Heirarchical (conditional) Menus

[Edward Newman]

I recently upgraded our systems to 5.0.3 and still cannot seem to get one simple function to work in FM. I need to set up heirarchical menus, also known as conitional menus. We have a database known as "products" it contains fields such as Manufacturer, model, description and price. The second database is "proposals". Users in proposals fill in a repeating field with information from products to generate a proposal for our customers. The problem is that products have grown to over 2000 items. Making it a challange to go by model. I want to configure it so that users can select a manufacturer and that the next field, model, will only show models from that manufacturer. I set up a test app in 4.1 last time I tried this using calculations, but it required major scripting changes anytime a new manufacturer was added. This is very simple in many other databases. Is there a trick that I am missing. Last time I tried, I called claris and they told me the next version (5.0) would support this. Any insight?:??

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Edward Newman, MCSE

Senior Manager

Universal Security Systems, Inc.

[danjacoby]

First of all, I highly recommend you replace repeating fields with relationships/portals (they're just so much more flexible).

Now, as regards conditional value lists -- set up a relationship within "proposals" to match the Manufacturer field with the same field in "products". Then create a value list ("models"). Select the "use values from a field" box and select the "only related values" box in the next dialog. Then choose the relationship and the correct field.

Now, when you select a particular manufacturer, only that manufacturer's models will show up.

HTH,

Dan

[lark04]

Had a similar problem myself, see the topic "Calculation on value list" in this forum for tan answer.

cheers.