Portal - shouldn't I be able to see portal records in Table View?

[Hoib]

Hello again.  Back with more on my food pantry solution.  I'm trying to figure out now how to set up a portal from Session_Ops to Session_Volunteers to handle volunteer hours, sort of like a time and attendance module.

 

I've done up three attachments to show where I am.  The problem is I can't seem to save the volunteer information for later retrieval.  I envisoned that Session_Volunteers would hold all volunteer specific info like time_in and time_out in an historical context.  I can't write it so that it properly saves the history.

 

Vol_1.jpg is what the layout looks like now.  I can drop down and install volunteers at will.  But Vol_2.jpg shows the Table view; note that only the first record for No1 Volunteer is showing up where I would expect both to be displayed.  Occurs to me that one of the rules is that in a portal you can't view the entire data set (ie. No1 Volunteer and No2 Volunteer.  Vol3.jpg simply shows layout view for this module.

 

Questions: 

 

Should Table view be able to display whatever is in a portal?

If so, why would both volunteers not show up in table view when they show in Form View?

And, is this the reason I can't seem to preserve the history of volunteer times on a day by day basis?  Because if I create a new Session with a new date, the old date and the data with it are then gone.  Am I not committing the records properly with a script perhaps?

 

Thanks all (and Merry Christmas to you folks, too!)

 

H

 

[neil r]

I don't believe you can see portal information in table view . only in list of form view .

[Hoib]

Yes, you are right.  In the middle of watching football, I came up with the idea to look at one of the supplied FM Starter Solutions.  Had to find one with a portal in it, filled it with some data and sure enough, table view only shows one record where form view and list view show all data.  So that's not the answer.

 

I still am stuck though on why my data entered in the portal doesn't remain in it's table for later retrieval.  That should be very simple, I do believe.  Am I missing some critical "commit records" step?

 

H

[bruceR]

You're going to have to provide more detail. Your file (or a clone or a similar example file) would be a good start.

 

Certainly your screen shots do NOT indicate the problem you describe.

[Hoib]

Yes, you're right, it's rather difficult to describe. I've attached a relatively clean copy of my .fp7 that we can look at. I'm trying to simply open a new food pantry session by first logging in our volunteers and having FM keep track of who's here on a certain day, store that day's vol data and then be able to come back later, search for the session date and perhaps change it or add to it (if I made a mistake), generate a report of hours expended and so forth. What happens is, I set up a session, leave it, open a new one and the new one has the first one's data in it. Or I set up a new, leave it and return to it only to find the entries are blank.

There are myriad mistakes in here - you'll no doubt see them. There's so much work to be done on this. You'll see lots of TOs on the RelDiag that don't go anywhere - I know they'll be gone someday or I might have to bring them back. We shy away from deleting anything until we're sure about the consequences.

I'm basically trying to just get one thing to work right. I've been guilty of wandering off in my dev of this. Hope you'll pardon the lack of organization.

But, here goes...

H

SVDP Journal.zip

[bruceR]

Ok, you provided a file; but what exactly is the problem?

 

You are being very vague.

 

You state: "I still am stuck though on why my data entered in the portal doesn't remain in it's table for later retrieval."

 

However, the portal shown in your screen shot, and the portal in your example file, both display the data that was entered and the example file allows new records to be created successfully.

 

It has already been established that table views do not display portals.

[Hoib]

OK, let me describe.  Open a New Session, choose a date with the drop down, set up a few volunteers for the date, hit Visitor queue, add some visitors, go to Main Menu.  Open a new session, choose another date, set up a few (different) volunteers for that date, hit Visitor queue, add some visitors, go to Main Menu.  Open a Previous session, choose the first date, the portal doesn't display the first set of volunteers, it displays the second set.  The first set is gone.  Open a third new Session, choose a new date, add a third set of vols, now before leaving, use the drop down to navigate to a previous session, the first two have now taken on the data from third set of volunteers, the first two sets are gone.

 

Am I not comitting the records properly when leaving that Session_Vol screen?

[bruceR]

There is no problem.

 

Everything is working and nothing is being lost.

 

Please explain what you mean by "now before leaving, use the drop down to navigate to a previous session"

 

The date at the top of the Session_Vol_Data layout is the date of the session. It has nothing to do with navigation and changing it merely changes the date assigned to the session.

 

Note that there is no connection between sessions and dates. All relations to sessions are strictly by session ID. As currently set up you can have any number of sessions for a given date.

 

Also note that your search script doesn't do anything. It enters find mode and puts nothing in the search field.

[bruceR]

So perhaps you need to clarify what you mean by "properly save the history"; and what you mean by "history".

 

For example; maybe you are hoping to track transactions and session_volunteers by date.

 

But right now there are no date fields in those tables.

 

(Except for erroneously named create/modified fields like timestamp_create)