Creating a Link to an External Data Source

In addition to personal Facsys phonebook(s), links to external ODBC databases can be created. Because there is a link to a database, the external data is not imported into Facsys and is "read-only" from within Facsys.

The maintainance of the database is still done within the external application. Any changes made to the external data will be reflected in the Facsys ODBC Linked folder.

NOTE: The external data source links defined are personal resources and appear at the bottom of the Facsys Desktop folder tree.

To create a link to an external data source, choose the ODBC Connection command from the File | New | Phonebook menu. Then do the following:

1. Select the data source to link to.
   
   
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 a mapping is assigned. If the 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 the 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 a fax message is addressed.

NOTE: Data source objects are created using the Windows Control Panel ODBC applet. Refer to the Windows documentation for instructions on creating ODBC databases.