So here’s what I have, simple: 

 

Three tables the second on being the child of the first, and the third that of the second, Ids (pk), fks, and a couple of dummy fields. (The real life scenario I try to emulate is clients having a child of departments and that a child for employees) 

 

One layout from the first table with a portal to the second, and a nested portal there of the third. 

 

The portal doesn’t stay put but floats above. 

 

What am I missing out?

b. I ve taken a turn to an approach of using value lists created on the spot, I ‘ve not taken it more than 50% in development, and it seems rather convoluted from what I am trying to do. That is have a nested portal of the employees per dept in the client layout. 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uxfoz0ecfx3filr/Ex.%20Portals%20Nested.fmp12

 

What am I missing out?

 

Reading the Documentation. You cannot nest portals.

 

http://fmhelp.filemaker.com/fmphelp_12/en/html/create_layout.9.29.html#1028605

 

If you have

 

Clients --< Departments --< Employees (+ Departments_forEmployees)

 

display a portal into Employees that shows fields from Employees, and from Departments_forEmployees.

 

You can achieve a grouping/sub-summary effect if you sort the portal and use a summary field (count, running, restart, sorted by the same field as the portal) in Employees to conditionally format (i.e. hide) all but the first occurrence of the Department fields per department.

 

Since you can only summarise fields from the same table as the summary field, you have to use as sort field either the Department fk, or (if you need another order) use a calculation field to pull the relevant data (probably the department name) into Employees.

 

Well, simply experiment a bit with the concept …