data entry form example

Data Entry, Uploading and Filtering Tools

By Thomas Eklund

The above tool (shown as the header image) demonstrates that once a person has been added into the database, the data can be recycled by simply selecting and clicking. At each such data usage point the application's built in features can check the user's work and if applicable, notify the user that he or she may be making a mistake.

Usually the database applications have all or most of the following functionality areas:

  • Data in
  • Recycle the data where needed, in as many ways as needed
  • Assemble information (Report Center)
  • Take action using the information (like, for example, create graphs and reports, or send out emails with or without application filled mail merge letters as attachments)
  • Collect feedback and other data so that the process can start again.

Somehow the data has to get into the application. It can be entered manually, or uploaded from different sources, or automatically collected based on, for example, user behavior, or on some specified criteria. There are two important points to this:

  • Database application should be set up so that any necessary piece of data is entered into the application only once, and is then recycled by the application users and/or the application when needed and the way needed. There are some exception to this rule, but in vast majority of cases this rule holds.
  • Recycling of information should be primarily based on either application user's identifying the necessary information, and pointing and clicking to make the necessary selections, or on the application's automated features.

So, how do you enter already entered data to different parts of the application? You don't enter it, you select it. Instead of entering data more than once, you simply select it where needed in a combination needed. If you actually have to enter the same data in more than one place, there may be something wrong with the application.