Joined table - Convenient way to enter data when a lot of records are present?

[OlbertPLZ]

Hello,

 

This is the situation I have a problem with:

Two tables - contacts and projects, linked by a joined table to display linked contacts/projects via portals. Many of my contacts can be present in a project, and a contact can be present in a row of projects.

I got it working via manual entry of the project IDs and contact IDs. Basically this is fine, but I expect to have a large number of contacts in the database, so that it will be quite inconvenient to enter only the IDs. I made a dropdown menu with a value list, which is better, but still not ideal as I can't use the Filemaker "auto-completion on entry" field function, because I have to display the ID and the contacts name.

Is there any way to use this setup with the auto completion function? Like you just have to type in part of the name, which gives you suggestions to choose, which then links the correspondent project to the contact?

 

Thanks in advance for help. I feel like I' just not seeing something here

[bcooney]

My go to UI technique for finding/selecting now is a popover with a filtered portal. Check out the Starter Solution "Invoices" and create a new Invoice. See how the Select button on Customer works.

ModularFileMaker has a very nice SQL Picker Window too: http://www.modularfilemaker.org/module/sql-picker-window/