Forum Discussion

ShereeBrown's avatar
ShereeBrown
Qrew Cadet
4 years ago

How to fix Key Field Issue in Table to Table Relationship

Hi,  My app has two tables: Colleague Calls, and Directory.  I want to periodically update the Directory table but i can't use record ID as the Merge Field - and I'm not sure how to proceed. Back...
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MarkShnier__You's avatar
MarkShnier__You
Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
The Directory is your list of Unique employees and they have a Unique  Employee #.  You can change the Key field of the Directory table to be the Employee number and Quickbase will retain the existing relationship and data connections.

It will give you two scary warnings, but just go ahead.

If you have never done this before, but I suggest you do is to make a copy of the app and make the change there just so you can get comfortable with what QuickBase is going to do.​  Then once you are comfortable make the change in your production app. 

Then, when you go to upload a new Excel sheet with the updated employee list it will do e Merge for the existing employees which is exactly what you want and add new employees as required.

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Mark Shnier (YQC)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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ShereeBrown's avatar
ShereeBrown
Qrew Cadet
4 years ago
Thanks Mark!   The warnings were scary!
I will change the key field in my copy app and see how it goes.

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Sheree Brown
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  • ShereeBrown's avatar
    ShereeBrown
    Qrew Cadet
    4 years ago
    Hi Mark, 
    I changed my key field and completed the merge, all went well.  However, with change in the key field, the reference proxy field in the child table form no longer works to look up the colleague in the Directory table.  If I reset the key field back to record ID it seems to work. 

    I assume i will need to change the key field before and after each merge?  right? or is there a way to make this work and keep the key field as the unique employee id instead of record id?

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    Sheree Brown
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    • MarkShnier__You's avatar
      MarkShnier__You
      Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
      4 years ago
      No, you absolutely do not have to keep changing your key field back-and-forth!

      It might help me if you could post a picture of your relationship but if you look at the relationship between the employee directories and Absences, on the left side of the relationship will be the employee ID number as the Keyfield of the Director a table. So on the right side the corresponding field that anchors the relationship should be named the same thing something like employee ID number.


      That is the field that you should put on your absence form so that when entering absences manually the users can choose an employee.   You will want to make sure that the fields you were offering to users to help the users pick the correct employee is listing useful fields the most important among them probably being a calculated field of full name, their first and last name.

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      Mark Shnier (YQC)
      mark.shnier@gmail.com
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      • ShereeBrown's avatar
        ShereeBrown
        Qrew Cadet
        4 years ago
        Ah ha,lightbulb!  All is working now.
        Thank you again! You are always so helpful.​

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        Sheree Brown
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