Phone Numbers Consistent Formatting

[Stretch]

We are wanting to remove the dashes from customer phone numbers. We import our orders into Stone Edge Order Manager and then send the info to UPS via Worldship. The tracking feature we have will allow the customer to search for UPS tracking info via order #, invoice# or phone #. The phone number has to be exact or it won't match which is why we're trying to remove the dashes. Any ideas on how to go about doing this? I guess we don't need to necessarily remove the dashes but we need to keep the phone number formatting consistent. I called Miva Support and they said nothing could be done. I'm hoping someone here might have some ideas.

TIA-Stretch

RustysOffroad.com

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Phone Numbers Consistent Formatting

Its not clear where you attempting to do the "stripping" The general approach is to use a programmatical function to test each character. If digit=keep Ifnot=delete. But the mechanics depend on WHERE you are doing this.

[Stretch]

Re: Phone Numbers Consistent Formatting

I don't really care where it happens. We are dealing with phone orders as well as customer orders. We're going to tell the phone people to start entering phone numbers without dashes or spaces. I've made a note on our Miva Customer Info page but there's no way to get it to show near where the customer enters their info so I'm guessing people will still enter dashes and spaces. That info then gets download to Stone Edge where it still has the dashes and then it gets sent to UPS with the dashes still in it. I don't work on site so I can't say simply 'take out the dashes after import prior to sending to ups'. I need to get it removed some other way. Don't care where it happens, it just needs to happen so we can tell our customers to enter their number a specific way on the ups tracking page.

Thanks-Stretch

[Biffy]

Re: Phone Numbers Consistent Formatting

Normally this is done as a data validation/formatting script in the database. You don't tell customers how to enter phone numbers and any store that requires you to read a manual to buy something from it is a failure.

You want to reformat the phone numbers inside of StoneEdge and don't bother the customers about it. MS Access does these validation and formatting scripts just fine and dandy. This would allow people to input phone numbers any way they wish and your output will auto-format any way you wish.

[Stretch]

Re: Phone Numbers Consistent Formatting

Hey Steve-

I appreciate the response and that makes perfect sense. I'll have to contact Stone Edge and see if they can implement something like that. If that doesn't work do you do that sort of work or is there someone that you can recommend to create or setup the validation/formatting script?

Thanks-Stretch

[Biffy]

Re: Phone Numbers Consistent Formatting

I'm sure Barney can do it for low cost. It's a pretty simple script (IF it's not a number, THEN delete it). You can even have the script add country codes from a lookup table exactly like we do zip code validation (does the zip match the city).

I don't use Access and don't know it. I use FileMaker Pro instead.