linking elements (words or phrases) in one application to database with menu properties on click

Question

I have been trying in google, on MSDN, on Experts-Exchange and other places to ask a question and get and answer and I have found a black whole in that my search words I use, statistically bring up completely non-relevant stuff.

 

Here is what the problem is I want to solve:

 

Dealing with a Business Intelligence data warehouse with marts and cubes that is being built for customers not yet ‘defined’ we are building to standards in healthcare. The challenge is the volume of requirement specification documents, iterations of review and document versions we are loosing track of data and terms being defined from the requirements:measuresimensions on to data dictionary…

 

Over the months a term that has been defined, gets changed, but not in all documents and (or) then gets used in a slightly different phrase so that now we are having a heck of time synchronizing our data elements and terms across our documentation (in Word, Excel, Visio)

 

What I would like to do is be able to in any of our Microsoft documents, as we specify requirements, and either create a new or use an existing TERM I would like to right click on the word, and have it check if that word is in the data base, if it is not, then create a new data entry for the database. It would be able to give the option to put term in measure table, dimension table, data dictionary table, or glossary term table.

 

This way, as the DEFINITIONS of a term or word are modified, where that term is used in requirement docs, the change will push back out to all the docs. Example ER Visit (Emergency Room Visit) got changed to ED Visit (Emergency Department Visit)

 

We are using SharePoint and unfortunately a tool is only as good as it’s set up and then the content is only as good as the user group inputting/updating content… the problem I am facing as a systems analyst on this project is both a document management problem and a requirements management problem. I have not seen or heard of a tool that solves the problem.

 

Ergo, would like to build it.

 

But my code work has been too far in the past (vba/vb 6.0) era stuff, while I know what can be done, I am not phrasing my query correctly to find a forum to ask the question in a way I can get answers.

 

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Hi Justin,

 

Your request is a little difficult to understand but I think i've got the essence of it.

 

You may have seen Office Smart Tags before without knowing what they are. Essentially when you are in Word (with Smart Tags enabled) when you type an address or other keyword, SmartTags can recognize the word and then provide a menu for the user to take some action on the word.

 

In your case, this may be a term. When the user types the term, you can invoke custom code via the Smart Tag framework and have that code connect to your term repository/management system and check for similar terms. This list of related terms could then be brought back to the user within the smart tag interface and they could select a more appropriate term or an updated one.

 

Check out this Smart Tag portal for resources and let us know if this helps.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905532.aspx

 

Jason