Filtering Portals and Adding Records

[eprowell]

I am building a customer database for the salesperson at our company. I have 2 tables. The first contains all the customer contact information. The second contains contact notes. The contact notes table has 3 fields: customer name, note, and date/time note was created.

I am currently trying to design the layout. I have created a portal that displays records from the notes file, but it isn't very user friendly. To add another note to this table, you have to scroll to the bottom of the portal. As the table grows, this will require more and more scrolling.

Ideally, I'd like the portal to only displays the 3 most current records for the customer. I'd also like a separate field that adds notes to the notes table. I can't figure out how to do this.

Can someone get me pointed in the right direction?

[Ender]

You can't use the "Allow creation of related records..." option and filter the portal by a date range at the same time.

What I'd suggest is to use a set of globals in the Customer table for the data-entry of new Contact Notes, and use buttons attached to scripts to create the Contact Notes with the information from the globals. Doing things this way, you can simply place the data entry fields above the portal, and keep the portal sorted by Date/Time (descending). With this, you'll eliminate your trouble with scrolling through the portal to add records. Of course, if you still wish to, you could additionally filter the portal by a date range or something. Filtering the portal to show the last N records is more complicated, and in my opinion less user-friendly.

If any of this sounds useful, let us what you might need more details about.

[eprowell]

Thanks for the help. I have it working now.