BUS1MIS Management Information Systems

1. BUS1MIS Management Information Systems Access: Data Entry Forms Semester 1, 2012 Week 7 Lecture 2

3. In this lecture the key ideas are: • Without complete and valid data input, the quality of business information and decision making will be poor. • Input screens should be designed to ……. • Be appealing to look at and use. • Use minimum keystrokes. Also included will be: • An overview of creating an input screen in Microsoft Access 2010

4. To illustrate the ideas of input screen design we will use the Order Form lecture example from last week …..

5. … and the database we designed to store the Order data.

6. People are not good at entering data accurately and completely. • We can reduce the number of errors through … • Setting data validation rules when we create our tables • Effectively designing data input screens

7. Most DBMS packages allow rules to be set to ensure the validity of data entry. The Access example sets the Order date to a value in this century.

8. Setting data validation rules when we create our tables The example below shows the Validation text when an inappropriate Order Date is entered.

9. Effectively designing data entry screens A data entry screen normally contains labels and data entry areas Data Entry Areas Labels Problems Labels should not be the field names Data Entry areas should reflect the amount of data to be entered

10. Effectively designing data entry screens A more effective data entry screen would be …. Remembering that data capture is best if it requires a minimum of keystrokes by a person ….. ……. what further improvements could we make?

11. Default Values If we can predict a value that will be commonly entered we can include it in a field as a default value. For example, the Order date is likely to be today’s date.

12. Default Values The data entry form will look like ….. Today’s date

13. Using the mouse rather than keystrokes Combo Box Because our database is made up of related tables we can use combo boxes to select values rather than having to type them. Customer Name in the Orders table is a prime example Relationship

14. Combo Box Indicates a Combo Box

15. Combo Box List generated from Customer table

16. Radio Buttons Where the data in a field is of Yes/No type we can use Radio Buttons to reduce keystrokes. I will add a Yes/No field to the Orders table Note: I have used Text as the Data Type for the field.

17. Radio Buttons We can use the Options group Wizard in Access to create radio buttons for the data entry.

18. Radio Buttons In the Data Form view the radio buttons look like …. Note: In the Order Completed field, 1 is stored to represent Yes and 2 to represent No.