Hi John,

I keep thinking of usability improvements whenever it looks like I'm close to the finishing line.

I have a Boolean field to mark certain types of appointments (interpreting jobs). I've already set things up so I can get all interpreting appointments for the same project in an Edit Appointment found set. I've also structured appointment creation so that all interpreting appointments for the same project are repetitions.

I've also set things up so that after I enter the Repeat Appointments layout I can change certain features (e.g. keywords, title, booth language, and other interpreting-specific features) across the board for all related repeat appointments by just clicking on the labels. This is working very well.

It now occurred to me that it would be useful to be able to do this for all appointments linked to the same job, on a filtered basis.

I would have a layout like the Mini Window Show Repetitions layout, except that at the top of the portal on the right I would have checkboxes labelled "Same date only" and "Same booths only", and there would be a garbage can in the portal row to put that appointment's ID in a global field used in a <> relationship to AppointmentID_kprime.

My trouble is with the "same date only" and "Same booths only" concept, as I need stored key fields on the right hand side of the relationship. Any ideas? Or is this too confusing?

Thanks!

Regarding "same date" and "same booth", that would filter the portal to show just those appointments of the same date, am I right about that? If so then the right side of the relationship is easy, and the left side is unstored (because it is based on the checkboxes). Am I following you?

Yes, that's right.

For the right hand side I guess I need to create a stored calc such as

ApptBooth & (paragraph mark) &
"-"

and while I regret the extra storage overhead (this database needs to be e-mailed on a weekly basis!) I can live with that.

But that method doesn't appear to work for dates.

Interesting issues here.

The Field & (paragraph mark) & "-" trick is really necessary when the right hand field in question may be empty. We use it when filtering the calendar appointments by Project, for example, since not all appointments will be assigned to Projects. You don't actually need it in cases where you know the field will always have content.

So in this case we know that everything in the calendar has a date, so we don't have to manipulate the right-hand side of the relationship this way, we can manipulate the left side by creating a date range relationship where, in some cases, the range is very wide (to show "all" records) and in some cases the range is a single date.

Note that you can do this range this with text as well, but only if there is always a value in the field on the right hand side. The text range looks like this:

FilterField ≤ RightHandField
FilterField ≥ RightHandField

To match any one "booth" or group of booths simply enter the booth into FilterField separated by carriage returns if there is more than one. To match all booths, enter "0¶z" into FilterField.

thanks, John, that should do it for me.

I suspect booths will often get entered later on, so I'll need the stored calc, but the range trick is a godsend (and now I realize I'd seen it somewhere in the solution!).