A little confused how to set up this portal

[Rich S]

Hi, all:

 

I'm stuck. What I'm trying to do is...well...to save bandwidth, see my thread at FileMaker's site:

 

http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/76d4f2428e

 

(I tried to bump up the thread but to no avail.) Rather than set up four (Domain) tables, I'm trying to populate the data into one child table. Whether this is the best course of action, I don't fully know.

 

I'm having trouble getting the field, HeadingNumber, to populate correctly when a user enters a value in its Data field. Also, I'm not sure I'm setting up the field correctly in the parent table in the first place: I have the Data (child) field in front of a portal box--the portal is juuuuust a bit larger than the Data field (box) and there are 22 of them, one for each Data field. Each portal has a filter so it only shows its HeadingNumber, e.g., the first portal for 1a is set to only "see" 1a in the child table.

 

So, obviously I'm doing something wrong--I just don't know what! :S

 

TIA for your help!

[comment]

I suggest you post a self-contained question here.

 

A preliminary note:

IMHO, you need to have (at least) three tables: Evaluations, Criteria and Scores, with Scores being a join table between the other two. Then you can use the Criteria table records as a "grid" against which you enter individual scores.

 

A general note:

Don't let your layout needs dictate your data structure.

[GisMo]

So you have a One to Many Relationship with Intern to Data. You can collect multiple reports(data) based on an intern. 

 

Based on what you have in your linked post, you need to create a layout based on Data table and when you create that record, you need to place the Intern Primary Key into the Data record as a foreign key. (There are several ways to accomplish this)

 

Now you are working on the data for the Intern you are evaluating. No portals. 

 

If you want to look at the results for an intern, you may have a portal on the Intern layout which shows a list(portal) of the the reports which have been completed for that intern. 

 

Hope this is clear. Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Also, I agree with the "best answer" in the post you linked.

[Rich S]

Thanks for the input, guys, but a question, Comment: Given a three-table setup as you propose, pushing the score into the Score table is straightforward enough, but how would I--at the same time the score is entered/edited--create a related record in Criteria for the Heading (1a, 1b, 1c, etc.) ?

[comment]

I am afraid you misunderstand me. The Criteria table needs to contain 22(?) permanent records to begin with - before you enter any scores. An example of a record in Criteria:

 

• CriteriaID: 8

• DomainID: 2

• Letter: "b"

• Name: "Establishing a Culture for Learning"

 

A record in Scores, OTOH, might look something like this:

 

• ScoreID: 272

• EvaluationID: 12

• CriteriaID: 8

• Score: 3

 

indicating that in evaluation #12, the intern scored 3 on the criterion of "2b - Establishing a Culture for Learning".