(Photo credit: Mónica, M)

I have used this blog to expound the virtues of IBM Connections’ Activities features before, but wanted to share this time the concept of using Activities as an easily-structured, highly-flexible database solution in its own right.

Don’t get me wrong, Activities are not going to replace IBM DB2 or Oracle any day soon, but for the simple lists and other small data collection exercises we all need to do at work, Activities is an easy way of putting it all together.

In this example I am going to create a simple asset register for office equipment.

You start by creating a new activity, in the same way as you normally would:

Create an Activity

Give the activity a name, e.g. Asset Register and a description.  Then press Save.

Press the Create Entry button:

New Entry

Add some custom fields for the different attributes you’d want to record about your assets, for example:

Custom fields added

Now save the entry.

With the entry saved, you’ll appear back in the Activity main screen with the blank asset displayed.  Click on More Actions and then Save as Template:

Save as Template

When you do this, a new window pops up asking you what name you want to give to your entry template:

Save Entry Template

Give your new entry template a name and a sensible / appropriate icon and hit save

When you go  back to the Activity home page you’ll see:

Custom Entry Type

Click from Entry Template to see your new entry type.

When you click on Add Asset Record (in my example) the new entry will appear with the custom forms you added earlier.

Now you can create one entry for each asset in your office and use comments, files and other entries as descendant entries against the Asset to record changes to it.

As I said, its not a traditional database as such, but might be good enough for lots of jobs in your organisation

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