Alternatives to Multi-Value Checkbox Fields ?

[geod]

Hi all, been along time since I posted, but I can't seem to get away from FileMaker. The thread title pretty much states the question.

The situation I am looking at is a talent agency. Say you have a couple of thousand people signed up with you. For each of those Talents, along with the standard fields for address, contact info, status, etc., are about eight fields that describe the talents' attributes all the way from Physical Attributes to Accents fluently spoken.

Some are fields with single value entries like Weight, Eye Color, etc.

Others are things like Athletic Abilities which offers a large choice of options of which there may be multiple entries for each talent.

All of the multiple choice option fields are set up as check box value lists.

Check boxes seem in my conclusion to be the best option in terms of ease of data entry. You can click to create a field value and un-click to remove it.

But they are a pain for reporting, I know there are ways to parse the values out of the multi-value fields and I did script a solution that helped with one type of report.

But now I can see they are a real pain also when trying to do complex Finds.

Does anyone know of a different approach that would allow the ease of use for data entry (like check boxes provide) and have the multi-values recorded as records in a related table.

Any responses much appreciated.

peace

geod

[Fitch]

You could set it up so that what appear to be checkboxes are actually buttons that run a script that creates the related record. Is that the kind of thing you had in mind?

[geod]

Thanks Fitch, yes that is what I was thinking. Something along that line. The potential problems are allowing the lookup values to be edited dynamically. And also I am not able just yet to visualize how to have the simulated check box delete the record when it is unchecked.

Do you have any specific ideas in mind.

Thanks

[comment]

See if this helps:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/68495-checkbox-for-a-join-table/page__p__324832#entry324832

[geod]

Thanks comment, that is clever and effective solution.

For my situation I have 8 categories of attributes, do you think your solution would work well also with categories.

And if I might probe your mind about finds, what kind of interface would you implement so the user

could easily setup complex finds, combining data from the main file and the attribute join file.

Just curious before I spend the time building this out.

thanks again

[comment]

I have 8 categories of attributes, do you think your solution would work well also with categories.

I don't see why not - just show attributes in the selected category instead of all attributes.

easily setup complex finds, combining data from the main file and the attribute join file.

I'm afraid that's a bit too vague to answer comfortably.

[geod]

Fair enough, I will work on it and when I have a specific question I will ask.

Thanks.