Problem when creating records in a portal

[FM::Student]

Hello,

I'm pretty new at filemaker and could use some help.

I'm keeping track of "submissions" in my main table. In each of those "submissions" there are "fundings" that I manage in a portal on the main "submissions" page. Each of these "fundings" also has forein keys from "Authorities" and "Area". So:

Subs -> Fundings One to many

Auth -> Fundings One to many

Area -> Fundings : One to many

Everything works fine up to this point, the trouble comes when I try to add in a new element to the mix, "positions". Each "funding" can have 1 or 0 "positions", which I"ve done as:

Fundings -> Positions : one-to-one

(the fact that I have a one-to-one might be the problem)

So I've got a portal for "positions" on the "submissions" layout (along with the "fundings" portal). I create records in it by selecting the primary keys from "fundings" that are related to the current "submission". The right values show up in my drop down list, but when I select them for some reason a new "fundings" is created, not the one selected. I have no idea why this is happenning, especially since "creation of records from relationship" is not enabled from positions to fundings (only the other way).

Maybe the way I"ve set up positions is not correct, but I can't think of another way to do it. Maybe you guys have a better way?

Thanks for the help.

[Vaughan]

Fundings -> Positions one-to-one

So I've got a portal for "positions" on the "submissions" layout

That's the problem. Positions aren't related to Submissions.

The interface should be based on the Fundings layout, not Submissions.

[FM::Student]

Ok, that makes sense. But aren't they related to through:

Positions -> Fundings -> Submissions

Or does that not work with portals?

My problem is that I don't want to have the user go to another layout to create positions, since they are directly related to the submission in question. Also the way my solution is built there is no layout for fundings since the user should never need to know they exist outside of a submission.

What I've been thinking is to merge positions into fundings and change my second portal to a fundings portal that only shows the "positions" part of fundings. But what I don't like about that is that it creates rows in the second portal that don't really need to be there since all fundings don't have positions.

Thanks for your help, I didn't quite realise that the problem was of that type.

[comment]

Your description is a bit hard to follow. It seems you have your relationships arranged as:

Submissions -< Fundings - Positions

and you have a portal to Positions on a layout of Submissions.

If so, there IS NO "selected funding" when you type into this portal. And since the relationship Submissions -< Fundings allows automatic creation of new records in Fundings, that's exactly what happens: you are trying to create a new position, but Filemaker needs a "bridging" funding - so it creates one.

A possible solution would be to define another relationship directly between Submissions and another occurrence of Positions, and use this for the portal.

However, one cannot help wondering why, if each "funding" can have 1 or 0 "positions", this couldn't be handled simply by a FIELD in Fundings.

[FM::Student]

Ok, I understand it now.

As for your question... It just seemed to be easier to create different reports that way if positions was it's own table. But I guess it's not really any easier...

(I figured out a way to get around it by only creating positions using scripts)