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Sloper, J., 2000. A New Database for ACAT. Reformulation, ACAT News Autumn, p.x.
The past few months have seen the design and building of a new membership and administration database for ACAT.
The combination of an ever-increasing membership and increasingly complex administration demands meant that the current database was struggling to keep up. A design that worked well with a few tens of members now groans under the demands of processing data for several hundreds.
A thorough process of consultation took place to establish the key purposes and applications of the database. It found the areas where improvement was most urgently needed, and also identified functions that will be of great use to ACAT in the future.
One major need was to be able to direct mailings more effectively and precisely to the relevant people in ACAT, eg. supervisors or trainees. Another was to be able to generate a current Private Practice list whenever it was required. New functions that have been added include logging information about people who have expressed an interest in training in CAT who can now be targetted directly with information about up and coming training courses in their area. Training courses are also logged - past, current and future - with trainees and "graduates" connected to the courses they attend(ed). Group lists and lists of alumni from different trainings can easily be produced.
This new database is now filled with the information from the current database. However we know that all of the information needs checking and much of it needs updating. New information is also contained in the new database to enable ACAT to monitor equal opportunities and demographic patterns amongst the membership.
To enable ACAT to complete the installation of this database we have included a new membership information form with this edition of ACATnews. Please take a couple of minutes to fill in your information on the form and send it in the envelope provided to the office. If you fold the form up you should find that the address shows through the envelope window. What could be easier!
We want to complete the installation of the new database onto the Administrator’s computer by the end of October so please send in your form as soon as you can. You’ll start to see the results almost immediately.
On a personal note we’d like to be able to write to you in a more friendly way, and so one of the entries on the form asks how you’d like to be addressed in mailings from ACAT, so in future any letters will be written to you with a more personal feel, as well as being more pertinent and relevant to you in their content.