Comments

# StepUP said on July 12, 2006 11:42 AM:

Is it my imagination, or are critical comments pretty much ignored in this forum? I have seen some common concerns raised here a number of times, particularly, it seems, from members of the development community. Yet it appears that they are never addressed.

If you say how wonderful the new feautures are (and don't get me wrong, there are some great new things), then your question might get addressed. However, reporting problems and concerns doesn't get much attention.

Given that the release of Office 12 is being delayed due to issues brought up in the beta cycle, if this is not the forum for that for Access, then is there one elsewhere within MSDN or Microsoft?

If not, I would be willing to host my own forum, and present the issues in batches to Microsoft.

Anyone interested? Please email me at:
dbguru @ dbguru . net

Thanks

# Erik Rucker said on July 12, 2006 1:21 PM:

Let me explain the method behind our madness.  Our goal is to answer all the questions that come up through the blog, and it practice we get most of them but not all.  Particularly if a question is about the feature described in the blog post and is looking for more information about how it works, what it does, or why it works a certain way, we're very likely to get it answered.  If the question is about somethng other than the post, we'll try to get to that as well, but probably have a slightly lower hit rate.

That said, there is a set of questions or comments that do get passed up.  Questions about things that have been discussed in the past and where there is little we can think of adding are likely to not get answered.  Examples of these might include things like security work, the continued use of VBA, and the continued use of Jet.  The reason we're not responding to those comments isn't that we don't care, but that we don't have anything to add and believe that continued discussion doesn't do the forum any favors.  These are areas where reasonable arguments can be made both ways or areas like security where we just can't describe all the relevant information.  We've done our best to answer the questions and explain our thinking and if we could provide better information we would, but we simply can't think of anything else to say on those matters.

As far as Office being delayed, remember the retail date is unchanged, and the RTM date has moved only slightly.  The issues we're responding to include things like performance and stability - really finishing up what we're already doing.  We're paying a ton of attention to bug-level input at this point and are making great progress fixing bugs.  We're paying a lot of attention to broader input as well, but it is much too late to take action on that input for Access 12, so we'll have to take that feedback into consideration for the next version.

If there's a question that we've missed in the comments for the blog, don't hesitate to use the link to send me some email.  I will get back to you.

  Thanks,
       Erik  

# Francis said on July 12, 2006 1:23 PM:

I have received a response to nearly every point I raised!

(It's wonderful to that the Access team reads this, even if the response oft is "no, unfortunately not in this release.)

# Micah Rousey said on July 12, 2006 2:17 PM:

As I've said before, this new process will open up new and great ways to use access.

Now for the questions:

Can we see an example of the HTML form email?

Can I choose what type of form to send depending on certain criteria?  ie: If a users email address ends with 'aol.com' send the HTML, otherwise, send the Infopath.

(Granted, I'm sure I'd figure out a way to do that even if it were not featured, I just want to know if it will be easy to do or not.  Hehehe.  )

# Erik Rucker said on July 12, 2006 5:11 PM:

You can see an example of the HTML mail in the post from June 30th.  It is the first example, and the mail image is just above the title "InfoPath Data Update Mail".  Here's the URL to the image:  http://clintc.officeisp.net/Blogs/2006/34%20-%20Data%20Collection/10%20-%20HTML%20Email.JPG

We don't have any slick way to split the forms between InfoPath and HTML depending on some criteria, although that would be a very cool thing to do (ideally we'd have some way to send both and have the respondant just automatically get the right one).  The workaround for this would be do to the data collection process twice - once for those with InfoPath and once for those without.  This is a little fiddly, but will get the best possible experience for your users.

Thanks,
   Erik

# Ray Egan said on September 6, 2006 8:27 PM:

I know that I am rather late to the party here, but I am looking at updating an address list -- along with significant other related info.

Using the HTML method, there does not seem to be any way to identify changed items in the returned info that could be reviewed (manually) before adding the reply to the database.

Is this true, or have I missed something?

Thanks,
Ray

# Kurt said on January 5, 2007 3:58 PM:

I was just testimg out this feature and I am having trouble getting it to work. I am receiving replies in the correct folder but they are not being processed.  The status message is "Message Unprocessed"  If I try to manually process them nothing happens.,  The status remains the same.  Any ideas?  I am not on an Exchange environment. Would that make a difference?  I am using Office 2007.

Thanks!

  - Kurt

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