I have a table Course with details of different courses. And 2 related tables, Facilitators and Enrollment.

In a layout based on table Course, I have fields from the table Course(course name, course ID etc), a portal showing the Facilitator details(Facilitator ID, Facilitator status) of that course, from Facilitator table and a portal showing Enrollment details(Enroller ID, Enroller's Status from Enrollment table) of that Course.

If I want to create a new record for a particular Course, can I use this layout to enter, along with the details of the Course, Facilitator Details and Enrollment Details using the portals? I could not do this.

But there should be a simpler way of entering data related to a Course- using ONE layout, rather than entering Facilitator details through a separate layout , Course Details separately AND Enrollment details separately. Basically I want a layout as a form with fields from the Course table and portals from related tables and be able to use this same form to enter data into the Course table and the related tables. Is that possible? Do I need to change the way I have created tables and stored data?

Could anybody help me out here?

Yes this is possible, and it sounds like a plan. I have done this with my database, I have courses, and students, and enrollment, and questions and responses. In my enrollment table, with one record per student in the course, I have a portal to the responses database. First I create the number of records based on my questions in the questions table with a script. Then in the enrollment table I edit the newly added records in the responses table with a portal. That way, I can answer all the questions with only having to submit one time because of the record, when using Instant web publishing. If I would have done it in the response table then I would have to edit each record one at time, creating the need for submit buttons on each question to commit the records. Huge time saver, use portals to connect to other tables when entering data as well as editing.

When you set up the relationship, you must be sure to check the field 'allow creation of related records' (or something close to that effect) for the related file. It won't work without that.

--Tripod

Yeah, thanks tripod. Forgot to point that out.

Thanks Tripod and Justin. I checked "allow creation of records using relationship" for one portal and it worked.