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Question

Transition from multiple choice text to multiple choice user efficiently

  • February 18, 2019
  • 0 replies
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I am currently making our teams app more efficient. I have a Work Requests table and an Employee table. In the Work Requests table, there are multiple "person" fields currently set up as multiple choice text fields:Field Tech, Designer, Reviewer, and Approved by. I recently made the Employee table to list all sorts of necessary information regarding employees and linked their name to their "user." 

My question is - how might I efficiently change these multiple choice text fields to be linked to a specific user without deleting said person fields and completely redoing them because there are countless reports and rules and formulas that use these fields, and we have over 3500 Work Request records which is why I am asking for some advice. My overall goal is to be able to have those person fields be linked to a user, so I can, for instance, have an email notification be sent to the "Reviewer" of a Work Request when it has been approved.

The other issue I am running into is making a relationship between the Employee table and the Work Request table. Each Work Request can have multiple employees assigned to it and each employee can have multiple work requests. Is a double relationship recommended for this?

Thanks for any help!

    My question is - how might I efficiently change these multiple choice text fields to be linked to a specific user without deleting said person fields

    I don't really understand exactly what you're asking, you want to have a QB user named Field Tech? But it seems clear that part of your solution is a helper field that uses ToUser() function https://login.quickbase.com/db/6ewwzuuj?a=dr&rid=178&rl=jk

    Is a double relationship recommended for this?

    This is called a "many to many relationship". The foundational idea is that the 'relationship' is a third table - call it Actual Requests, let's say. So say you have PersonA, PersonB and PersonC and you have WR1, WR2 and WR3. If PersonA is assigned to WR2, you create a new Actual Request with those characteristics, and Actual Requests is a child to both parent tables.

    There's TONS of education out there on this. You shouldn't have much trouble finding "Many to Many" tutorials that make this seem a lot more intuitive than it sounds like here.
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