Summarizing within a table
I have an application with hierarchical tasks in one table. This tasks table is a child to a parent projects table. Each task will have various types of costs like labor, materials, etc. There would b...
Forum Discussion
Take a look at this @Paul Streit:
Parent Table with Summary Fields
When you relate two tables, you can add summary fields from the child table to the parent table giving you similar function of a summary report, but with dynamic filtering capability and you can export to spreadsheet.
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Adam Keever
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Parent Table with Summary Fields
When you relate two tables, you can add summary fields from the child table to the parent table giving you similar function of a summary report, but with dynamic filtering capability and you can export to spreadsheet.
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Adam Keever
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- Adam,
The issue with using summary fields is that the hierarchy of tasks is variable in depth and breadth. For example, one project might have five levels vertically while another might have seven, and within any given level, one project might have three tasks while another has ten. If I tried to define summary fields at the project level for every combination of the hierarchy, there could be thousands of summary fields. The only level that is easy to do with summary fields is Level 1 because by definition there is only one element at that level (the apex).
This is like defining an app to capture the hierarchy of organization chart where the number of levels of the organization can vary (some companies might have more levels than others), and within a level, there could be different numbers of functions.
I looked at defining separate tables for each level with relationship lineage, where a Level 1 table is related to a Level 2 table which is related to a Level 3 table and so on, but that appears to be very complex, especially if other tables have to be linked to these tables for things like resource assignments (or in the org chart analogy, assigning employees to a specific function in the org chart).
Paul Streit
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Paul Streit
------------------------------- Do you have a business process map for what you are trying to do? Those can be helpful in understanding how the information must be structured and how it flows.
From my understanding of what you are stating, you would need these relationships one Project to many Tasks, one Task to many Sub Tasks, and an additional one Sub Task to many Sub-Sub Tasks. This set of relationships would not be negatively affected by the number of tasks. In fact this would allow you to summarize tasks so from your Project table you could see how many Tasks, Sub Tasks, and Sub-Sub Tasks are contained within that Project.
For example the Projects table with the number of tasks in each level:
Which can then be grid edited:
Most people stop at the sub task level. I am interested to understand your use case and why there are so many levels of tasks.
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Adam Keever
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- Adam,
The use case is close to what you describe, except that I don't know in advance how many tables (levels) there would be from task to sub-task to sub-sub-task and onward. I can of course limit the number of levels, but the application is for scoping out work for bid and proposal purposes. So the work breakdown structure could vary considerably from project to project in terms of depth (how many levels of sub-tasks), and horizontally (how many tasks at a given level). The key part of the use case is to roll up budgets to each level from whatever sub-task resource costs were assigned to.
So for example, say a project is to design an airplane. Level 1 is the airplane. Level 2 would have sub-tasks for the fuselage, engines, tail assembly, and wings. Level 3 would have sub-tasks for each Level 2 task, so for example, under the tail assembly there might be tasks for elevators, trim tab, rudder, etc. Level 4 sub-tasks for the elevators could include actuators, hinges, the elevator control surface, and other key subsystems. And it continues. At some lower level costs will be estimated and assigned. The challenge is how to roll up those costs to the intermediate levels. For example, the program manager may want to know labor costs for the tail assembly, and if they're high, drill down another level to see if the cost increases are coming from the elevators, trim tab, etc.
I often see projects with as many as five to seven levels, so that would require one table for each level. But if that's the solution then I'll look at that again.
I'll look at cascading lookups which I'm not using right now.
Does this explain the use case better?
Thank you for your time and thoughts on this.
Paul Streit
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Paul Streit
------------------------------- MarkShnier__You
Qrew Legend
I did an app like this before for a Bill OF Materials for auto components with subassemblies or sub-assembles and in that design, as I recall, we had 9 levels of depth allowed. I don't think that we has nine tables but I think that we had we had nine relationships.
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Mark Shnier (YQC)
Quick Base Solution Provider
Your Quick Base Coach
http://QuickBaseCoach.com
mark.shnier@gmail.com
------------------------------ - I was able to get the same result using one tasks table and relating it to itself:
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Adam Keever
------------------------------- Adam,
Very helpful. Would it be possible for you to send me a link to your tasks test app above so I can see how you constructed the tasks table relationship to itself, and the cascading lookups?
Thank you,
Paul Streit
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Paul Streit
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