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Many to Many, AND match in Master and related file


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Posted

I want to build a smart help system in my application.

After the user has entered a number of keywords he/she will be able to select from a popup list

a number of help files that matches ALL the keywords (so an AND search).

This is what i have done.

1] I have made a help file. Each record contains a help header (for example How can i find a specific order) and a text field containing the help description. In addition i have a calculated field that contains all the words from the text field.

2] This file contains a number of help records.

3] The user can enter maximum of 5 keywords.

4] I have 5 keyword_index calculated field that contain the first, second, third and so on word of the keywords.

5] I have five relations from each keyword_index to the calculated field form the help file.

6] I have 5 valuelists based on the above relations containg the record id of the matched records.

7] using a script i find the recordid that are in all the 5 valuelists (of course i have taken care if the user enters only a limited number of keywords).

8] Based on the found recordid's a menu list is created which the user can use to select the needed help file.

This works fine.

But my Q is this :

Can this be done in a more simple way.

1] Can i make a calculated field that does the script job ( i am using FM 5.5 !!)

2] can i use smarter relations ?

Any suggestions are welcome

Thanks

Jitse

Posted

It is diffucult to answer your question because the description of what you are doing is a bit vague.

However I will attempt to answer your question by making some suggestions on how I would approach it.

You should be able to accomplish what you need to do in a single help table/file.

If you are attempting to store information for multiple systems, simply add a field to distinguish your different categories which can then be used in a script to automatically input a specific category before your "find" step is completed.

All searches could be attempted within the search file itself if needed. Or done externally in the file you are attempting to get help from.

You could use a global field to store a multikey of the records you found

By using a relationship from the global field to the record ID you could then:

a) Display the found set in a portal

: "show related records" and go to a layout that is set in List view

c) have a value list based on the relationship for the global to record ID, to display your hits

In any of the above examples you could then have scripts to link to a different layout/table/file, or capture data from the selected record to bring it somewhere else for display.

Another suggestion I would like to add is the addition of screen shots for some situations to be stored in container fields to be used as examples as part of the help.

If you feel your help will be complex and require multiple pictures, simply add 1 more file for the help file to link to to store multiple records (pictures) per help entry. This way you could refer to them as: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, etc in your written help and the user could click on the link to the specific related record in a portal to view the picture.

Hope this helps.

Posted

Thank you for your attention and answer.

Your suggestion is a valuable solutions.

In your solutions the user can select the apropriate help document using a portal.

In our solution the user selects with a list.

After coding your example we can compare,

agin thanks.

And guess what : we already have build screenshots in our help as a guiding for users B) great.

Thanks

Jitse

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