I am creating long forms in FileMaker Pro with many unique questions in each form.
Each unique question is comprised of: a radio button, two fields of support data, 4 container fields, and a field for comments. There is also a map feature that collects the device location when using an iPad.
Because each question is unique, I have been creating up to 8 fields for each question. The forms I am creating contain up to 40 questions.
Example fields:
Question1
Question1_Comments
Question1_Value1
Question1_Value2
Question1_Image[1], Question1_Image[2], Question1_Image[3], Question1_Image[4]
Is there is a simpler way of approaching this?
Yes. I can offer some general suggestions, but it sounds like you need to normalize your data. Whenever you start creating fields of the form Field1, Field2, etc., that's a hint that you should probably create a separate table. In your case it sounds like you need at least three tables:
Forms
Questions
Files
This is going from the information you've provided that each form has many questions and each question has many files (container fields). Assuming that your form table already has a primary key field (a field that is unique for every record, often an auto-enter serial number), the Questions table would have the following fields:
id (primary key)
form_id
question
comments
value1
value2
Then the Files table would have two fields:
id
question_id
file
Then you'd create a relationship from Forms to Questions with Forms::id=Questions::form_id and from Questions to Files with Questions::id=Files::question_id. If both of the value fields will always have data, I'd leave them in the Questions table, but if one of them could be blank, or if you think you may someday want more than two, I'd break that into it's own table as well.
Check the FileMaker documentation for more information on creating relationships.
Related
There are two tables, one for Student and one for Borrowed Books. In the Microsoft Access (2010, 2013), it is easy to display a form Student based on the table Student, and other form BorrowedBooks based on the table Borrowed Books with their Record Source pointed.
How to do Form BorrowedBooks showing records for the current student showing on the Form Student one at one time? I'm looking to learn both VBA script and using the built-in controls to achieve the result.
Relationship between has been built. And it's one student to many books relationship.
One VBA approach like:
DoCmd.OpenForm "BorrowedBooks", , , "StudentID = " & Me.StudentID
The real trick is figuring out which event to put code into.
Another option is to use form/subform arrangement - main form bound to Students table and subform bound to BorrowedBooks. Have you looked at Microsoft Lending Library database template?
so if my understanding of your question is clear then you need to join operation on the tables
SELECT *
FROM
student
INNER JOIN borrowedbooks ON (The two table'S related column ie student.pk=borrowedbooks.fk)
you can also add a where clause if you want from here you can state you primary key in student table and it relationshi
I have a form a manager fills out for each employee once a week as an audit. Currently the form is in Excel. They would like this data to be tracked over time to review for trends. What they are asking for is basically a one to many relationship. Each answer on the form should create a new record in the table rather than one record per audit form. There are 34 audit questions which can result in either yes, no or n/a. Most of my experience is in SQL and Oracle databases so I am not very familiar with Access. They are looking for a form in Access they can input the audit response and then I can create trends and so forth in Tableau.
So for example Rep: Ms. Smith Date of audit: 09/10/2016 then each of the 34 questions with a year or no response. I cannot seem to manage to get the form working without having to enter the reps name 34 times. Any recommendations for an Access newbie?
Correct me if I misunderstood your question, but here is what I would do.
You can create 2 tables, one called Representative, the other Audit.
In the table Representative, create a field Rep_Name and let Access create an AutoNumber primary key.
In the table Audit, create a field Date/Time for the date of the audit, create a Number field Rep_ID, 34 Yes/No fields for your Audit questions and let Access create an Autonumber primary key.
Then in Database Relationships, link your Representative>ID with Audit>Rep_ID.
You can then create 2 forms, one where the User select/enters his name, and a second form where the date is entered/pre-filled and the questions will be asked. You can link both forms using a button.
My company uses a third-party vendor to get all of our NPS information. I'm trying to set up a data feed from this vendor into our data warehouse, which runs PostgreSQL.
The feed is in the form of 2 tab-separated text files: "question mapping" and the responses. The question map is one row per question, with columns for question id, question text, question label question type, etc - straightforward. The responses are one row per survey response, with a column for each question and stuff like user id, etc. Here are the 2 biggest problems:
The survey questions sometimes use the same question ID for different questions, resulting in multiple columns in the response data having the same name but not being the same question.
The number of questions could change, resulting in a different number of columns in the data.
Both of these things make it a real headache to automate a data feed into a single table.
I'm afraid I don't quite know how to phrase my real question other than, "Does anyone have any ideas how I can accomplish this?" If I think of something better than that, I'll come and update this, so for now:
Does anyone have any ideas at all about how I can efficiently set up my automated data feed without having to always drop and recreate everything?
If your data is a mess and doesn't really have well defined columns you can use the entity attribute value pattern, where you turn each fact into a set of rows with 4 columns - a unique row id, the same entity id for each row extracted from the map, an attribute column (where you put what would be the name of the column) you get from the key of the map, and a value column where you put the value from the map. It's not that neat but you can still query it and you won't have to drop it when you receive a map with a new column.
I have created an adaptation of the 'Goods' database that includes a quote feature. The user selects the customer (customer table), Product (product table), qty, discount ect.
The chosen entities then get saved to the quotes table and there is a 'print' function on form.
Whilst the information can be saved and the quote prints via a quote report, I'm having major difficulty in finding a way to add multiple products to a single quote.
The main objective is to be able to select various products and add their total price (product after addition of qty, discount) to a SUB TOTAL
Quote total is therefore the formula Tax+Shipping+SubTotal
any takers? :)
Hi guys,
Thanks for the response I really appreciate it. As for tax and shipping, they are just added in the form and are not pushed from anywhere else in the database. Its simply a type in form and display on report sort of thing. As you said in the answer, HansUp, the salesperson will compute it seperately and just input it.
As for tax, products will be shiped globally so the tax/vat shall be computed seperately also.
Also, each table DOES have its own unique ID.
More to the point of having QuoteProducts. I can't seem to get my head around it! Are you saying that whatever products are chosen in QuoteProducts will create a QuoteProd_ID and then that ID's total price will therefore be added to the Quote?
I tried making a subform before but through the 'multiple records' form but obviously every selection made its own ID. Is there any way you could elaborate on the Quote products part and how it allows multiple records to store to one ID? Without understanding it i'm pretty much useless.
In addition, how the multiple records are then added up to make the subtotal also baffles me. Is that done in the Quote form?
Edit 2
HALLELUJAH.
It works! I created a sum in a textbox on the footer of the subform and then pushed that into subtotal :)
I do have one slight issue:
I made a lookup&relationship for the ListPrice. I don't think its the correct way to do it as it comes up with the price of every light (i.e 10 products priced £10, £10 shows up ten times in dropdown).
Can you guys help?
List Price Problem
here's what i've tried:
1) Create >Client>Query Design
2) Show Products, QuoteDetails. For some reason, it automtically comes up with ListPrice, ProductID (as it should) and Product Name linked to ID in Products
3) Delete links with ListPrice and ProductName.
4) Show all in quoteDetails (*)
5) Create Multiple Items form
Doesnt work! What am I doing wrong?
I'm extremely grateful for both your help. If I can do anything, just shout.
Ryan
In addition to HansUp's stellar answer, you might be interested in DatabaseAnswers.org. They have a number of data models for free that might provide additional insight to your situation and possibly serve as inspiration for future projects you may encounter.
Edit 1
Forget about the form and report for a moment - they are important but not as important as the data and how you store the data.
In your current design, you have a quotes table presumably with an autonumber key field. For the purposes of this answer, this field is named Quote_ID.
The quotes table, as HansUp suggested, should store information such as the Customer_ID, Employee_ID, OrderDate and perhaps even a reference to a BillingAddress and ShippingAddress.
The quotes table SHOULD NOT store anything about the products that the customer has ordered as part of this quote.
Instead, this information should be stored in a table called QuoteProducts or QuoteDetails.
It's structure would look something like the following:
QuoteDetails_ID --> Primary Key of the table (autonumber field)
Quote_ID --> Foreign key back to the Quotes table
Product_ID --> Foreign key back to Products table
Quantity
UnitPrice
You may also want to consider a field for tax and a separate field for shipping per line item on the quote. You will inevitably run into situations where certain items are taxable in some locations and not others, etc.
This design allows a particular quote to have any number of products assigned to the quote.
Returning to your form \ reports, you would need to change your existing forms and reports to accomodate this new table design. Typically one would use a main form for the quote itself, and then a subform for the quote details (item, price, quantity, etc).
To get the quote total, you would sum the items in QUoteDetails for a particular Quote_ID.
You may also want to check out the Northwind sample database from Microsoft. From what I recall Northwind had a sample Orders system that might help make these ideas more concrete for you by seeing a working example.
For the first 3 tables mentioned in your comment, each should have a primary key: Customers, customer_id; products, product_id; and employees, employee_id.
The quotes table will have its own primary key, quote_id, and will store customer_id and employee_id as foreign keys. (I'm assuming you want employee_id to record which customer representative/salesperson created the quote.) You may also decide to include additional attributes for each quote; date and time quote prepared, for example.
The products offered for quotes will be stored in a junction table, QuoteProducts. It will have foreign keys for quote_id and product_id, with one row for each product offered in the quote. This is also where you can store the attributes quantity and discount. An additional field, unit_price, can allow you to store the product price which was effective at the time the quote was prepared ... which would be useful in case product prices change over time. I don't know whether tax should be included in this table (see below).
I also don't know how to address shipping. If all the products associated with a quote are intended to be delivered in one shipment, shipping cost could be an attribute of the quotes table. I don't know how you intend to derive that value. Seems like it might be determined by shipping method, distance, and weight. If you have the salesperson compute that value separately, and then input the value, consider how to handle the case where the product selection changes after the shipping fee has been entered.
That design is somewhat simplistic, but might be sufficient for the situation you described. However, it could get more complex. For example, if you decide to maintain a history of product price changes, you would be better off to build in provisions for that now. Also, I have no idea how tax applies in your situation --- whether it's a single rate applied to all products, varies by customer location, varies by type of customer, and/or varies by product. Your business rules for taxes will need to be accommodated in the schema design.
However, if that design works for you (test it by entering dummy data into the tables without using a form), you could create a form based on quotes with a subform based on QuoteProducts. With quote_id as the link master/child property, the subform will allow you to view all products associated with the main form's current quote_id. You can use the subform to add, remove, and/or edit products associated with that quote.
Not much I can say about the report. There is a lot of uncertainty in the preceding description. However, if your data base design allows you to build a workable form/subform, it should also support a query which gathers the same data. Use that query as the record source for the report. And use the report's sorting and grouping features to create the quote grand total.
Edit: With the main form/ subform approach, each new row in the subform should "inherit" the quote_id value of the current record in the main form. You ensure that happens by setting the link master/child properties to quote_id. Crystal Long explains that in more detail in chapter 5 of Access Basics by Crystal: PDF file. Scroll down to the heading Creating a Main Form and Subform on page 24.
Edit2: Your strategy may include storing Products.ListPrice in QuoteDetails.ListPrice. That would be useful to record the current ListPrice offered for a quote. If so, you can fetch ListPrice from Products and store it in QuoteDetails when you select the ProductID for a row in the subform. You can do that with VBA code in the after update event of the control which is bound to the ProductID field. So if that control is a combo box named cboProductID and the subform control bound to the QuoteDetails ListPrice field is a text box named txtListPrice, use code like this for cboProductID after update:
Me.txtListPrice = DLookup("ListPrice", "Products", "ProductID = " _
& Me.cboProductID)
That suggestion assumes the Products and QuoteDetails tables both include a ProductID field and its data type is numeric. And cboProductID has ProductID as its bound field and uses a query as its RowSource similar to this:
SELECT ProductID, ProductName
FROM Products
ORDER BY ProductName;
I'm fairly new to Access and have gotten stuck at a point despite hours of on-line research. In short, I'm trying to write a database that will store the answers that people give on several different tests. Some people take 1 test, some take 2, 3, etc. I need to store for each student what test(s) they took and what their answers were for each question. I feel like my current approach (make a separate field for each question on my MainRecord table along with a yes/no field for each test that can be taken) is cumbersome and leading to my ultimate problem: when I populate a continuous form with all of the test questions and an adjacent combo box to input their answer, I can't transcribe the combo box value back into my MainRecord. The data for the continuous form comes from a separate table (Test1) which has a field for question number and a lookup field that allows me to select the person's answer (i.e. A,B,C,D,E).
Is there a better way to construct my tables? If not, how can I get the combo box values on a continuous form into different fields on a table? Thanks, sorry if I sound like a moron.
You're going to need to look into a more generalized structure.
Here's a really basic structure that should work.
I can't help too much with all the continuous form stuff
Test
test_id
TestQuestion
test_id
question_id
question_order (used for sorting)
question_text
QuestionPossibleAnswers
question_id
possible_answer_value
possible_answer_prompt
Student
student_id
student_name
// etc...
StudentTest
test_id
student_id
date_taken
// whatever
(assuming a student can only take a test once)
StudentAnswers
student_id
question_id
student_answer (would be the possible_answer_value from "QuestionPossibleAnswers"
Anyway, when a student takes a test, your top form would be 'bound' to the 'StudentTest' table i guess. The continuous form would be based probably on StudentAnswer. The student_answer drop down would need to be bound to the current StudentAnswer.question_id's possible answers (through the query builder).
It's been years since i've done Access so i can't give step by step, I apologize, but the structure above is pretty sound (if not overly simple).