On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Richard S. Russell <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2009 Jan 16, at 14:48, Michael Grant wrote: > Greetings FileMaker Pros! > > I was wondering if a "best practice" has been established for > presenting users with a combo box type field setup for related > records. What I have in mind, for example, is an address book Person > record where the user can, within the same field, either choose an > employer from a list of existing related Organization records, or > enter a new one if a matching record doesn't already exist. What makes > this less than straightforward is the need to base the relationship on > an id key rather than a name field. FileMaker provides a means to > choose from the existing list without having to expose the id key to > the user, but I'm not aware of any way to also have the option of > creating a new record (by name, not id) in the same field. Any > thoughts? > > Mucho thanko! > > Michael > > If I understood you correctly, Michael, "best practice" is not to do it the > way you're proposing. > If the organization isn't already in the pick list, make the users go to the > appropriate place where they can create a new org record, then return to the > person record to forge the desired link from the now-updated pick list. > Keeps everything a lot cleaner.
Well, I certainly want to keep things clean, but it's quite possible in a data entry situation that the organization's name is the only available information about it, in which case I don't want to make things more complicated for the user than they have to be. Thanks, Michael -- You have to be happy with what you have to be happy with what you have to be happy with.
