Allowing direct Record creation in Portals

[Wickerman]

Somewhere along the line I got the impression that it's a "Best Practice" (or at least a *better* practice) to build a little Child-Record-Creator system where the user onters values for a new child record in little global fields and then scripting a button to go and create the record, rather than simply putting browsable fields in a portal to the Child table and allowing users to create records by simply entering data on the next line in that portal.

What I can't recall is *why*. There are times when this just seems like overkill, particularly if it's just a simple 1-field child, and adding such a system takes up extra space on the layout that's sometimes hard to afford.

So, could people pitch in with the drawbacks to allowing this sort of easy record-creation-in-the-portal scenario? What are they? I need to determine whether any of these drawbacks are acceptable for a database I'm working on, and perhaps how to work around them.

Thanks!

[bruceR]

A few issues with regular portal row creation:

Confuses some users.

For long portals, may disappear off end of portal.

Always there. Is your invoice complete and shipped? Why can I still add line items?

Doesn't allow display of related info. If you have a special global method of adding records, you may have added features that display product info for the line item you are about to add.

[Ocean West]

It's can be a case by case basis and it depends on your users how you train them - some are content with scrolling to end of portal to add. A button sometimes does help too. Or you can use a trigger on a global field to auto create the child records sometimes when you abstract the creation of related records you can at a later time add a modified logic to the creation should it arise.

Typically I would say that screen real estate becomes a factor where to put global fields that are redundant when the data is right there in the portal.

In cases like this a simple button that toggles an invisible tab panel can do the trick.

It doesn't spawn a new window but switches tabs sets globals creates records in child table. and the user doesn't loose focus when creating or editing data.

http://screencast.com/t/MDJkZmI5ZmMt

This example uses a global field that is used to create records in the related table

and also the use of hidden tab panels - all scripted in order to create children records.