prompted to close open objects, close them and run the compatibility checker again.)

5.       Type your SharePoint 2010 Server URL, Site Name (JobApplicants in this case) and click Publish to Access Services.

6. Get error

7. Make sure Access Service Application Proxy is started

8. Make sure Access Database Application is stared

9. Click to custom link yo your web application

10. Check to Access Service Application

11.    Access shows the publishing progress.

12.    When publishing is complete, the Publishing Succeeded dialog will display. Click the link to access the site.

13.    View your new web application in SharePoint 2010!

a.     Add new contact form

b.    Result as

c.     Click to Report Center then get Error

d.    How to solve

a.     Click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products, and then open the SharePoint Management Shell.

b.    Type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Enable-SPSessionStateService – DatabaseName "<your string>"

Note In this example, <your string> is a string that represents the name that you want to specify for the new session state database, as in the following example:

Enable-SPSessionStateService –DatabaseName "Session State Database"

c.     3. Restart Internet Information Services (IIS). To do this, type the following command (Do not enclose the command in quotation marks) in the SharePoint Management Shell, and then press ENTER:

d.    Database was created

e.     Click to report center and select some report, don’t have the error