Here's my problem. I volunteer for an organization that wants to track attendance of youth. Each youth has an ID number. I've set up a layout that tracks the week, the days, and the ID. How do I tie the ID to the date so the same set of ID numbers can be used for next week's data and so on?

Is this a role for a portal? Lookups? I'm afraid I'm a rookie and stumped.

Koaxfrax

The usual approach is to create two files. Call the first Yuths and the second Attendance. Create an auto entered ID for each Yuth (er Youth) in the first file. In the Attendance file, create a number field "ID". Create a relationship between Yuth "ID" and Attendance "ID" with "allow creation of related records". You can add what ever attendance fields you wish to the Attendance file. In the Yuth file, create a portal using your relationship and place any fields you wish to see from the Attendance file. When you click on a blank line in the portal, a record will automatically be created in the Attendance field and related the the Youth record you are on. -bd

Thanks I'll try that - while I've got you though here is another issue I'm having with the same problem. Only some of the youth are coming every week. I have fields for their ID, the week's start date, and check boxes for monday-saturday. When you;th come they come in they are identified by ID number on paper and a check mark is put nex to the day of the week. Currently when someone goes to enter the info they find the ID numbers of the youth who've come in and enter the week's start date, find all those youth, and then mark which day or days they've come. Is there a smarter way of doing that?

Thanks,

Koaxfrax

The paper approach is fine.

I would still make each record in the attendance file a single day. If you use the portal approach, for a given Youth you will need to create a new record for each day of attendance.

It is possible to have the entry made into a weeks worth of check boxes using this approach (use globals for the week begin date and Monday-Saturday attendance check boxes) then have a "Submit" button that triggers a script to automatically create the needed records in the attendance file. This will make the entry similar to the paper method and still make attendance file entries one per day of attendance.

The advantage of keeping attendance records by the day, rather than by the week, is that it is much easier to create any sort of report you might think up in the future (how many attendees on Tuesday, etc.). If records are kept by the week with check boxes, it's much harder to create special reports.

-bd

I can't seem to get this to work> I think I need a step-by-step tutorial or something so I can see how things work and am not just hunting around and faking it. Any suggestions on a book/tutorial/resource? (We're using 4.1)

Thanks,

Tanya