Another exciting conditional value list question

[bradford]

This solution is for a school. There's a STAFF file and a STUDENTS file. I am working in FM7 on a solution I originally created in FM5. I want to create a value list where certain staff show up on a student's record. Ten of the 100 staffers are instructors. I only want to see those ten on the pull down.

I created a field on the STAFF side that's a radio button. It enters "Writing Instructor." On the STUDENTS side I created a global field with the same value hoping to create a relationship then basing the value list format on that relationship. Zero luck!

Stumped with this one as I used to know and can't for the life of me figure it out now.

[Fenton]

Well, it sounds like it should work. I'm assuming that you're trying to "dynamically" filter the list; ie., sometimes you choose "Writing Instructor" sometimes something else? I'm going to to call the field "Type" (as you don't say).

The "_gType" global from the Students table should be related to the Type field in the Staff table (which should be an indexed field, not a global, but I guess you know that). So that would be from the main Students table occurrence (TO) to a new "Staff_gType_students"* (or whatever name) table occurrence; the latter a Staff TO.

The Value List field is "Staff_gType::Type". The "Starting from" (at the bottom) is the Students TO. This may be where the error is; it's new terminology. It is NOT the table occurrence of the filtering relationship (that goes at the top).

In 7 you do not have to "start from" the table occurrence where you actually are. You can start further up or down the line; as long as the relational logic is still valid (if you can tell -). That's why you have that choice.

[P.S. That's my naming convention, not particularly standard. It tells me where it's going to, what the key field is, and where it's coming from (adjacent only, not capitalized). It could also be prefaced with a short TOG (table occurrence group) abbreviation in complex files.]

[sbg2]

There are two ways to filter the values in the list, one is through a relationship the other is by creating a calc field in the origin file. Example file attached which shows both.

staff.zip