Defining a screen/layout from user selection

[Kunal Bhende]

Hi all, this is my first post to the forum. I've just started using Filemaker Pro for developemnt and have come across my first problem. Luckily I managed to solve the others but am just stuck on this issue.

I have defined a database for a billing program which has 18 kinds of charges on it. e.g. Creative fees, Recce, Air Travel, Food, Production etc.

Problem 1: Depending on wether the bill should include the charge or not, the user needs to have a list of these items on the first screen and he checkmarks only the ones he wants. Then a bill entry screen gets generated with only those fields available which the user selected in the first screen. Is this possible?

Problem 2: A charge like Creative fee, if selected, should then ask for a 'rate field' and 'no. of days' which put a total multiplied into a 'total creative charges field'. This happens only for a couple of options, the rest are a direct amount value.

Problem 3: If the above is possible, what if the person wants to go back to the field selection screen and add 2 more fields for entry? Can the entry screen update to show those too?

I hope I'm not asking for the impossible here and there's a easy way to go around it.

Also, any books I can purchase on Filemaker which has these kinds of filemaker solutions explained?

Thanks a ton in advance,

Kunal Bhende.

[Ender]

This might be a good place to use a portal. It would look something like an invoice, where you have line items (Fees) for each bill. Not exactly what you asked for, but I think it would work well.

To do this, add a Fee table that relates to your existing Bill table by Bill::Bill ID = Fee::Bill ID. The Fee table would have these fields: Bill ID, Fee Type, Rate, Qty, RateExtended. You could also add Date, Description, etc. You would then put this on a layout based on the Bill table. Add a portal of Fee records, with the Fee fields you want your users to enter. You can add new fees right in the portal if the relationship definition has "Allow creation of records in this table via this relationship" checked.

Totaling the fees is then just a simple calc: Sum(Fee::RateExtended).

If it's important that the process of selecting the desired fees be separate from the process of entering the fees, you could use separate layouts showing just the fields you want on each, or you could limit access to fields with Access Privileges based on the current process that the user is in.

Hope that helps.