converting contacts module

[bioplasma]

This is one of the hardest thing I been trying to acomplish, I want to transform the contacts module into a Donors module for our blood bank.

I have transform most of the fields already to match the donor information we will need. However I want each donor to show in a portal all the units or (products) associated to that donor.

Example: 1 Donor can donate blood every 56 days 1 unit (which has a serial number associated to it) 

I want each donor to show all the products or units associated to him.

Im sure this might be something really simple to some of you so any help will me much appreciated

 

Thank you in advance for all the help  

[NateJames]

Hello bioplasma,

What you are going to need to do is create a new table to contain the data that will be related to your donor. 

its under file/manage/database

on the tables table you will need to make a new table "Units" 

now you need to add fields

within this table you will need id_contact (or what ever you called your new donor contact id) as one of the fields. its also a great idea to have the fields, created and modified date and timestamps and possibly the id_staff (if you are using that module for the staff entering the data). This will allow you to relate the data to other modules within FMSP.

in the relationships tab, you will create a link from the former contact table "ID_contact" to the new table you created above "Units", linking to id_contact (this is a field within the new table). Notice the naming convention that RCC uses in the relationship table (its called anchor bouy). This creates the relationship of one donor to the new table. (you will have to drag the new units table over to the contacts module. expand both the anchor table and the new "unit" bouy table" and than connect the 2 id's together). Give this new relationship a name (see the notes above in the relationship module to see how its named).

go to your donor layout and enter layout mode. pick a portal tool and when you draw it onto the layout you will have to point the data source to the new relationship you created above. 

This is explained way better in the video training from RCC in video #1104 What is a portal... and a one to many Relationship.

at this point you have a little more work to do to get the data to work together............

or (and this is only my opinion 

if you would have used the accounts module and modified that to be your "donor module" instead,  the products module is already related to the accounts.

Repurposing the products module will allow you to see all the products--"donations" that a particular account--"donor" has in the system already. The products module will assign a unique serial number to each donation. And the created timestamp in the "products-donations" module could be used to reference when the last donation was made. (just a thought but you could repurpose contacts to be a family/next of kin contact information).

Welcome to the wonderful world of filemaker, you did yourself a big favour on purchasing FMadvanced to start with. I am a newbie myself going on 1 year of using FM (so if I didn't explain it very well above I apologize), and its been a great experience (so much I went to Devcon this year). Biggest thing I did to help myself was purchase the video training series from RCC after watching a few free ones. The best thing is that Richard takes apart this very file and shows you how to modify it, explaining the process as he goes along, its well worth the dollars. 

And disclaimer alert, I do not work for Richard Carlton, I have my own business that is using FMstarting point and I am thrilled on how it works, including the offline mobile synching that we do with it. (think taking your app and having iPad users fill out the forms, and than pushing all the data into one server for all users to have available with them when you have an internet connection again...its very cool)

 

hopefully I didn't confuse you more

Nate

Edited October 4, 2016 by NateJames
added clarification

[bioplasma]

Thank you for your reply Nate, your suggestion work for me but after I did I realize that I would need to expand the donor module a lot more. As you suggested using the contacts module would been a better option but we use that one a lot due to all the accounts we have.

I have purchased the FM starting point 15 courses as well and I saw a suggestion there for transforming the Estimates module into a PO module, which gave me an idea.

I could do the same for the contacts module, just copy all the information from accounts and reading all the relationships to the proper fields.

i think that would work better for what I want to do and would give the option of utilizing all the tabs from the accounts modules since they are related to the products fields and estimates which I converted into Packing List in our case.

 

Any though and feedbacks will be much appreciated as always 

Thank you 

[NateJames]

I am glad I was able to help.

 

So thinking about your solution, you might not need to always create a new duplicate tables and layouts for your solution. I used to do the same thing all the time as well, but realized very quickly that Filemaker gives us all sorts of creative ways to filter the data we see. (Disclamer...Thats not to say for other reason that you want to have the data separated, in which case its a great idea to do that). 

 

But you could create a "flag" field that is set if the contact is a donor =1. Than you could do a script step that would filter all contacts if flag_donor = 1. This would return only the donor contacts. You can than have fields that are specific to being a donor hidden if that flag does not = 1. Conditional formatting on the banner for colour could also be changed on that flag =1 value to give these a visual cue that they are working with donors vs non donors.

Nice thing is what ever choice you decide it comes down to the work you wish to invest into it and the time you need to have it up an running. If you ever go do the path of offline synching i mention, than you may be very happy to have made the decision to create a new table and new layouts, (and from memory, the video does a great job of walking you through doing that) Just remember that all the internal links will also have to be fixed on the tabs to reference the new tables you are making as well, so it becomes a bit more work to keep everything functioning as a nice neat package....

 

Cheers and happy filemaking

Nate

[bioplasma]

Thank you for all your help I been able to modify the contacts module pretty good to work for donors.

Have set up most of the layout and scripts to work as intended as well, I added a products tab that will allow me to create a donation (Product Unit of Blood) for that donor.

now all I need to do is figure the script that adds the product to actually show the product in that tab after its been created is the

Is basically where I'm stuck at right now, we have a hurricane in Florida now so I guess ill have some free time to figure it out 

 

Thank you very much for all the help 

[NateJames]

You are welcome, best of luck