In addition to your personal FACSys phonebook, you can create links to external ODBC databases. Because you are linking to a database, the external data is not imported into FACSys and is "read-only" from within FACSys. You continue to maintain the database in the external application. Any changes you make to the external data are reflected automatically in the FACSys ODBC linked folder.
| NOTE: | The external data source links you define are personal resources and appear at the bottom of your FACSys Desktop folder tree. |
To create a link to an external data source, choose the ODBC Connection command from the File|New|Phonebook menu. You will be prompted to do the following:
| 1. | Select the data source to which you want to link. |
| 2. | Select a table belonging to the selected database. |
| 3. | Define the mapping criteria between the fields in the selected table and the FACSys phonebook. To define field mapping, select a table and click the Set Field Mappings button. In the Set Field Mappings window, drag and drop field names between the columns to define the mappings. Dropping a field onto another field will create a mapping. Also, pressing the <INS> key will map the highlighted table field to the highlighted phonebook field. <DEL> will remove the mapping for the highlighted phonebook field. |
The only fields that become linked to the ODBC database are those for which you have assigned a mapping. If your external database consists of hundreds of fields, all extraneous/unused data will be ignored.
The ODBC data source link will display as a personal FACSys resource in your folder tree. The name of the folder is the name of the data source file. The ODBC link will also display as an available phonebook resource when you address your fax messages.
| NOTE: | You create data source objects using the Control Panel ODBC applet. Refer to your Windows documentation for instructions on creating ODBC databases. |
