• A sales organization can publish price updates, product information and stock availability to its Web site so representatives in the field always have access to the latest information for and about their customers.
  

• A travel agency can publish up-to-date tour package information on its Web site, where clients can go to conveniently browse the options, make travel plans, and even book travel arrangements online.
  

• A health care organization can publish changing prescription and medical history data about patients on its Web site so personnel outside the facility can get the vital information they need in case of a medical emergency.

Publishing your Q&A data to a Web site is easy once you have the appropriate elements in place. It can be as simple as running a Q&A procedure that automatically outputs selected Q&A data to a standard HTML Web page file that you then upload to your Web server. Publishing a series of Web updates — even several times each day — takes minutes, not hours.

The Q&A data on your Web site can be unsecured (anyone can view it) or password protected so only designated people can view it.

The data can be static (designed to be viewed only) or interactive — where visitors to your site can select what data to view and even update the data remotely. A Q&A application can even be designed to be totally Web based, where any and all database updates are made entirely online via your Web site.

Static Web Pages
Static Web pages — usually consisting of HTML tables with prefaratory text — can be generated in any version of Q&A. Suppose you wanted a daily price update table on your company's products available on your site:

• You design a Q&A report that includes the appropriate information in the general format in which you want it to appear.

• You then "tweak" the report design, adding the appropriate codes to produce the HTML tags that make the report output publishable as a table on a Web page.

• You upload the updated report output to your Web site, replacing the out-of-date Web page.

Once the design work is done, when you need to publish new updates, you simply run your Q&A report(s) and upload the resulting file(s) to your Web server.

With static Web pages, the Q&A database itself isn't on the Web server, only the output from it in pre-formatted HTML files is published to the server.

Interactive Web Pages
Interactive Web pages give remote users flexibility in choosing the information they want to see. In other words, you allow them to interact with your Q&A Web application similar to the way you interact with Q&A on your desktop computer.

Some application needs can be better served by having your Q&A database (or a copy of it) on your Web server and using Web programming to extract and display information from it in real-time.

Here's a representation of what an interactively-generated Web table might reveal when a remote salesperson using your Web site requests current price and availability on widgets. Note that there's a place for the In Stock quantity to show what's current as of the day and hour:

With the database itself online and with Web programming, the remote salesperson could actually post a new sales order from the Web site for 30 Heavy Duty Widgets, and within seconds the In Stock quantity would be reduced from 34 to 4 so the next salesperson would know exactly how many she could deliver immediately to her customer.

Without the posting feature, this is the interactive method we use to make The Quick Answer Index database searchable online.

To search The Quick Answer Index database (try it!), a "Retrieve Spec" form is provided for you to enter your retrieval criteria. Hidden programming validates your criteria just like Q&A can, then retrieves the selected records from the actual Q&A database and displays them in an attractive table-like format for easy viewing.

Once the information has been displayed, the application can provide options on what to do next, such as perform another search, order a product online, display more detail on a selected product or service, or send you an email message requesting more information or personal assistance.

A Web application designed to let remote users actually update (change information in) a Q&A database can take one of several approaches.

The Q&A database can reside on the Web server (password protected) so a remote user with permissions can view selected records as above, and edit one or more of them in real-time. The changes take effect immediately, so the next remote user sees the new information. In this case the remote user isn't working in the Q&A database itself; he or she specifies changes to a record using a predesigned Web form, and those edits are posted to the pertinent Q&A database record via Web programming.

If the Q&A database is not on the Web server, the remote user's updates or newly added record(s) can be transmitted or emailed then either automatically or manually (with human intervention) applied to the database locally.

There are various approaches that fall between these two examples, but any security and data validation that you can have in a Q&A database can be incorporated into any kind of application like these.

What's Next?
If you would like to have information from your Q&A databases available on your Web site, we can help. We can design and implement the specific Q&A components you need to make publishing your data online a snap. We can even design and manage your site entirely for you if that's what you need.

• You don't have to know a thing about obtaining and maintaining a Web site for your company — we can take care of all that for you. We can train even non-technical personnel to manage your site effectively.

• We can help you design and implement the Q&A elements you need to generate attractive, up-to-date HTML Web pages for easy publication to your Web site.

• If your needs are more along the lines of an interactive Web-based Q&A application, we have the tools, know-how, and experience to provide you with a system that's easy for your people to use and maintain and will work exactly the way you want it to work.

To discuss a Web application you have in mind, contact us using one of the methods at the bottom of this page. We're the Q&A experts.

_______________________________________

Email inbox@quickanswer.com
Phone  800-780-5474 (orders only) or 949-722-9127 / Fax 949-722-9127
Marble Publications
1927A Harbor Boulevard
Costa Mesa, California 92627

Last modified: December 11, 2006

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