Layout, structure questions

[torifile]

I hope I'm not wearing out my welcome by posting so many questions, but here's yet another one...

I'm designing a participant tracking database for a study I'm running. Some of the information to be tracked is:

Name and contact info (phone numbers, etc)

Date they contacted us

Date we called them back

What meds they're being prescribed

Appointment times

I've designed my tables and done the related rows thing, etc. I'm not having too hard of a time doing that because my needs are pretty simple.

What I'd like to be able to do is have a "start page" of sorts so that when the database is first opened, the user gets a list of options. Right now I'm using some buttons in a layout to trigger certain scripts or go to other layouts.

I'm having a hard time with a couple things:

1) The "start page" layout is duplicated for each record. I don't need this. I'm not sure it's a problem and I may actually keep it because it makes entering and editing data for a particular person easy. But that's not the purpose of this particular page. Like I said, I want the user to be presented with a set of options (e.g., "New participant entry", "phone screen info", "new appointment"). These options should be "person-agnostic".

2) If they go to say the "med records" screen to add a medication, I want them to first be able to enter a participant number. Actually, I want to require them to enter a participant number. That is, they click on the "new medication" button, they get a field for participant number entry and then they enter the info as appropriate. I *don't* want them to be able to *change* previous entries here. What I'm using is a portal to my "meds" table that's linked to my participant table. Is this the best way to do this?

Any help or pointers on how best to structure this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[stanley]

Torifile:

You needn't be worried about the "start page" layout being "duplicated" for each record; it isn't. It only exists once. However, you could make your "start page" a separate table, if you wish.

It actually sounds to me like you want someone only to have access to their individual records, in which case your "start page" should have a spot for their participant number, which you can store as a global, and then use when they go to (for example) add meds, to show what they've got.

To prevent them from modifying records, just make sure the fields in your portal are locked.

-Stanley