Conditional Portals in v.6?

[wirledpeas]

Hello all -

Essentially, I am trying to make conditional portals in FM6, and I'm not sure I can. If I can't and I can do it in FM7, please let me know, since I can get that version. On to the issue...

I have a database of everyone that has ever had contact with the organization. This includes faculty, graduates, coaches, donors, major funders, and so on. For sake of clarity, let's pretend there are only 2 - faculty and students. What I want to do is create multiple databases - one that has everyone in it for things like mass-mailings and one that has only specific categories of people in it (like Students) to hold more specific info regarding that category. I think of this as a central database (with everyone) with associated sub-databases (with subsets of people). The sub-databases would have more detailed information for individuals than would the central database (ie. the Students sub-database would have a field for "Graduation Date" that would not be in the central db, because the field is not relevant to faculty and others). BUT, I don't want to have to keep track of redundant fields for the same individual (ie if I change a student's mailing address in one db, I want all occurrences of it to change at the same time). I understand how to create portals, which seem like the best solution, but I can't get the portals to be selective or conditional. That is, I want a portal to import/display all of the records that have a certain entry in a particular field (ie "Yes" under "Student"), but NOT import/display fields that DO NOT satisfy that condition (ie records for faculty members). Right now, the relationship I've built is based on a unique, numerical ID number, but the result is that ALL records are imported/displayed in the Student sub-database - not just students, but also faculty, etc.. How do I do this? *Can* I do it with FM 6 or FM7?

Help!

Thanks.

[Delta Tango]

Hi,

I think the only way you could do this is functional in FM 7,8 & 9.

There are things called Tabs. You can basically put fields on tabs that are like the pages of an address books. So based on what kind of contact they are you could make a script that jumps to a certain tab and reveals only the fields on that tab. But the fields would have to be there in the table, no matter what kind of client they were.

OR, since you can have multiple tables from 7 on I believe, in one database, you could make a table for each kind.