Hi - my apologies if this is long winded.

I'm creating an employee management system to keep track of conversations and issues that arise.

I'm using a portal which has a drop down menu allowing the manager to choose what if any action was taken regarding an issue: ie, verbal, written warnings, final notice, suspension termination etc.

I've got a line of text (outside the portal) at the top of the page which will allow the view to quickly identify if the employee's issue record was flanged with the above action. This text pulls it's information from the 'Action' field in the table.

The conditional formatting works great when the specified value is met displaying it's corresponding color.

The issue I'm having is that when I have multipule issues entered and each has an action assigned - such as a verbal notice, written warning and suspension - I won't refresh to the new value. It sticks and displays the first entered value unless you delete all the records which defeats the purpose.

I'd like to assign a weighted value (I think) to each value so as an employee progresses through their notices the most severe notice will show at the top.

I hope that made sense.

Thanks!

The field that you put on the layout should be from a sorted relationship perhaps on date entered.

I cant imagine that one would have a suspension PRIOR to a written or verbal warning, so I am not sure if there a weighted system is required, but then again I dont your business rules.

I can get the records in the portal to sort correctly but not the <> text field I've got outside the portal.

Edited May 13, 200916 yr by Guest

What is the relationship that you are using for the portal? What is the relationship that you are using for the Action field?

The relationship has to be sorted. Most likely you will want a new relationship for the purpose of this sorted state so that the other fields that use the orig relationship are not affected.

To add to what John said:

If you put a related field on the layout, outside of any portal, it will show data from the FIRST related record, according to the sort order set in the relationship's definition.

Make sure your relationship is sorted by date, descending (or by severity, descending - if it's possible for a less severe action to be taken at a later date). Note that a portal can have it's own sort order, overriding the one set for the relationship.

Another option is to place the field in it's own one-row portal - and set this portal to sort as described above.

It works!

Thanks everyone for your help!