jmobley

WOW!! Thanks. I just looked at the employee tree view and I think this is exactly what I need! Haven't had time to try it on my project/tasks database yet but I wanted to shout out a BIG THANK YOU for everyone's help. I just started using this forum this past weekend and I've already learned so much. This is a very giving community. I really appreciate this!! Once I get my projects db more sorted out, I'll post it. Perhaps it will help solve some other poor newbie's problem as you have helped me solve mine. Janet

I hope this isn't a dumb question.... The file you attached is "php" -- isn't that a web app extension? Is there a zipped filemaker file that goes with this upload? Thanks for your help, Janet

Thanks for posting this file. I think I can adapt this to suit my needs for a nested project/task tree. The idea being that any project/task could see up a tree to see its parents and down the tree to see its children. Here's the challenge I have, though. Using a structure like this, how do you get a report that you can print that shows the tree? For instance, using your file I've tried to create a report that shows Supervisor Supervisor Employees But I keep getting tangled up in subsummaries and sorting order and it doesn't quite come out right. I'd like to try to adapt your structure so that I could have series of "trees" that look kind of like this: Project 1 Summary Task a Sub Task Summary Task b Project 2 Summary Task -m Sub Task Summary Task- n I already have a table strucure that writes the parent id onto each child and captures a "project root" for each task in a series (where the project root id is equal to the id of the top-most task in the series). Everything works in browse mode, but for the life of me I can't seem to get any useful reports out of it. Any ideas for reporting & subsummary settings for mult-level parent-child-child relationships where the tables are self joined? Any help would be most appreciated.

Fenton, Thanks so much for your speedy reply. I got the "parties & guests" example to work. Then I moved on to trying to do what I really wanted to do in the first place. I have a table called "Projects" and I have several instances of the same table that allow me to create infinite sub-projects. Each "sub" inherits the ID of it's parent in a field called "parent ID". Then each instance in a series all share the same "root" id -- which is the id of the very first project in the series. I'm actually not experienced enough to have created this myself. I'm using a file called "infinite hierarchies" from Matt Petrosky (sp?) from his filemakermagazine.com site. Everything works great in browse mode and I've been happily creating all sorts of subtasks within my projects. The catch is that you can only look at one project's (or sub-project's) set of associated info at a time. Now I need a report that shows this hierarchy which is all based on records from the same table. I created a new set of table occurances trying to mimic the infinite hierarchies down 4 or 5 levels and then I based a few reports on those tables with somewhat satisfactory results. I'm getting project names and their sub tasks, but the reports don't behave exactly right. If you're really curious (and incredibly generous w/ your time) you can take a look at the mess I've made in the attachments. The main file is FatCat.v4 Report Testing.fp7. It's linked to Infinite Hierarchies.fp7. The report in question is "multi-level sort test report" Be kind, all this is a work in progress by an incredibly inexperienced newbie. FatCat.v4Reporttesting.fp7.zip

Please excuse if this is too simplistic of a question... I've been building a project/task tracking db and I've just now tried to create some reports. Ulitmately, I want to see all my projects and their associated tasks in a printable report. I've followed the instructions in the FM help and in the "Sams Teach Yourself FM 7" book, but I'm having a heck of a time getting subsummaries to do what I think they should do. Even using the sample files from the "Teach Yourself..." book -- I keep having the same problem. Take Parties and Guest for example. One party can have multiple guests. There's a parties table with a field called "Event" and a Guests table w/ a field called "LastName". When I try to create a simple report w/ a subsummary part that sorts info based on Parties, and LastName is in the body, I get a report that only lists the first guest, but no others. The layout is based on records from the party table. The first break field is based on Events from the party table, then the body only has one field "LastName" (from guests table). Can anyone explain why this report only lists the first guest, but omits all the rest? Interestingly enough, I've even been able to show the reverse of this behavior. I switched the report so that it's based on a Guests table. The I sort on Events from Parties table in the subsummary. In this scenario, I get the first party with all the guests, but no other parties. So it seems that when running reports I can either show one party with all its guests, or all the parties, with one guest at each. (Again, the party/guest thing is just an example of behavior I seem to be repeating in other db files.) I'll happily answer questions if any of this is hard to follow. Please help. I've got to be able to provide project/task reports to a new client and I've been stumped on this for DAYS. Now I'm frustrated and demoralized.... **sigh** thx, Janet