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Help: Purchase Order question - filtering info


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  • Newbies
Posted

I'm putting together a master database for a fencing contractor, and everything is working fine, except one teeny piece. When the office admin starts a new job, she clicks a "New Project" button. A serial number is assigned to the project, which then drives the ability to Generate Quote, Generate Purchase Order, and Generate Invoice, amongst other utilities.

A job may have pieces from several different vendors. My idea was to feed the PO form from the Quote, and then the office admin would simply click a "Vendor" drop-down. Each vendor who had material in the quote would display, and each vendor's materials would display once that vendor was selected. Unfortunately, it's not working that way. No matter what vendor is picked, the items in the list don't change.

I have a separate file that marries the vendor with the material. How can I get the relationship to carry over, so that the list of materials is filtered based on the vendor selection?

Thanks!

Scott

Posted

A little too complex to deal with from just your description. I'm sure it's perfectly clear when you're looking at the files, but it's pretty fuzzy from here.

-bd

  • Newbies
Posted

OK, I'll try again:

One FMP database that is a listing of all parts. There is a field, Vendor, which identifies where the part comes from.

There's another database that lets the user create a work order. Each work order is given a unique ID. The work order has a section that lets the user select the parts for the job, which feeds off the parts database. The work order may contain parts from different vendors.

Another database is for purchase orders. It feeds off the work order database. What I hoped to do was make the "Vendor" field a drop-down list that would end up filtering the parts list to display only those parts belonging to the selected vendor. Unfortunately, no matter who I pick in the Vendor list, the parts list on the form remains the same. How can I get the drop-down selection to filter the displayed parts for the job?

Posted

I have a separate file that marries the vendor with the material.

How is this marriage structured?

You should have a parts file with one part per record, each identified by vendor. (Sounds like you already have this.)

Then, in your PO file, a relationship from SelectedVendor to VendorName in the parts file. (To be thorough, this relationship should really be between ID numbers and not names, but just for clarity's sake i'll do it this way.)

If you base your parts value list of this relationship -- that is, make the value list use values from a field, then specify that field to be Parts::PartName (where Parts is the name of the relationship described above) -- you should get the results you're looking for.

HTH,

Jerry

Posted

You can define a value list to be based upon a relationship. In this case it would be a relationship between the vendor field (hopefully the vendor number) and the vendor number field in the Parts file. This will filter the part file value list to show only the parts from that vendor.

I hope you structure includes: Parts, Work Orders, Work Order Items, Purchase Orders, and Purchase Order Items. If you have omitted the "Items" files and used something like repeating fields for multiple parts entries, some serious limitations will result.

-bd

  • Newbies
Posted

Jerry and BD:

Thanks for the direction, I understand where both of you are coming from.

Question regarding repeating fields: <blush> Um, yes, I'm doing this. Would I rather do it like "Part1", "Part2", "Part3"...until my 20th line is reached? And then specify sliding fields in the PO form to accommodate any blank lines?

-Scott

Posted

No. Filemaker has been relational since 1995. Time to switch to a proper design using a portal and related records in an item table. Look at any of the example files for invoice type applications or the Time Billing template that comes with Filemaker and uses related files.

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