BadgeMaker Connect
How to set up a BadgeMaker Connect Project
Follow these steps if you want to create a project using an external data source as your primary source of information. If you want the local BadgeMaker Identity project to be your primary source of information, please refer to chapter 2.2
We will start by creating a new project. Click the New Project icon and select “Create a new BM CONNECT project” from the dialog.
#SCREENSHOT2#
Enter a name for your project and click “Next”. BadgeMaker will now create the internal database structure to base your project upon. Click “Next” once the process is complete. The third step in the process is the definition of data sources.
Click “Add data source” to create a new data source. By default, the data source will be set to a Microsoft SQL Server, which can be changed to an ODBC data source by selecting it from the “Type” dropdown box.
Configuring a Microsoft SQL Server data source
After selecting Microsoft SQL Server as the type of data source, you are able to fill in all information required to connect to the server.
Server: Path or IP address to the server. If the server is hosted on another system in the network, it can be either addressed as \\servername or the IP address of the server (see item A in the screenshot below).
Information such as the database name (or name of the view) username and password will be provided by your database administrator. Note that in order to be able to work with a Microsoft SQL Server, an active network connection must be available.
Configuring a Microsoft Access data source
After selecting Microsoft Access as the type of data source, you are able to fill in all information required to connect to the database.
Simply click the “Browse” button, and navigate to the location of the project file on your local drive or network drive. Some Access databases require an username or password, which can be entered below.
Click the “Test connection” button to ensure the connection can be established, and continue with the next step.
Configuring a MySQL data source
After selecting MySQL as the type of data source, you are able to fill in all information required to connect to the database.
Similar to the Microsoft SQL Server data source type, the MySQL type requires information on the location and access to the server in order to function.
Server: Path or IP address to the server. If the server is hosted on another system in the network, it can be either addressed as \\servername or the IP address of the server.
Information such as the database name (or name of the view) username and password will be provided by your database administrator. Note that in order to be able to work with a MySQL, an active network connection must be available.
Click the “Test connection” button to ensure the connection can be established, and continue with the next step.
Configuring a data source through an ODBC driver
After selecting ODBC as the type of data source, you will be able to select one of the ODBC drivers installed on your system. Please note that Windows may have more than one driver installed per file extension. In this example, we have selected the Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb) for our data source (see item B in the screenshot below).
After selecting the driver, you are able to provide a direct path to your database file. The path to the database needs to be formatted in a certain way, for Microsoft Access (*.mdb) files, the format is:
DBQ=
example:
DBQ=C:\Projects\Databases\Db.mdb;
The connection string and information may differ per ODBC driver. A website such as connectionstrings.com may provide you with information on how to connect with your database using an ODBC connection.
Note that in order to be able to open your project using a remote directory, an active network connection must be available.
Defining the data sources
After configuring the data source, click the button “Test connection”. Once the dialogue reports “Connection OK!” you are able to proceed. If the connection cannot be established, the dialogue will report a detailed overview of the problem. Check all information and make sure a connection with the external server is available before trying again.
Once the connection is established, click “Add table” in order to continue configuring your data source. A pop-up dialogue will list all tables available for you. Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access and MySQL data sources will likely only list database tables, where other files (such as MS Access databases over ODBC connections) might also list tables otherwise invisible to the user.
After selecting a table, you are able to configure the rights to the table, and to each of the listed columns in the table. Users connecting with a Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL or Microsoft Access database will also be able to create and remove rows, whereas users connecting through an ODBC database will only be able to select the “Edit data” checkbox for existing rows.
Note that the newly created data source will have the “Primary table” checkbox checked. This setting can only be altered during the process of defining the data sources, so make sure that the primary table is correctly configured.
For a primary table, you are able to define the “Id column” this is a column containing unique, numeric data. For secondary tables, you have to define its relation to the primary table or to one of the tables linked to the primary table. This means that each table will have to contain a column containing a corresponding type and kind of data. It is advised to keep the column marked as “Id column” as read-only or even hidden if the data in the column is not crucial to users working with the data grid.
The list of columns can be used to define certain restrictions to each column such as “Read-only” or “Hidden”. By default, columns will be marked as “Read-only”. Think carefully about what data you want to manage through BadgeMaker, and what data should be managed by other external systems.
Once complete, you are able to define the image sources for passphotos and signatures in your project. You are able to choose from three different options:
• Read image from local project
Selecting this option stores captured images along with the BadgeMaker Identity project files. This option can be used to capture new image data.
• Read or download image from path or URL
This option allows you to read images from a remote directory either on a server or on a network drive. This can only be used to read image data. New data cannot be captured.
• Read image from database (blob)
This allows you to read an image from a specific column in the databased marked as BLOB (Binary Large Object) This option can be used to both read existing data and capture new image data to the database.
Images will have to be linked to a record in the database in the same way data sources are linked to each other. It is highly recommended to choose the “Id column” of the primary data source as the source. BadgeMaker Connect will use the filenames of the images to match between images and records. Only exact matches will be imported in the project.
Once all the steps have been completed, click “Finish” and your project will be created.
How to set up data sources for existing projects
In addition to creating project around an external data source, it is also possible to add external information to data that is already available in an existing BadgeMaker Identity project.
If you want to configure your existing BadgeMaker Identity project to use data sources, go to the Project Settings panel, and choose Data Sources under the BadgeMaker Connect tab. The approach to configuring the data sources is very similar to the process when creating a project from scratch, please refer to chapter 2.1 for a detailed explaination.
The main difference compared to creating a new BadgeMaker Connect project is that the local project data will always be your primary source of information. This means that any external data source will have to include a column that matches one of the columns in your local project data.
Attention: The software will only join tables when a corresponding record is found in both the local and the external data, which means that if you have a local project with 10 records, and an external project with 20 records, only the 10 records that match the local project will be displayed in the datagrid. The software will automatically complement the data in case a new record is added that has a correspondence with one of the records in the external data source.