Sorting Portals Descending / Want blank spaces at the top, too

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on the Client Database at a homeless shelter, and we need a lot of assistance.

We've got two important fields, Admission Date and Departure Date. They are displayed in two portals each. At the top of the form they are side by side and are used for simple entry. At the bottom of the form they are in larger font and are for display in a table, showing a history and being used for calculations.

The operations staff at our organisation decided that it would be best for them if both sets of dates were listed descending, with the most recent dates at the top of the list.

So there are two problems:

1. The new portal rows still show up on the bottom. This is inconvenient for the people filling out the forms. It would make the most sense if the blank (new) rows would appear at the top of the list, so people don't have to scroll down to find them. Of course it's possible to enter a script to bring you automatically to the bottom, but then it's necessary to scroll back up to the top, and because not everybody is going to do this, it will create problems in the printouts/ waste time, etc.

2. We need the new Admission Date rows to match up with a blank Departure Date row if the client has not departed yet. Currently, the current Admission Date matches up with the previous Departure Date, which causes all kinds of problems. Is there a way to create a blank record automatically?

Any help would be appreciated. I'm very much a beginner at this, despite being the person chosen to work on these issues.

Thank You

Joe

[bcooney]

Why do you have Admissions and Departures in two portals (both fields in Bookings)? Why not one portal showing both dates. Then sort Departure asc so that blanks come to the top.

I would turn off allow create in the relationship and use a scripted New Booking button. Sort the portal Admitted asc then Departure asc, so that blank record comes to the top.

I can't do portal sorts in my head, but hopefully you get the idea.

Edited May 6, 2009 by Guest