Multiple relationships question

[danielrmitchell]

I have a Customer who has many devices.  Each device has many Services.

 

I want to be able to display Services that are related to the owner of a device in a portal on my Customer layout so thay I do not have to go to my Device layout first.

 

I am having a complete mind-block over this, I know it can be done, I am pretty sure that I covered it while learning to use FM but for the life of me I cannot implement it.

 

Any help please?

[LaRetta]

I assume that you have a Services portal on your Devices layout?  If so, copy it and paste it on your Customer layout.  

 

FileMaker evaluates according to context.  So if you have a structure similar to:

 

Customers -< Devices -< Services

 

... then the same portal on Devices to display Services can also be placed on Customers.  Cool beans!

[Fitch]

As LaRetta says, a Services portal will work on the Customer layout as well as the Device layout.

 

Now, if you're wanting to be on a Customer and display Services for a selected Device, that takes a little more doing. A typical method would be to create a global field in the Customer table, e.g. "gSelectedDevice," and make a relationship from that field to a new table occurence of Services. Make a portal based on that. Next, create a button in your Device portal connected to a script that sets gSelectedDevice to the device ID that you clicked. You can probably take it from there.