DavidHalter2
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Re: Filtered tables and search
Okay. Thanks much.. I wonder if it was a problem when I put a search box on the app home page. That might have been the problem rather than on the table home page. In which case I either need to remove the search box from the time page or figure out how to limit that one. Either of those is a possible solution. Thanks again, Dave4Views0likes1CommentRe: Filtered tables and search
Mark: Thanks for that about the 1st question. There's a lot riding on that IsCurrentUser field and would be bad if that broke the whole thing! Re: the second part. That's exactly it: I set up the role that he was testing to have a Table Home page to show a report that was filtered based on that user's location. So show the customer if IsAtCurrentUsersLocation = 1 then show the Customer -- everyone else was filtered out. BUT from what he said, when he used the search box on that page with the report as set up, he indicated he was seeing Customers from other locations in addition to Customers from the current location. Do you think that was what was happening? Or is that not really possible? Thanks Dave ------------------------------ Dave Halter ------------------------------2Views0likes3CommentsFiltered tables and search
Hi Quickbase community: I posted many times recently because I was on a trial period for my organization. We may eventually go with quickbase, but for the moment are on pause with that process. One of the test users I had review the initial application asked a question which I was unable to answer before the end of the test period. The following is my best to describe the situation. 2 questions actually come out of this description. I have 3 tables: Locations, Customers, and Users. Each location has many customers, and each location has many users. -- [(Yes, each customer could have multiple locations and each user could have multiple locations, but it doesn't actually make sense to give the customers multiple locations in my situation and adding that bit of complexity about the users doesn't help me ask the question here and won't affect the answer, I don't think)]. I set up a field in USERS where IsCurrentUser = 1 for currentUser and 0 for non-current user. Using summary, formula, and lookup fields this value is passed to the Customers table such that when the customer's location is the same as the current user's location, then a field, say IsAtCurrentUsersLocation = 1 in the Customer table. Every customer with a different location will get a 0 in that field. Thus, each user can have a default view of Customers where IsAtCurrentUsersLocation = 1, meaning they see only customers at their own site. So, 2 questions arise: 1) when I'm the only user, or there were only a couple of test users, this arrangement works fine. What happens if 2 users from 2 different locations are simultaneously accessing the database? In theory, User A and B at two locations will each tag a location with a 1 and therefore customers at locations A and B will both show up for user A, even though location B would be wrong. Is this indeed a possibility? Or is this really not ever going to show up? 2) Then the question that arose from my test user: he saw a problem when he was viewing the default filtered table which showed only Customers at his current location. He noticed that when using the search function on that page, it was showing him results from all locations, not just the filtered location, let's say it was Michigan. Thus, if we had John Smith in Maryland, John Smith in Michigan, John Smith in Massachusetts, and John Smith, Jr, in Maine, he was going to see all those search results instead of just the John Smith from Michigan. As you can imagine, this would lead to incorrect choices, but he was also concerned about performance. Any suggestions or thoughts? Thanks, Dave ------------------------------ Dave Halter ------------------------------28Views0likes5CommentsButton to clear 'primary address' some other record and allows adding to the current child record
Hi. Another question. I seem to be missing something about how buttons seem to work. For this post, I referred to Setting a 'Primary' address- How to ensure only 1 child record has a checkbox checked | Discussions (quickbase.com). I needed that functionality, but I've got another question to follow up that one. I'm wondering, however, if a user is in the midst of adding a New address, what can the user do to clear that primary address checkbox from other records in order to allow adding the new address as a primary? Is there a button/url design that will function this way during the Add process? I tried adding a ToggleCheckbox button (thanks Kirk Trachy) which triggers an automation to do the search and clear, but it only seems to fire correctly when editing the record, not when entering a new record. And I suppose another option is to use a button to make the changes in the parent form after the new record is entered with the similar buttons and maybe an automation (thanks again Kirk Trachy) but I want to be able to allow the user to change it when they think of it as they are entering the new record. Is that possible? Thanks Dave ------------------------------ Dave Halter ------------------------------23Views0likes1CommentMobile -- Add child record button not appearing before initial save occurs.
Hi all. On the mobile app, the button to add a child record doesn't seem to appear until the initial save occurs. For the user this is a bit annoying... Enter new data and save. View the data. Go back to the part of the form you needed to for adding the child record. On the web app this is not the case. You can just fill all the info nicely from one form to the next and it flows really well. Is there a fix or work-around for this on mobile? I suppose a business case might look like this: Parent table -- client Child table -- project Child table -- tasks If no client exists, add a client --> add a project --> add tasks. But on mobile it feels like add a client, save --> view client --> add a project, save --> view project --> add a task (or many tasks) --> return to view project. -- Any way to jump over that step of the view form when on mobile? -- Takes a what feels like a three step process on the web interface and makes it feel like almost twice as long. My concern is user experience. By the time the user gets to the part about "adding tasks" they are ready to be done with the data entry and move on. It just makes it that much more difficult for my user to make a complete record that I can analyze and report later. I've been reviewing almost all the mobile posts. From what I gather it's not really possible, but maybe I'm wrong? Is there, for example a formula rich text solution to this for mobile? If not, I'll probably look at designing a mobile form such that the child record portion will appear only after the record is saved and then it will appear near the top of the form, instead of where it resides at the moment near the bottom. Thanks Dave PS, I see I've been one of the active users on the community. Thanks so much for all your help and prior questions and answers. I'm evaluating this for my non-profit and I'm not a DB programmer and only dabble in any other programming, so all your answers have been very helpful. I just wish I could contribute to answering some of the other questions people post here in order to give back. #Mobile ------------------------------ Dave Halter ------------------------------25Views0likes0CommentsRe: How to: Edit and automation and have it run again on all applicable records?
Thanks for the interest Mark. I can try! We are looking at tracking activities that occur in a training program where there is also heirarchy. That is: staff / senior trainee / junior trainee. Sometimes staff trains two juniors. Sometimes a senior trains a junior with the help of the staff. Sometimes a senior does the activity with the help of the junior and no staff. And other combinations. Thus, you might have records: Primary actor Secondary Actor Tertiary Actor Grade Activity details (date, label, etc. multiple col) senior staff junior 2 activty 1 staff senior 1 activity 2 senior junior staff 4 activity 3 junior senior staff 3 activty 4 Each person may have a slightly different role in the activity even when the Actor position is the same. Thus activity 1 the senior needed more help but in activity 3 the senior needed very little help and in activity 4 they were teaching while in activity 2 they were observing the staff. This data entry model makes a lot of sense when entering because that is how the activity proceeds and how it is already commonly recorded. IE, entering the data in the same way I want the eventual report is problematic because the people just don't think that way. My automations solved that problem to get a report of the trainees (not the activities). I end up wanting a list of activities for each person. So the list above needs to be reported like this: activity person job category in words grade (may or may not be same as reported grade) activity 1 senior primary needs lots of help 2 activity 2 senior secondary observing 1 activity 3 senior primary needed very little help 4 activity 4 senior secondary taught the junior 4 activity 1 staff secondary teacher 6 activty 2 staff primary teacher 6 activity 3 staff secondary teacher 6 activity 4 staff tertiary teacher 6 activity 1 junior tertiary observing 1 activity 3 junior secondary observing 1 activity 4 junior primary needed very little help 3 The automations I have set up do this nicely based on rules which may or may not be obvious above, but the problem became today that I had it set up inappropriately and it passed the blanks for tertiary for activity 2. And it did it over and over and over (500+ records in my test database). So, that was a problem. What I really wanted was to fire the automation over and just get it reset. Probably one thing I could do is set up a time-based triggers and run an overnight automation basically run the same automations but getting it right could be tiresome if I mess it up a couple times and have to wait until every night to let it run to see if I set it up correctly. In the long-term, I'm thinking about what will happen if the reporting requirements change and then I've got a very useful set of database records with all the correct information but all the wrong answers, so to speak. So, 2 questions remain, then. Is there a better way to get the desired result? Second, if not, is there a better way to get the automations to fire when I want them to particularly if I'm testing or else if the reporting requirements change, which they might. Thanks Dave ------------------------------ Dave Halter ------------------------------0Views0likes1CommentHow to: Edit and automation and have it run again on all applicable records?
Hi: So, I've written automations (all variations on one theme) that transform input data to a secondary table that will contain the output data and formats we want in the end. But, I've realized that I need to edit the automation now because its not acting the way I want it to. It's copying over some blank values which won't be useful and will just be confusing. My thought was: remove all the secondary table records, make a field on the input data table that I can change simultaneously and Voila, the automation will run again. I used Mark Shnier's focus date range parent-child table method to make a single field change simultaneously throughout the table and no luck. No automation fired. Is there another strategy I should use? Hmm, I guess since I'm still in app building mode I would be able to export the records the automation will run on, clear all the records, and re-import the records. That should fire the automations again. But that's probably not a good strategy in a live app environment. Thanks Dave ------------------------------ Dave Halter ------------------------------13Views0likes4CommentsRe: Filter a lookup table based on a date in the current record?
Thanks Mark No I don't think that's quite it. But, I have used some snapshots here. And I've kinda decided that it probably shouldn't be a big deal. For those few times it is, the person involved can maybe pick a less busy time, switch back to the old status, and then switch back to the new status. It'd probably be fine. Dave ------------------------------ Dave Halter ------------------------------42Views0likes0CommentsFilter a lookup table based on a date in the current record?
Hi: I'm working with staff / managers and activity tables. Each staff --> multiple activities. Let's say I want to enter an activity for last week, but this week one of my staff was promoted to a manager. The new manager shows up in my activity form under "managers" not under "staff" because the lookup field provides the staff table filtered on current status rather than on last week's status. And, let's say I go to edit one of the prior activity records, my new manager starts causing problems by not really being a proper staff person anymore, even though he was a staff person at the time of the record entry. I've tried multiple things but can't seem to hit on the right solution. For example, I've made an "assignments" table with start and end dates. Staff with multiple assignments and activities with multiple assignments. Then tried a conditional drop-down based on the date field, but it doesn't give me a 'between' two dates, it only gives me a choice to match dates exactly... Surely I'm not the first person to try to do this. I imagine this can come up regularly in a business situation, whether people move departments or get promoted, or move locations. You don't want their new data showing up in older records and making changes there. Any ideas? Dave ------------------------------ Dave Halter ------------------------------65Views0likes2Comments