Phone SMS Database

[therock003]

I am trying to create a database for storing communication via mobile-short messages. I can manage the first part of extracting messages from the mobile and create the database to store them with necessary fields, but i would greatly appreciate your help concerning the output. I.e. the way I can retrieve them and view them in reports.

I want to create an iPhone-like Theme, where at the TOP i can view the recipient, and then bubbles containing the conversations.

Like So.

Could i pick your brains guys on how to do this?

I would really appreciate your help on this one.

 

[Norie]

How exactly are you storing the conversations and the messages in them?

Is there something that identifies that a message belongs to a specific conversation?

eg conversation ID

Also, what is it you want to report exactly?

Entire specific conversations? Every conversation over a time period?

By the way, I'm a little confused when you say you need help to 'retrieve' the messages?

I thought you already had that part done?

ie retrieving and storing the messages from the phone.

 

[therock003]

Thank You fro your interest.

Well i'm going to have a table for inbox (received) and one for outbox (sent messages from me).

Tha Table will include fields such as

Sender|TimeStamp|Message Contents

Also some additional MetaData could exist, such as SMSC or something.

Conversations are going to be specified as selected records. For Example upon generation of report, i will select the specific table records that the conversation consists of.

That's all in sort.

By retrieve the messages i meant retrieve them as stored on the database and have the desired end-result. Sorry that i made it sound complicated. I just need the data to result on the above format.

If you need me to specify anything further please ask me. Thank You.

 

[Norie]

You probably shouldn't have separate tables for outgoing and incoming messages.

They could all go in the one table with an additional field for 'conversation'.

That would indicate which conversation the message belonged to.

Then when you came to the report you could use that field to group the messages by the conversation they 'belong' to.

 

[therock003]

You probably shouldn't have separate tables for outgoing and incoming messages.

They could all go in the one table with an additional field for 'conversation'.

That would indicate which conversation the message belonged to.

Then when you came to the report you could use that field to group the messages by the conversation they 'belong' to.

Yep, not bad. But what about the graphical part of the report. Having the final touch on the look-feel is the reason i posted here. How can i generate reports that have the exact image of an iPhone screen?

 

[Norie]

Access isn't really built for this type of thing and to get the exact look you want would be difficult if not impossible.

I can think of a couple of things with conditional formatting you could do to change the look of the messages.

That would be limited to what's available, which might only be as advanced as changing colour, font etc.

In later versions you might get some other options, eg changing the shape of the controls the data is in to something that looks bit closer to a bubble.

If you could post some sample data I'd be happy to look into it, I've not really explored fully all the new options available in Access 2010.