so I am very new to Filemaker and am not sure how to make the layout function that way I would like it to. Here's what I have going on.

I am making a data base to manage my event planning and make itineraries for my crews.

So here is how I would like it to work.

I have a table of companies.

I have a table for schedule.

and a table for each event.

I would like to have a pull down list of companies where I can select the company that the schedule of events for that company will be displayed in a list. From there I would like to be able to select an event from the schedule and edit the details of the event in fields below.

Ideally I would like all of this to happen within one layout. I have got all my fields set up and can flip through records but it will make working much faster if I could sort though that record as described above. Hopefully this makes sense and someone can help me figure out how to build this.

Thanks

Ryan

Hi Ryan, welcome to the Forums.

You're at the data modeling stage, and although it's very tempting to dive right into layout design, it's better to spend some time at this stage identifying all the entities and their attributes, and the relationships between them.

I understand the need for Companies and Events (one to many, are they?). But what is Schedule? Perhaps what you really need is an Event Start Date and End Date. Then you can Find for Events using these dates to create a "schedule" report.

But, to directly address your question, you need to relate a Company to an Event. You do so by storing a CompanyID in the Events table. Read up on primary and foreign keys. You can make a value list from your Company table using the primary CompanyID and its Name, showing only the second field. Assign this value list to the foreign CompanyID field in the Events table, using a Popup Menu.

Thanks for the welcome and the advice.

So I added an id field and set it up to auto enter serial numbers.

I modified my value list to include the id but only show the company and to sort by company.

I was already thinking of ditching the schedule table and have now done so....I thought it would be useful but after getting into this a bit more I realized that it wasn't doing much.

So I have my relationship set up between event and company for my company field. I am still not sure how get records to display the way I would like. Can I set things up so that when I select a value from my company field a list of events for that company are displayed, and then when I select an event from that list the record for that list is displayed and can be edited?

Good job so far. I imagine that you will have a list view of Companies. You'd also have a form view that displays one Company at a time. On that form view, you'd have a portal to Events, related by CompanyID. So, in that portal you'd see only the Events related to that company.

Now the fun part. Sounds like you want to click on an Event in the portal, and see some fields from the Event record while you're still on the Company form view. That is quite easy. Just set a global field to the selected EventID. Then use second relationship to Events that uses the CompanyID and the global EventID. See demo attached.

Events.fp7.zip

You Rock......

Oh yeah Happy new year too,

I got it going and it makes sense. It took me a bit to figure out the button set field part in the portal but as soon and I set that up it all worked...Thanks for the help...