Hello.

I would like to create a simple solution to keep track of
correspondence (email) which I send to members of a group (who
download content from a site of mine).

Occasionally these members run into a technical problem which requires
clarification. I have about 8 to 10 "stock" responses, one of which
nearly always resolves the questions that are put to me by these
members. (I have a support page on my site, too, which answers most of
these questions, but people don't always read it (!), hence the need
to send emails when required.) The stock responses sometimes require
*minor* modification and, of course, will have merge fields to change
Dear John to Dear Joe, etc.

I think I know what to do, especially having read this very helpful
thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....af67 f07c4433

What I have in mind is:
3 tables
- 1. members
- 2. emails
- 3. stock_responses

The members and emails tables would be related by member_ID. I would
have a portal in members which would display stuff from the emails
table and it would be possible to create records (emails) via that
portal. The emails table would have "subject" and "body" fields, as
well as a few lookup fields which would copy over data from the
members table.

My question relates to the need - or not - for a "stock_responses"
table. I thought this table would have just two fields - subject and
body - and would contain 8 to 10 records each with the stock response.
Then I would select which of these was appropriate in response to a
particular question and set the body field in the emails table with
the content of the stock response via a script when the email was
being created.

Maybe this is needlessly complicated, tho'. How about just a
"developer" layout in the emails table containing global fields
containing these stock responses. The thing is, over time the number
of stock responses may grow so the globals option would become
messy...

Am I way off base? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Hugh

p.s. Am using FMP 8.5 on a Mac.

On Feb 14, 11:35 am, "Hugh" <hugh.na... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
It's good development procedure to have a separate table for your
responses. It doesn't sound needless complicated at all.

G

On Feb 14, 4:39 pm, "Grip" <g... (AT) cybermesa (DOT) com> wrote:
Thanks, Grip.

Didn't find it so easy to get the response data back into the email,
after all. I set up a few global text fields and transferred the data
there first. It's not pretty, but it's adequate... and it works.

Hugh