Portal on dynamic layout

[Pearl]

I want to cut down on the amount of layouts I have for various faxes, memos etc. I'm thinking of creating some type of dynamic layout that I can use for all of them (presently we have around 50 layouts). User's would enter information into fields, click a button that would then run a script that would put all of these fields into a calculated field that displays the document. I would like to include portals in this calculation field. Is this possible?

Thanks.

[DykstrL]

It's possible, but I don't think you, or your users would be happy with the results. Portals were not designed to be printed. You will get text lines cut in half across page breaks, and they don't slide/shrink so well either.

A better approach would be to create your print layout in the table that contains the portal data, then use merge fields to print - they were designed for that. It would take some additional scripting, but the results will be much more predictable and your prints will look better.

[mattlight]

what you could do is have a standard format layout which also has fields for the field titles and layout name.

You have to work out what type of layout would suit all possibilities.

Create a table that has a list of field names and a heading for the type of report to generate. Create a relationship between the report form and the table with the field names by the heading title. The fields on the layout used as titles will then lookup the table to find out what the field titles should be:

PrepLayout Table

Heading: Time Sheets

Field1: Time On Site

Field2: Arrival Date

Field3: Definition of Work carried out

Field4: hourly Rate

Field5: Total Cost

etc

etc

Heading: Product Line Item

Field 1: Quantity

Field 2: Order Date

Field 3: Product Description

Field 4: Unit Price

Field 5: Total Price

etc

etc

Notice that in the two examples above, each field has very simular field charactaristics. The same fields are used for numbers and the same fields are used as calcuation fields using the same calcuation.

Hope this helps - tried this before where I had an ordering system that asked questions depending on the product type. The same fields had the same type of information but the value lists were all based upon a product type table which ensured the right value lists were used and the right field descriptions/questions were used.

[Pearl]

Thanks for the advise guys. I'll check and see if I can get things working based on what you've described.