Create related records from a field above a portal

Two easy techniques to improve user experience

If a user wants to easily create related records, a portal based on a relationship set to allow creation is obviously appropriate.

Nevertheless, this built-in technique has some cons:

• the user needs to scroll to the first empty row before being able to create new records.
• he must know that only the first empty row allows creation.
• some interface elements are displayed on this empty row, while they make no sense (i.e. a deletion button, useless because there is yet no related record to delete)

This sample file presents two easy techniques that allow creation from a field placed above the portal.

The first one, the easiest as well, has been available since FileMaker 7 (although the auto enter calculation would require a little adaptation, because it’s making use of Self function, a FileMaker 9 feature)

The second one uses filtered portals, a FileMaker 11 feature.

Download