Sammy

Okay, I set that up, but I'm having trouble making it work. What I get is the portal displays only one entry via the relationship, it is not a record that should be displayed (ie the record's date matches, but the facility is incorrect), and it repeats this record 50-60 times inside the portal. If I take out the facility and leave just the date, it still displays that same record, but shows only 10 or so repeats. Any thoughts?

I call a set of records in a portal by defining the rel Date::Date , having a global that allows me to enter any date I want. Here's my problem: Once I have all of the records defined, I would like to filter more specifically, and to perform some calculations off of the displayed records. For instance, I would like to display in my portal records that are from one day (Date::Date), but filter those to show only the records that are in a specific facility (Location::Location). Is there any way I can use multiple relationships to do that?

I have a time database that people enter times every day into. It's tedious (I need a barcode solution, it's coming), so it would be nice if instead of formatting time, one could just enter 0600 and FMP would know that you're referring to 6:00am, or 1300 --> 1:00pm, etc. etc. Is there any way to do this by calculation, or am I stuck trying to find a plugin?

I have a bit of a dilemma: I have a parent database for work orders. One of my fields is a calculation Sum(timesheets_rel::hoursworked) ... This gives me an instant running total when I view a particular record (I really like that part) .. the relationship is based off of the unique serial number of the work orders. I look at individual records every day, and it's useful that it's a unstored, non-lookup field. HOWEVER, I need to run a report on a monthly or bi-monthly basis (or so), and I need to make calculations based off of that Summed value. Any suggestions?

I have a database for scheduling work. Most work is scheduled in meetings, and descriptions, due dates, etc are generated manually. However, a certain amount of work is preventative maintenance; so it reoccurs on a weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc. basis. So, I have a database for work orders, and a source database for Preventative maintenance tasks. All of the records in the PreventMaint database are "generic", that is they are a description I want to write a script that loops through all of the Preventmaint database's records, calculates which tasks are due, and creates any necessary records in the work database. No problems on the calculations to separate what I need, but I'm at a loss as to how to script creating records based on a separate database. I have no idea how to go about doing this. Any suggestions?

Okay, the portal works fine, but I get duplicate names. Is there any way to filter out duplicates and only display one each of the unique names?

Works like a charm. Turns out I guess I was thinking about it too complicatedly (word?). Anyway, another question for you: How do I dump the different personnel that have worked on a specific work order into one field delinated by comma's or maybe a repeating field? I can get *one* with a relationship, but I'd like to get all, say, 3 people that have worked on a work order. Bear in mind that they will have duplicates ... ie same personnel, same work order number, different entry.

I need to have a set of universal, Supervisor-defined values for my database. I want a person with appropriate access to be able to go to a special layout and edit these values. How do I store them? Globals don't seem to be the answer ... but maybe I just don't understand their particulars: How do I store a universal user-defined value? I want one user to edit the value, and that value to be stored ... anyone else accessing the database would now see the new value in any record. My understanding of Globals are that they are a session-and-user specific field in a multi-user context, ie. that they disappear when that user closes the session.

Okay, easy answer first. I messed with it a little bit, and it worked like a charm! Thanks much for your help! .. it's always the seemingly obvious that I miss. :-) I spent all day thinking about this problem yesterday; I realized I'm going about it all the wrong way. I'm making it frightfully complex, but I'm still not sure how to simplify things. Forget about my initial Time sheet database. Let's try a different tack: How do I write a relationship in my Work Order file that is Sum(Hours) for only matching serial numbers in the timesheet file?

I have developed a fairly straightforward work order database for our company's maintenance department. Work Orders have a Time Spent field and a Time Estimated to Complete field ... these feed into a Percent complete calculation field. Useful for our management structure, etc. I've created a second Time Sheet database to log time spent on work order codes. Time is recorded on paper; at the end of the day it is input into the database. 1 Record = 1 Day's times. How do I add up the total time for the day, and add it to the existing time already recorded in the Work Order database? ie. something like Sum(Exisiting+New) . Here's my problem. Different day's time logs will/may have the same work order code with the total times. Also, instead of the work order number, some of the time entries will be arbitrary (ie. Mike-Pumps or Fixed Chiller). on a regular basis, we will go back and write a work order for anything like that and then assign it a code, but there is a possibility for non-numeric data in the time entries. One more question: is there a way to force input in .250 increments? To reject anything that's not an integer or .250, .500, .750 ? I'm guessing it's tough, but anything thoughts? I'm trying to keep the system from being obtuse. I'm not sure I'm succeeding. ;-) Any help would be appreciated! I've attached the time sheets file so you can see what I mean. Go to the Layout Data Entry (Click on the Create New Record script) ot_timesheets.txt

one way to also do it ( a little ugly) is to make white border, invisible and unchecked "Allow entry into field" fields in your layout. Your script can edit them, paste into them, etc, but they will remain invisible to the user.

I'm a little lost. Ok, you want to individually specify what you want "Report Title" to be, but you don't want it attached to a record? Why not just make a global field and just type it in? Why script it?

Is there a way that I can perform calculations on JUST the records in a found set? Here's what I want to do: input a begindate and an enddate into their respective global fields. Input a few user-defineable constants. Run a script to filter out everything before and after those dates, leaving behind only the range of dates between them. I'm fine with the loop to filter out to just the records i want, but then I don't know how to perform calcs off of just those records. This will allow me to create custom reports on a per week basis, or a per month, or whatever range of days I specify. I suspect I might be going about this in the wrong manner. Should I not be omitting the records I don't want?