Popover Portal Picker in Find Mode

[bcooney]

Sanity check here...I want to use a popover with a portal to help a user select from a long list of choices in Find Mode. Apparently, I cannot do that. I've tried to populate a global in the parent table and use a relationship with the global on the left to display related children in the portal. Nothing shows. I then switched to a virtual list of choices where the $$vlist is populated by SQL. $$vlist has data..portal shows nothing.

Is Find Mode unable to use such a technique?

I did follow Kevin Frank's tutorial on conditional value lists in Find Mode. That works wonderfully, except my first popup is too long -- really need that picker! 

[bcooney]

anyone?

[Lee Smith]

Hi Barbara,

On 4/21/2017 at 5:45 AM, bcooney said:

That works wonderfully, except my first popup is too long

 

Why not use checkboxes?

[comment]

On 4/21/2017 at 3:45 PM, bcooney said:

Is Find Mode unable to use such a technique?

There are many red herrings in your question: the popover, the portal, the relationship with a global field, the virtual list ... Eventually, it all comes down to this: are you trying to display data in (non-global) fields while in Find mode? That's, of course, not possible.

 

[bcooney]

And that's the answer, comment. Yes, I am trying to do so. Value lists work attached to popup menus...so, I thought perhaps I could get a popover with a portal picker to work.

 

@Lee - over 100 values to choose from on first popup. So, checkboxes aren't the answer either.

[Fitch]

You might have to pop up your picker in a new window. This will be a nice option in the upcoming version with the Card feature announced in the product roadmap. While no release date has been announced, the last two versions shipped in May.

https://community.filemaker.com/community/product-roadmap

[bcooney]

Yes, cards look very cool. Hmm...a new window isn't the best since I'm on FMGo.

[Fitch]

Maybe some combo of virtual list / button bar?

[bcooney]

Not in Find mode, apparently. Just want to show a popover with portal picker of Events in Find mode. no joy. However, a popup menu with a value list works. I thought, perhaps, that I'm overlooking something obvious. 

[comment]

8 minutes ago, bcooney said:

Just want to show a popover with portal picker of Events in Find mode. no joy.

So why don't you do this while you're in Browse mode? Set a variable to the selected EventID (or what have you) and then enter Find mode. You have all this scripted, do you not?

[bcooney]

Here's the use case:

User would like to find all loans at a specific Event, and perhaps a location related to that selected Event (Events have locations).

Currently, they enter Find Mode, hide calcs are used to provide Find enterable fields. The Event field has a popup menu with a value list of all events (very long) and the Event Location field has a popup menu with a value list that is now conditional given a selected Event.

So, I'm stuck with that really long Event popup menu.

Not sure how'd I'd split what we can do in browse with what we can do in Find. Perhaps forget the "Find Mode" and use QuickFind.

[comment]

11 minutes ago, bcooney said:

User would like to find all loans at a specific Event, and perhaps a location related to that selected Event (Events have locations).

That's difficult to understand without (at least) an ERD of the three. 

Anyway, if you want to pop-up a portal, you must be in Browse mode at that point. So either let them select the event first, and switch to Find mode after they have done so, or enter Find mode first and switch to Browse mode only to select the event (while remembering the other criteria they might have entered), or do the whole thing in Browse mode, using global fields to capture the criteria. I believe that covers all the options - at least all the options that include a pop-up portal, in the same window.

 

 

Edited April 29, 2017 by comment

[bcooney]

I'll give this some thought. Thank you for helping me think this through.