Your seventh interview

Dan doesn't work in your actual office but he does work for the company. You met Dan Magnus at an office party about two years ago. You don't remember which party but you did end up hitting it off and the two of you still run into each other from time to time. A couple of days ago you saw him in the hall and arranged to meet so you can talk about this. We'll pick this interview up after you've told Dan about the issue you are facing.

Dan: Huh. Well, I can tell you what I would recommend. I would get someone from the IT office to build you a database in Microsoft Access.

You: Why Access? And I don't know anyone in the IT group that I could call to see about doing any programming or anything. I don't even know much about Access to even know what questions I should ask them.

Dan: Well, over a year ago we wanted a way to keep track of all of the books that we have up in our office. I mean we must have five or six hundred books up there. So, Connie, who was my boss back then called someone in the IT office. In a few days about four of us, Connie, me, John (another of the people who has a lot of books in his area), and the IT guy (I think his name was Freddy). Anyway, we all sat down and Freddy asked us some questions. Then a few weeks went by and John went down to the IT office and came back saying that he and Freddy looked at some database the guy was building for us. He had some recommendations and then said that Freddy said that we should have something that we could use in a couple of weeks.

Then a few weeks later Freddy comes up and shows me how to open the file in Access and how to put in my books and how to search for them and that was about it. I've been using the Access database file ever since. Just adding books when I get new ones in.

You: What type of questions did you all go through when you had that first meeting with Freddy?

Dan: Well, he just asked what we wanted in the database. We said we wanted to have the Title of the book, the Author, and stuff like that. I know that when Freddy and John talked the second time John said that he asked Freddy to make some of the fields a little bigger (we have some very long titled books.)

You: Do you have any problem with anyone else getting into the database while you are there?

Dan: Yes and no. Sometimes when someone wants to go into the database to look for a book and I'm in there adding a new book or updating some of the information about the book then they tell me they get a file locked message. If they get that then they know to either call me and ask me to get out or they just wait until later and try back.

You: Do you have any problem with anyone messing up your data in the database?

Dan: How do you mean?

You: Do you have any time where you go in there and some of the books are missing and you know you entered them in there? Or where someone has gone in and changed the title or author of a book or anything?

Dan: No, no one has done anything like that. Why would they, it's just a database of the books. If they mess it up then they have to come over to where we store all of the books and sort through them manually. And no one likes to do that.

You: Do you have Freddy's phone number?

Dan: Nope. I'm not even sure if he is still around. I don't really hang around with those people. They are a little weird for me.

You: Dan, what else can you tell me about this?

Dan: Nothing. That's about all of what happened.

You thank Dan and leave, walking back to your office.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Dan interview.