Selecting a record from a dynamic portal

[wmugrad28]

I'm working with FileMaker Pro 7.0v3.

I have a table 'Customer' that has the name, city, and state of many businesses (which are customers). I have another table 'Equipment' that contains information about a piece of equipment (specs, etc.). The 'Equipment' table also includes a field for "Customer Name". When I'm looking at the 'Equipment layout' I would like to find a way to type in part of a customer's name (in the "Customer Name" field) and bring up an automatic sorting view/portal of the closest options (including the ability to view the associated city and states for those customers from the "Customer" table/layout). Then I would like to be able to select a specific record from within the view/portal that would automatically input that "Customer Name" into the "Customer Name" field on the 'Equipment' layout (and not the city and state).

The purpose of this is to be able to select a customer's name so that it doesn't have to be typed. All of the customers will be previously entered into the 'Customer' table. I'm just trying to prevent typing errors!!!

Finally, an add on solutuion would be nice to be able to autoenter the city and state into two additional fields on the 'Equipment' layout if needed.

Thanks,

Greg

PS: I know I'm asking a lot, but remember I'm a beginner!

[Dan-A]

If I understand what you want to do, the simplest way is to have the

customer name that is part of equipment use a value list.

create a value list that uses customer name & a calculated field

(the calc field could be something like city & ", " & state) then you could

have customer name in your equipment layout use a "pop-up" list with the value list you created. Your users would just click on the field then a list of choice would appear, as they type the 1st letter the list will take you to the closest match.

Hope this helps, see attached sample file

--Dan

TestFile.zip

[wmugrad28]

Hey,

I like that idea, but it might be difficult if I had 50 customers that started with the letter "J". When I began typing a name it sent me right to my options without allowing me to continue typing to eliminate my options.

I've subscribed to FilemakerMagazine.com and they have a video related to what I'm talking about. They said the function is commonly called "type ahead". The portal they used allowed you to enter a letter or two... or three (etc.) of a person's first or last name and then the matching names were automatically whittled down in the portal below. The first problem was that they used a first and last name and I only care about the first part of the company name (it's typed all in one field which should make things simpler). Second, they had a seperate field in which to enter the data. Once the data was entered and then the record that a person was looking for was found, they would double click on the record in the portal and it would put that infomation into a new field. I'm trying to put the selected record into the same field that I typed into.

What I'm REALLY trying to do is much like the auto entry feature of Internet Explorer in the address bar at the top. You start typing a web address and it will either allow you to continue typing OR select the appropriate address you have already visited to save you time! In my case though, I don't want people to type the whole thing out and misspell something!

Thank you for any additional effort!

Greg