Problem forming relationship which moves information from one database to another through a dropbox

July 27, 201015 yr

I am new to Filemaker and am currently trying to build a database that integrates my purchase orders with my inventory. I would like to be able to click on a drop down menu on my purchase order find a certain item (in this case a Belt Style# which i placed in the inventory) click it and have the belt description a (which was imported into the inventory) come up in my purchase order.

For example - In my inventory i have: Belt# 3412 with the description: 14mm brown bond belt

Now in my purchase order i have a dropdown field marked BELT STYLE # and a field directly under it marked BELT DESCRIPTION.

How do i set up a relationship in which i can scroll down the dropbox menu, find Belt#3412, click it, and the description from the inventory appears below it.

The tutorial for relationship does not help very much. Please help.

July 27, 201015 yr

Take apart this demo. Although it's for an Invoice, this is the standard approach to PO's as well.

Notice that the Product's ID is stored in the Line Items table. Then the description can be directly referenced.

http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/309136/

July 27, 201015 yr

Author

I was able to set up one relationship but still cannot figure out how to directly reference the description. I have created it so you can click on the style number you want. But Im still not sure how to get the description there. When looking at the demo i still could not figure out how if you were under invoices and put the next field in the name next to it came up automatically. For example if you chose 1 from the drop down list Alpha would come up next to it.

July 27, 201015 yr

In comment's demo, he used merge fields to show related data. That might be adding a bit to your confusion.

If you turn off Show Sample Data, you will see that the description is the field Products::Product, which is a related field. It uses the relationship from LineItems to Products by Product ID.

Try this: Drag a new field onto the Invoices layout into the body part. FM will present the Specify Field dialog. Here you can pick from any field in the current table or any field from any of the related tables (Table Occurrences). Try adding the Contact Name.

invoicedemo.pdf