Public Talks

Maintain Databases

Journal

You get to the Journal by selecting the Journal tab on the Maintain Databases property sheet.

The Journal property page allows you to create, maintain and manage free-format notes which are time-stamped and optionally related to a congregation. The facility is very flexible. For example, you may use it as:

•  a work in progress “do not forget” list to help you keep track of your dealings with other congregations;
•  a record of your activity in arranging home and away talks;
•  replacement of whatever notes you make manually in your role as talk coordinator.

You can add new journal entries, edit and delete existing ones. You may highlight entries as important and sort them by one of importance, date of last edit, congregation or contents of the entry.

Note that the Date column indicates the last time the entry was edited. However, the database also retains the date when the entry was created. Although created timestamp details are not displayed here, you can use them if desired with the custom report scripting facility.

You may also access and manage journal entries from the Away/Home Talks database maintenance form. When you are displaying that form, all you need to do is right-click on any date in the calendar to display a context menu which will allow you to: add new journal entries; edit or delete existing entries. See the Maintain Database, Away/Home Talks topic for more details.

Please find below a detailed description about the journal facility. Alternatively, hover your mouse over the screenshot above and click on any of the control you are interested. This will take you to the details for that control.

	Press the Add button to add a new journal entry into the database. When clicked, it will display the Add Journal Entry dialogue. See Edit (below) for further details.
	Press the Edit button (or the Enter key) to edit the currently selected journal entry. When clicked, it will display the Edit Journal Entry dialogue: Congregation Use the drop list to select a congregation to associate this journal entry with. The default is <None> which is at the very top of the list. Memo This is where you specify the journal entry text. You can type in a maximum of 255 characters. This should be adequate for most user requirements. Flag as Important Set this option to flag the journal entry as important. These journal entries are indicated with a red flag next to the date stamp: Using the pre-defined journal memo text You can use the droplist to select one of your predefined journal memo text entries or type in a new one as required. The predefined memo text is customized by clicking Options button. This will display a popup dialogue where you can add, edit or delete as required. Display as tooltip on calendar You can also get any journal entry to display on your home / away maintenance calendar as a tooltip (see example on the left). To do this, set the option Display as tooltip on calendar and then use the calendar control to specify which date to associate the journal entry with. More than one journal entry can be set as a tooltip and they will show line under the other. However, the tooltip will only display the first 50 characters for each tip.
	Press the Delete button (or the Delete key) to remove the selected journal entry from the database. Since the data will be permanently deleted, and the process can't be undone, you are asked to confirm your request. Note that deleting a congregation (Congregations maintenance page) will automatically delete all journal entries associated with it. However, journal entries for congregation (None) have to be deleted individually.
	You can change how the journal entries are sorted by clicking on any of the column headings. Click the same column heading a second time to reverse the sort order. Your chosen sorting preferences will be retained for the next time you use the journal facility.

Custom report scripting 

The journal information can be printed using custom report scripting. You will need to do a LOOP of the Journal table. Then you can use any of the fields as required within the loop:

There are a couple of sample report scripts that have been included with the software to show how you might represent the journal data. They are called Journal 01 and Journal 02 and are available from your computers Start menu under the Public Talks\Sample Scripts\Management & Planning menu.

With respects to scripting, note that looping through Congregations will not find journal entries for (None).  See the sample script Journal 02 for more details.

Please click here if you would like to find out how to import sample scripts.