Forum Discussion

LauraMcFeely's avatar
LauraMcFeely
Qrew Cadet
5 years ago

Displaying most recent and next upcoming record

Hello! My app is used to track my team's relationships with teachers, who use our cases as teaching material in their classrooms. My team is interested in seeing how a teacher's experience using ca...
LauraThacker's avatar
LauraThacker
Qrew Captain
I think you could simplify this by doing the following:

1.  Your first "summary" field to get your Record ID# to give you the last-Case date that was entered before the Training Advice was given would be setup as follows:

Summarize the MAXIMUM [Record ID#] when [Date of Case] is before the date in the field [Date of Training Advice]

Use this summary-field value as the formula-value in your reverse-relationship to identify the information from the last-case entry before training.

2.  Your second Summary field to get your Record ID# to give you the first-Case date after the training advice was given would be setup as follows:

Summarize the MINIMUM [Record ID#] when [Date of Case] is after the date in the field [Date of Training Advice]

Use this summary-field value as the formula-value in your reverse-relationship to identify the information from the first-case AFTER training advice.

Remember that ALL your Cases must be connected to the Training Advice Record.  Your workflow description suggested that Cases would be entered before Training Advice was given; and so I wonder what process you have for ensuring that existing Cases are assigned to a new Training Advice entry.

If you pull your summary fields as Record ID#s rather than "dates" you may find this yields more accurate results.

Did you know about the new Summary Combined Text Field?  This has solved a lot of need for reverse relationships.  You can summarize text data values (unique ones) from child-record data without having to physically build the reverse relationship itself.  You will still need the summary fields to determine the Record ID#s to pull the data from; but you do not necessarily need the whole relationship connection.  You often then have to convert the summary-combined-text-fields into Formula-Text fields for readability though.

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Laura Thacker (IDS)
laura@intelligentdbs.com
(626) 771 0454
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LauraMcFeely's avatar
LauraMcFeely
Qrew Cadet
5 years ago
Thanks so much, Laura!

I like your idea to simplify, but I think your way would rely on cases always being entered chronologically in terms of when they happened, and therefore Record IDs always being in order from smallest (earliest date) to largest (latest date). Unfortunately, we can't rely on that -- we sometimes find out about cases months after they happened, which is why I built it on Date rather than Record ID#. 

I'm not seeing how your summary field for the first case after receiving advice is different from mine, other than being based on Record ID#. For some reason, summarizing by the minimum [Date of Case] when [Date of Case] is after the date in the field [Date of Teaching Advice] is not working. 

I did not know about the new Summary Combined Text Field! That's very interesting, and could be really helpful. I'll play around with it and see how I can use it.  

Thanks again!
  • LauraThacker's avatar
    LauraThacker
    Qrew Captain
    5 years ago
    If you would like to jump on a call with me, I will try to help you fix the problem with # 5 of your existing setup then.​

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    Laura Thacker (IDS)
    laura@intelligentdbs.com
    (626) 771 0454
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  • LauraThacker's avatar
    LauraThacker
    Qrew Captain
    5 years ago
    I replicated your two date summary fields and got results on both ends; so a possible reason why step 5 is returning en empty result is if the Case is not actually connected to the Training Advice.




    ------------------------------
    Laura Thacker (IDS)
    laura@intelligentdbs.com
    (626) 771 0454
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    • LauraMcFeely's avatar
      LauraMcFeely
      Qrew Cadet
      5 years ago
      Hi Laura, 

      Thanks so much for taking the time to test this out, and for helping me think this through. After a good night's sleep, I realized that you're right, of course: I need to connect the cases to the training advice, which is the crucial thing. After thinking about this, I think that the complication of connecting them is ultimately not worth the slight increase in convenience. 

      So I'm sorry for wasting your time, but I appreciate that you helped me figure out why it's not worth it!
      Laura
      • LauraThacker's avatar
        LauraThacker
        Qrew Captain
        5 years ago
        I must assume that your Training Advice and Cases are both connected to a "higher" table somewhere.  If they are both connected to the same "higher" table; then you could possibly do the following.

        Summarize to the higher-table the Record ID# of "latest" Training Advice record when it is created
        Use an automation to find all Cases which are not already assigned to a Training Advice, and assign them to the latest Training Advice record which has been summarized to the higher table and added as a Lookup field into the Cases table (Latest Training Advice RID).  This would keep the cycle of connections going without having to manually associate a Case to the Training Advice.

        Just food for thought.  Don't give up on a good idea just because it "seems" like too much effort.  Automations have really had a major impact on how applications can improve daily user life.

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        Laura Thacker (IDS)
        laura@intelligentdbs.com
        (626) 771 0454
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