Creating and recording daily work tasks in Access 2010

Question

Hi everyone

I was hoping to use Access 2010 to build a daily task tracker to highlight tasks that need doing on the day or that are left over from the previous day.

I am looking for design tips how to do this.  I have various tables set up with the task name, frequency, task owner etc. and whilst I can create a query to determine what is due to do today I don't know how to store this information.

I guess this sounds like a basic workflow management tool: I'd like to be able to open the database in the morning, see what jobs need doing, record by the end of the day whether they were completed or not then repeat tomorrow.  Tomorrow's task list should include tasks that were not completed the previous day (if not a daily task) and allow you to see the previous days' commentary (or the commentary the previous time the task was due).

Can anyone please advise me or point me in the direction of a working example I can use as a basis for this?

Thanks very much

Answer 1

In its simplest incarnation you would have only one table:

tblTasks

TaskID autonumber PK

TaskDescription text(255) required

TaskDueDate datetime required?

TaskCompletedDate datetime

Comments memo

Then create a query to show the non-completed ones:

select * from tblTasks

where TaskCompleteDate is null or TaskCompleteDate=dateadd("d", -1, Date())

order by TaskDueDate

You can use this query as the basis for a datasheet form showing the records just completed, and to be completed.

I'm leaving recurring tasks as an exercise for you.

Answer 2

Hi Tom

Thanks very much for your reply.

It's the fact that all tasks have some recurring frequency that is stumping me.  Having set the recurrence I can query the base data so it pulls out the tasks due today from that core data, but what I don't know is how to store that data at the end of each day.

Ultimately I want to create an audit trail to prove that work was completed on the day (and allow people to attach evidence of that); I can then run reports off that to measure performance over time.

Apologies if I'm not making this clear but although I consider myself an Excel expert, I'm a total newbie with databases.

Answer 3

While I am a big Access fan, do you have Outlook? Outlook's Task Manager can handle just about all your requirements, including the recurrence.

Answer 4

Hi Scott

Outlook's task manager wouldn't suffice for me for a number of reasons: I've only put the very basics of what I want to do on here, once I get the recurrence and recording / reporting sorted out there is a lot more that I will add, use and query that data for.

Answer 5

There are many ways to do recurring tasks; I'm trying to find a very simple one for you.

tblRecurringTasks

RecurringTaskID autonumber pk

RecurringTaskDescription text(255) required

StartDate datetime required

EndDate datetime

Frequency text(10) required    'daily, weekly, monthly

DayNumber integer    'vbSunday etc, or day of month

Then every first day of the week you run one or more append queries that copy data from this table into tblTasks, for the current week. You can call the same function when you select a future date.