Method:Classic General Q&A

Re: Designing a Customer Attribute screen

Method_Ashur — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:13:59 GMT

Understood, you'll still need to add a record into your custom table for each customer. You can do this by looping through your Customer table, retrieving the FullName field from your Certification table, use a conditional statement to check whether or not the customer name already exists in your Certification table, and finally insert the records into that table. Below is my example.

*Note: If you have any required fields in your custom table, ensure you're adding entries into those fields as well when editing the Insert Records Into Table action.

In order to modify the entries in your grid just edit the screen and make your grid editable. Everytime you modify a record click the Update button to save the changes.

- Ashur

Re: Designing a Customer Attribute screen

MikeB — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:48:40 GMT

The basic structure for the grid is as follows:

FOR all the customers in the customers table

SHOW the FullName in the first column of the grid

SHOW the Certification columns in the next columns of the grid, based on filters outside of the grid for Year and Quarter.

Make the table editable so that all customers, whether they are in the Certification table or not, are shown and then saving populates their records in the cCertifications table for that particular Year and Quarter.

I am unable to show ALL customers and their associated attributes in the grid. In Access, something like a Join or Select query would allow me to do this but I can't seem to be able to do this in Method.

Re: Designing a Customer Attribute screen

Method_Ashur — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:06:43 GMT

Yes, you'll need to add records (entries) to your Certification table. What I meant was you can add the fields which are in your table to your custom screen. That way any data you enter into those fields and save will be inserted into the table. The screenshot below shows the the screen editor; the left side shows the available fields in my table which I have yet to utilize on my screen, and the right side shows what fields I've already added to my screen.

- Ashur

Re: Designing a Customer Attribute screen

MikeB — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:45:08 GMT

I'm not sure exactly what you mean.

The Certifications table is currently blank and has the following fields:

Fullname
Year
Quarter
Certification 1
Certification 2
Certification 3

Do I need to pre-populate this Certifications table?

I was looking at showing in the grid a list of all customers, and their associated Certification fields from the Certification table. I could then select the appropriate Year and Quarter in fields above the grid, and then add actions tied to a "Save" button that populate the Certifications table with these entries.

Does that make sense?

Re: Designing a Customer Attribute screen

Method_Ashur — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:52:26 GMT

Hi Mike,

You need to first add entries to your table. You can either enable adding and editing on the grid and set the appropriate actions in the After Edit and After Add events. However, the simplest and most time efficient solution would be to add the fields in your table onto the screen, then add a Select link to your grid. That way you'll be able to add/edit entries on the screen without having to add actions in two different places on your grid in order to be able to add and edit entries.

You can add the Certification fields to the Customer tables as linked fields but remember that you will not be able to edit them, as linked fields do not allow modifications. The first approach along with my suggestions above will work for you.

- Ashur

Re: Designing a Customer Attribute screen

MikeB — Wed, 01 May 2013 16:07:28 GMT

For further clarification, I'll use a simple example:

I have a Customers table, with all regular columns/fields
I have a Certifications table, with 3 Yes/No Certification fields
I added a dropdown in the Certifications table that shows the Fullname field from the Customers table. I called the field CustomerFullName. This Certifications table should now be linked to the Customers table.

Now, I want to design a screen that shows all customers, and for those customers, the 3 certifications

So...

I need to designed a new screen called Certifications, however, which table is it based on? Customers or Certifications. I think Customers, yes?
I need a grid where the first column is customers and the following three columns are the certifications (1, 2, and 3). Do I base this grid on the Customers table as well? Or do I base it on the Certifications table? Attached or detached?
No matter what I seem to try, I'm only able to select columns from a single table in the grid.

Note: just adding the Certification fields to the Customers table is not an option. These certifications are going to be updated quarterly, so they will require a transaction/activity-style table setup.

Please advise on the proper setup for showing all Customers, plus their Certification attributes on a single grid.

Thanks

Designing a Customer Attribute screen

MikeB — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:52:59 GMT

I'm looking to design the following type of screen:

A grid showing list of all customers (fullname field in the Customers table)
Certification attributes for each customer (Certification 1, 2, 3 levels, for example) are also columns in the grid. These would be checkboxes. These will be manually updated in the grid for now
Filters at the top of the screen for Calendar Year, Quarter and Sales Rep

The idea is for a sales rep to log into the screen and see a list of their customers in a grid. The sales rep then picks an appropriate calendar year, and then the appropriate quarter (g. 2013, 2) and updates the certification fields for each customer. Records are then populated in a Certification table on saving, and the Certifications table ends up being like the Activities or Transactions tables. This will be done once every quarter.

My question is on the proper way of structuring this screen:

If I build a grid based on a Certification table, how do I get the Customers to populate the screen if I'm starting with a blank table? Currently, the Certifications table has 4 columns: the 3 certification columns plus a Fullname field that is a dropdown linked to the Customer table. However, just inserting this field into the grid shows no customers since the Certification table is currently empty
Or, do I build a grid based on the Customers table? That solves the problem of having all the customers on the screen, but now how to I add the Certification fields? Do I need to add them to the Customers table? Can I not just link to them?