Tracking Attendance

[theoph]

I am currently wanting to track attendance in our church

[Oldsneekers]

Thinking on the fly, it looks like you need three files: Laos where each member equals one unique record, CellFile where each Cell name would constitue a record, and a third AttendFile where member, cell, and date would be recorded.

1- In CellFile and in Laos make a field that is the same for all records (either a global field or a TestField where you would enter a value (e.g. "1"). This allows all the records in Laos to be seen in a portal in CellFile. The advantage in using globals is you will not have to enter the value in all recrods as the field is common to all but over a network the entry would be lost. The advantage of the text field is the value is not lost in a network setting but you need to use the replace fields script step to first update you already entered member list in Laos (with the "1" value in the match field).

2-CellFile and AttendFile will be related by a field containing both cell name and meeting date. In cellFile this could be a calc field (eg: CellName & " " & MeetDate) but in attend file this would be best to be a text field - note if you do not plan on allowing new portal records you can make the match field in AttendFile a calc field. The relationship is created in CellFile.

3-In CellFile the portal with the membership list related to Laos has a botton in the portal row. This button will copy (or better using set field) the members name from the portal, the cell name from CellFile, the date from CellFile all into a record in AttendFile. The second portal in Cell file will be a list of all those that attended the specified cell on the speficied date. In CellFile the date field could be a global formated as a pop up with all the dates from the field in AttendFild.

If you are not familiar with related record data transfer, the easiest is the make in AttendFile a gMembNameField, gDateField, gCellNamefield, in CellFile: Setfield(Attend::gMembName, MembName) - ditto for date, cell name

In AttendFile have a script that: makes a new recrod, then makes the proper entries from the globals into the text and date fields.

In CellFile make a script strep to the button that performs the external script mentioned above. good luck.

[theoph]

Thank-you very much for your recommendations and suggestions. The idea of creating another file (i.e., AttendFile) and then having a button in a portal row in the file CellFile scripted to create records in AttendFile was how I was beginning to think. Your suggestions were a confirmation.

Your idea to have a second portal in CellFile that would record the newly created records in CellAttend was ingenious. This would enable one to make sure that the portal button was actually working correctly and creating the attendance records you actually wanted.

Thanks again for taking the time and helping me.

[Oldsneekers]

A few days later while driving down a quiet street, it came to me, you do not need one file with the list of Cells and another for attendance. You could use just one file with a relationship to itself OR you could have the Cell name in a pop up list that is generated from the entries in the CellNameField.

In the first instance, since the CellName file (in my earlier reply) exists only to have a source for a portal, a relationship of a file to itself will still provide this functionality. To prevent the portal from having a lot of empty entries (if the number of total entries is greater than the number of cells), you need to use what I all a marking field that indicates that the entries with the cell name only are destined for the portal (calc field-Case(Is empty(PortalCellNameField)=0,"Portal"). Here the field needs to be indexed and is the mactch field for the relationship to give you the portal with the no extra entries. Besure the match field in the main layout has a global field with the entry "potal" so that the portal works. A scrip at the start that enters "portal" into the global field will ensure the portal is live when you need it.

If using a pop up list (or check boxes if the number of cells is small) is acceptable, then all you need to do is format the CellName Field to a pop up list based on the entries to this same field. Thus as you enter a Cell name for the first time, it will be present for all future entries. No second file is needed.

Regards

Greg.