Welcome back to our course on Access 2013.
The contact management database that we’ve been looking at so far is a desktop database.
Now this is not restricted to being used by one user and in fact the database can be shared
by putting the data part of it on a network and giving other people access through the
user interface components of this Access database.
If we want to share a database, that’s one approach.
But if we want to share a database more widely and in particular if we want to share the
database over the internet, then the traditional type of Access desktop database is not the
ideal way to do that.
However, if we want to share a database over the internet, then Access 2013 includes the
ability to build Access web apps which give access to databases using standard internet
browsers.
In this section we’re going to take a first look at how to build an Access web app and
what one actually looks like.
Now for this to work, the data in the database has to reside in a central location and the
central location will not be your own PC or your own laptop or your own tablet.
It needs to be in a location that other people with internet browsers can access.
Now the data itself lives in a SQL Server database, a Microsoft SQL Server database
and that’s where it needs to be put.
In order to access it there and to have all of the tools that we need to store the data,
manipulate the data, etcetera, we use Microsoft SharePoint.
Now you probably haven’t got your own installation of Microsoft SharePoint and most people don’t.
Even if you work in a company, you may or may not have access Microsoft SharePoint.
In order to demonstrate this, I’m going to have to use a standard installation of
Microsoft SharePoint.
Now in order to do that we need to use what is effectively a trial version of Microsoft
SharePoint and by the time you actually come to work your way through this section of the
course, that trial version may or may not still be available.
So at the time of recording this, the best place to start to get a trial of Office 365
that includes SharePoint 2013 which is the latest version of SharePoint, that’s the
one you need.
Here is the Microsoft page, Office 365 preview and then on the right you have a list of options.
Now I’ve gone with the Office 365 Small Business option.
That takes you through to the Office 365 Small Business Premium preview page.
It gives you a description of the top 10 reasons to try Office 365 Small Business Premium and
then you can follow that through, sign up with the relevant details that you need.
At the time of writing it’s free of charge for a limited period.
Don’t forget that you need Windows 7 or 8 in order to use Office 365.
And then once you’ve gone through and completed the sign up for your Office 365 preview, you
should be able to do what I’m going to do next which is to create an Access 2013 web
app.
To create an Access web app in Access 2013, choose the requisite App Template.
I’m going to go for contact management, the equivalent of the contact management that
we’ve looked at already but as a web app.
The web app templates you can recognize by the blue globe on the sheet of paper behind
the icon.
So this is the contacts one, click on that.
Now exactly what you see here to some extent will depend on the SharePoint site that you’re
using.
If you’re using an Office 365 account or Office 365 preview account, you’ll see details
of the web location at the bottom and then the available locations for you are listed
in a panel in the middle.
Now for me with the account that I’ve setup, I have two choices.
I can either publish this web app to my team site in which case that tells me the web location
at the bottom or within my team site as part of the Office 365 preview account that I have
I have a personal apps area.
Now I’m going to publish this on the team site, selected the team site, that adjusts
the web location at the bottom, and then I want to give the app a name.
Now the name I’m going to give it is not very imaginative.
I just call it Contacts TA.
When I’ve done that, I click on Create.
Now once the app has successfully been created, I have a very basic app in place and it includes
a contacts table on the left.
I can add further tables.
I can either use a table template from Microsoft.
So I can search in here for a particular template or I can add a new blank table using this
link on the right here.
Let’s suppose that I want to search for a table related to contacts so I’m going
to search on the term Contact.
It gives me a number of options.
It’s got a people table, contacts table, customers.
Let’s suppose I want a table suitable for customers.
So now my database has two tables in it, a contacts table and a customer’s table.
Let’s look at the customer’s table to begin with.
I open that up.
Obviously it’s empty at the moment.
I haven’t put in details of any of my customers but I can certainly add details of customers
and I can also go into the design of the table.
Now it’s very important to recognize that when we’re working in this way, this is
completely different from the Access desktop forms, reports, and so on that we’re going
to look at during the rest of the course.
The views that we’re getting of the data here are views through an internet browser.
And although we can go into change the layout of the forms that users fill in they are different
forms from the ones that are used in an Access desktop database.
So you’re basically using the same principles, you’re using the same ideas in terms of
tables, forms, queries, and the other things that we’ve either looked at or are going
to look at.
The application, the implementation of them in a web app is different.
So for instance, if I want to change the design of this form, the one that users will use
when they access this database over the web using a browser, if I click on Edit, then
there’s the layout of the form.
I can go in.
I can change the wording of a label.
I can move fields around and do all sorts of things to them, but that’s a completely
separate set of exercises to the ones where I’m working on a desktop database.
So when I finish working on a particular object, I can just close it in the usual way, save
the changes if I’m requested to do so.
Once I’ve setup the tables and views and so on that I want to use, it’s very straightforward
to launch the app.
So I just click on Launch App on the left there and this enables me to view the app
in my default browser.
So I’ll click on Launch App.
My default browser is Internet Explorer and there is my app.
I have a selection of Internet Explorer toolbars at the top here but basically I have access
to contacts and I have access to customers and in each case I have a choice.
Here I have List View.
I can go into Datasheet View.
And in either of these views I can start to add data to my database.
Now I don’t really want to spend too much more time just showing you Access web apps
at the moment.
I just want you to have some idea of what they look like and what the key differences
are.
If I’m working on a particular record like this one, I can fill in details: first name,
company, job title, etc., exactly the same way that I would normally fill in data.
I then have buttons on this Action Bar here for things like save.
There’s also a Delete button that’s currently grayed out.
This Action Bar which is a common feature of these views in Access web apps can be customized
and for instance if you write macros which are supported within Access web apps, you
can put buttons here to activate macros.
So here you can see the view that users get of your web app running in Internet Explorer
in this case.
If I just switch back now to Access where we started from, we can have a look at the
information about this web app in Access.
And in Access, we can see the form layout that we started with.
We have the facility there to go into edit to change the design of that particular view.
And if I just go back to Backstage View to look at the Info, then I have information
there about my web app.
It gives me a URL for the web app, including this number 6BE, etc. that identifies the
particular web app, and then information about data connectivity, the server name that the
SQL Server database is actually running on, and so on.
So I have pretty full and comprehensive information about where my web app is and links to get
access to it.
And of course I can control other people’s access to the web app, their permissions,
etc.
So if you don’t already have access to SharePoint 2013 and you do want to try out Access web
apps, I’ve given you at least an outline, the instructions for doing that.
You need to get access probably via an Office 365 account which you can get at least on
a temporary basis free of charge and then you can setup your SharePoint on your Office
365 account and then create a web app from Access and set about customizing it and using
it in the way that I very briefly outlined in this section.
So that’s it for this section.
I’ll see you
in the next one.