This updates is about the user manual. Thanks for your requests and suggestions, the documentation is now completed with the basic concepts of the feature of BAU DB and the contents should be sufficient so that you can get your hand in customizing your own database solutions.
BAU DB is an easy-to-use tool which lets you create powerful and flexible solutions to manage business and work. Apart from that, it is also an easy-to-learn tool. This is a summary of what is included in the documentation so far:
The purpose of the first section – “Quick Starter” is to let you start working with BAU DB immediately.
In “Going Straight to Data Entry“, you will know how to use BAU DB in a single click to create a ready-to-use database application and you can go straight to enter the cell captions and save data on the worksheets.
In “Automated Documents Using Excel“, it explains the simple steps to add some cell captions of BAU DB worksheets into Excel and turn it to a document template immediately so that you can generate automated documents for the data entries you have created.
In “The Actual Database“, it reveals the relationship of worksheets wit the actual database underneath. With this understanding, you can edit your worksheets to add more cells and also apply automation formulas that manipulate the tables and fields of the database.
In “Automating The Data“, you can learn the formulas and apply them to automate selection lists, input validations, calculations and manipulations of data between worksheets.
In “Reusing Pre-Existing Spreadsheet Data“, you will understand how to import your existing data in spreadsheet format into BAU DB worksheets in some simple steps, so that you can continue your works in BAU DB.
In the second section, “More Features” explains more features of BAU DB along with a real life sample, so that you can understand apart from using the default worksheets, BAU DB allows you to create an application from scratch as well.
In “Download The Sample Application“, it shows you the way BAU DB opens an application file is just like Excel opens a workbook file. It also introduces briefly about each worksheets of the application so that you can better understand the examples in the following sections.
In “Settings of a Worksheet“, you will learn how to edit a worksheet with its input cells associated with database fields and different field types. You can also edit the entry list views and the filtering boxes.
In “Data Flows Between Worksheets“, more use cases and examples are shown. You will meet some useful and convenient techniques there.
In “Manipulations of Data After Saving an Entry“, it will shows you the features of data manipulations that simplify things and empower you to apply some formulas to perform some tasks.
In “More Automation Features“, there are more fun and convenient features that sum up and made BAU DB an easy and simple tool for building applications.
Once again, thanks for Jan’s suggestion to add the explanation of database table and field and Ramos’s suggestion to add the steps of importing data into BAU DB. In the coming session, topics like usage of formula, cell properties and reporting will be rolled out. As suggested by Nagendra, forum is also need to build. For the time being, let me know if there are anythings that you want to know and not yet found in the documentation.
Thank you for your software. It is very useful. Is it possible to make a template with Word. A template like Excel. A letter linked with some data.
Thank you for your respond.
Hi Pierre,
Thanks for your suggestion. It’s true that some documents are better done in Word than in Excel. This feature of Word template is not a feature of BAU DB at the moment. It’s put on the to-do list already.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for your respond. Can you tell me how to make a statement for many clients. I imagine it is possible with a “loop” in the sql statement. And how to fill a checkbox in a form with BAU DB. It would be nice some tutorials about that.
Have a nice day!
Pierre
Hi Pierre,
You are correct. BAU DB can produce a statement report for many clients on Excel spreadsheet. I will put this in the documentation soon and let you know after that.
Currently, the form of BAU DB can be populated with cells only. The workaround for a checkbox is to make a selection list of Yes/No, or other choices of words, for a cell.
Hi Eric,
Just one question. How can I display on my worksheet just the fields I need to fill in my database?
Thanks and have a nice day.
Hi Pierre,
Have a look at this docs page “The Actual Database Part 1 & Part 2“. Basically, you can click out “Worksheet Setting” from Main Menu to manage the database fields of a worksheet. You can use as many fields as you want and remove the fields that you don’t need. Whenever you have created new fields or changed the data type of a field, remember to click the button “Update DB Tables” to apply the changes to the actual database file.
Cheers
Eric
Hi Pierre,
You can also have a look at this docs page Edit Worksheet.
Hi Eric
Thank you very much.
Eric
What are the steps for doing a calculation. I’ve got 2 fields (d1.B) and (d1.C) and a third one (d1.D) with captions respectively “Début”, “Fin” and “Total. My formula for d1.D field is: “Select val(‘d1.C’) – val(‘d1.B’) from tblDummy. It does not work. Nothing in the d1.D field. What’s wrong? Somethin I don’t understand, maybe?
Thanks for your respond
Hi Pierre,
Need to press the button “Save & Render Formula” in field setting:
Cheers
Hi Pierre,
Does it work now?
Hi Eric,
Yes it works fine.
Thanks
Hi Eric,
Can you tell me when the tutorial will be ready and the “BAU DB PRO” will be available. It is a very good product and I think we can make great projects with it.
Have a nice day!
Pierre
Hi Pierre,
Really thanks for your affirmation. All positive comments and useful suggestions from you and other friends on this site gives me empowerment to go ahead and make BAU DB a great product.
Absolutely, it is understood that progress here shall be made faster. It’s difficult to give a solid timeline at the moment. Being a bootstrapping company, I am committing on making my living at the same time. That said, I am working daily on it and also thinking on the plans that can speed up my works.
The good news is that I am now working on the documentations of making reports on Excel and the new feature of Word template. It shall not be long. The planning to release BAU DB Pro will be after the completion of documentations since users will have their money worth when at least they know how to fully utilize the program 🙂
Stay tuned and it’s also my hope that BAU DB can help your work.
Cheers
Eric
Hi Eric,
Thanks
Very good news. You know I don’t want you make things faster. I just want to be sure that I learn your software and I will have the chance to buy your Pro product. I have some ideas and want to go forward
with them. I respect your living and a very important thing “be happy”. The success of your work is on the way.
Have a nice day!
Pierre
🙂
Hi Eric,
I hope you are fine. One thing I wonder. Is-it possible to hide a sheet from a user?
Thanks
Hi Pierre,
I’m fine. It’s user access control. You can take a look at the page of Features. It’s a feature in BAU DB Pro.
Cheers
Hi Eric,
Me again. I really enjoy your software. Funny to work with and it is a convenient way to do certain things.
One question. How can I say to the user he must enter the date like this: “aaaa/mm/dd”.
Thanks and have a great day!
Hi Pierre,
You are welcome and, you know, you always inspire me.
When a field is set to Date field, it follows the date format of Windows. Although you can force the user to enter certain date format like applying a selection list of date values in certain format, the date value will be changed internally and re-appear in the date format of Windows.
To set date format in Windows, it’s Region and Language in Control Panel.
In general, to manipulate date format in formula, the function format(date_value, “format_string) is used.
I am not sure I have answered your question completely, let me know if you have further concern.
Cheers
Hi Eric,
Your answer is ok for me. What I want to know is: is-it possible to link a tooltip to a cell? Like ” date format is “aaaa-mm-dd” for instance. Another question: I want to print a query. How do you do that?
My query is “select a1.a, a1.b, from table where date >2016-01-01 and date < 2016-01-15"
Thanks a lot.
Hi Pierre,
You can use label cell to add any instruction to users:
This is the setting of the label cell:
This is the way to create a report.
Firstly, create a new worksheet for retrieving the report data. Let’s say the cells C.A and C.B are for entering of report range.
The “GO>>” cell is for triggering of report data. Below is its cell setting.
In the cells C1.A and C1.B for retrieving data, “BulkReport” is used and formulas are added respectively. The formulas are different only in the retrieving fields (i.e. the “Select” part).
You can see in the formulas, the “~” sign before ‘c.A’ and ‘c.B’ is to disable triggering of formula of these 2 cells and let the formulas be triggered by the cell ‘c.C’ alone. To start retrieving of data, go to this cell ‘c.C’ and press Enter.
When report data is retrieved on the worksheet, you can “save” the report data as a record entry in this worksheet, and you can also create an Excel spreadsheet template so that the data on this worksheet can be printed on Excel.
Hi Eric
I appreciate you answer me so quickly. Thanks a lot for all. It is a pleasure to communicate
with you.
Best regards
Hi Eric
It would be nice to have a manual with all instructions and features for the software.
Always ask you how to do things. It would be less disturbing for you. I think.
Best regards
Hi Pierre,
It’s alright, and I’m working on the manual. As a development tool, user manual is as important as the software itself. I enjoy meeting many people here, including you, who like BAU DB a lot and gave me a lot of positive advice. So I know it’s my job to make BAU DB better.
Cheers
Hi Eric,
I wonder if it would be possible to translate the interface in french for french people. i live in Quebec city in Canada and people are french canadians. So it is more convenient to work in french. Maybe some tooltips over the word like “Print” and the word in french “Imprimer”. Just something simple.
Thanks and have a nice day!
Hi Pierre,
It’s possible. You can use Access or MDB Viewer to open the system file, bauSetup.dbp, under program files. Inside that, you can edit the dictionary table, tblMessage.
Cheers
Hi Eric,
Before going forward, can we sell the “dbp” file produced by BAU DB software and referring to your site for BAU DB download.
Thanks
Hi Pierre,
BAU DB is also a great tool for developers to deliver custom solutions to their customers. You can definitely sell your own created solutions – in the form of dbp files, and let your customers download BAU DB Free or buy BAU DB Pro from my website. It’s win-win 🙂
Cheers
Eric,
You are right . It’s a great tool. And be sure I will guide my customers to buy BAU DB Pro.
Have a nice day or evening!
Thanks
Eric
I have may business forms in Libreoffice / OpenOffice Calc. Can I use Calc with Baudb instead of Excel?
Thanks
Hi Vince,
It’s lucky that your documents can be used with BAU DB. You can save your business forms in LibreOffice/OpenOffice as Excel format. Then, download and install WPS office which is also free and a very nice program that is compatible with MS Office. That’s it, and the rest is the same as using Excel as described in the Docs.
Since OpenOffice/LibreOffice are using a different set of programming interface, BAU DB has not connected to these office components directly at the moment.
Cheers and wish you happy using BAU DB!
Eric
Thanks very much for your reply.
Regards
HI Eric, Pierre , Vince,
My name is Edwin from South Africa.
For a long time I have been dreaming of a spreadsheet /database integration, and going through the documentation BAU DB seems to be exactly that.
I totally agree with Pierre and Vince, that you have created a software gem that is filling a void in the business world.
I am definitely keen on further exploring this and I will try to give you constructive feedback where I can.
With regard to the the PRO version: When will this be available, and how would this run?
Would it be a stand-alone app that needs to be installed on a local server? Or will it be more like a cloud application?
From my expertise a a heavy user of cloud based applications, I believe that if one could offer BAU DB as a cloud app, this would be a groundbreaking piece of software!.
Looking forward to hear more of you Eric and from Piere and Vince and any followers that might join!
Keep up the amazing work !
Edwin
Mtubatuba, South Africa
Hi Edwin,
Thanks for your invaluable comment. With your comment, together with the so many great comments received from blog posts and by emails that I am now pretty sure the original idea of BAU DB has been well received by all of you, and all your words in return gave me much encouragement that I know I need to make BAU DB a better and better tool to help people. And it’s my promise here that, by all means, I will keep up my effort for that.
Yeah, your feedback is always invaluable. Just like the way as Pierre and Vince, and many other friends here, your questions and comments will definitely enlighten the path for a better BAU DB.
In the current planning, the Pro version will be running on local LAN, with the sharing ability for team work. There are several ways of “sharing” and let me make a leak here 🙂
The basic way is to share the app files through local network, without the need of any installation in server. There is also a sync feature so that the app files can share and collaborate with remote locations. And BAU DB can also work with your self-installed sql server. Oops, better stop here and I wish these features are intriguing enough for you to buy BAU DB Pro.
Cloud based application is definitely one of the phase in the future planning. I think there are two groups of users, with one group likes the desktop program and the other likes to work on the cloud.
Again, your feedback is vital to the success of BAU DB, and so feel free to drop me a message no matter what is on your mind about BAU DB!
Cheers
Eric
Hi Eric,
I have a question on how to tackle my product / pricing structure in my application and I would like to send you a few screenshots to easily explain the challenge.
Please advise the best way to forward your my question.
Thank you
Edwin
PS: A great way for you to keep on top of these questions would be to include an FAQ plugin on this website.
Since you are giving so much to your user community, I would gladly help you with this and install such a plugin for you.
Let me know if you would like me to do this for you.
Regards
Edwin
Hi Edwin,
You are welcome. Please send your screenshots about product and pricing to my email and let’s discuss on it.
Thanks for your advice, I will create the forum for better support of questions and suggestions. It’s so nice of you to offer the help. Anyway, thanks again!
Eric