Relationship and Portal Questions

[videotom]

I looked at my history on this forum, and noticed that the last time I posted a question, it was 2006! Anyway, I’m back to ask another question for a problem I can’t seem to figure out.

I’m using FMP V9 Advanced on a Macintosh.

I've developed this database that tracks the television pitches my company has made to TV networks. The database contained two main tables: Ideas and Networks, and I recently added another main table, Personalities (for people whose ideas we rep). The database is working great (hence my long time away form this forum). However, the addition of the Personalities table has caused some issues that I can’t figure out. Or put more specifically, I can’t get a certain functionality to work – a portal.

A little more background… In the Ideas table, I can add new ideas, as you would expect, and at the bottom of the layout, I have a portal that allows me to enter in pitches that I’ve made of that idea. For example, I can (using the portal), indicate that I pitches a particular idea to the Discovery Channel, on such and such a date, etc. This works via a “join table,” named “Pitches” that someone on this forum was kind enough to suggest.

I also have a portal on the Network table that tells me which shows I’ve pitched to a particular network (also by accessing the Pitches join table.)

All is good, and works perfectly. Then, I went and added this Personalities table that lists people (one record at a time) whom we represent (or may represent). For this table, I wanted two portals:

1. A portal on the Personalities table that will track which show ideas we’ve created that include this personality. My approach was to include a pull-down menu on the Ideas table, where I could assign a particular personality to the idea. Then on the Personalities portal, it would simply show all the records from the Ideas table that matched that particular personality. To make this work, I tried making another join table: Personalities_Ideas, to link everything together, but no matter what I try, I can't seem to get this to work.

2. The second portal that I want, also on the Personalities table is one that shows me all the Ideas that have been pitched using this particular personality. My approach on this one was to access the Pitches join table. But again, it’s not working.

I will admit that I’m more of a novice user. I find the concept of relationships somewhat confusing. I suspect that the issue has something to do with what match fields I’m using for the relationship. As a reference, here are some of the core fields I have been trying to get to work as the match fields…

IdeaID: Auto generated in the Idea table, this is a sequentially numbered field tracking each individual unique idea.

NetworkID: Also generated automatically, each network gets it’s own ID. This is on the Network table.

PersonalityID: Also auto-generated automatically, each person gets their own unique ID. This is in the Personality table.

Any suggestions would be great!

Tom

[videotom]

Anybody have any suggestions?

Much appreciated!!!

Tom