How to skip from form to browse?

[Themis Skiathitis]

I need a way to be able to skip conditionally from a form to a new record on an embedded browse.

As it stands the form is a customer entry form and the browse is for recording transactions.

I want to be able to skip all the fields in the form if the customers details have already been entered and skip to the new record in the named browse.

Problem is I'm not even sure where to start so any suggestions would be appreciated. As usual, thanks in advance :)

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: How to skip from form to browse?

Themis,

I suppose such a thing could be done with a script that checks each field in the primary table to verify that none are 'blank'.

However, I think what you're talking about may not be such a good idea. If the user needs to change a value in the current primary table record they'll have to cancel the pending new record in the browse. Many will simply mouse out of the browse object to do this. Guess what, when focus leaves the browse object the new (empty) record there will be saved to your table. So they'll then have to back and clean up the mess, or your child table will quickly populate with empty records.

-- tom

[Themis Skiathitis]

RE: How to skip from form to browse?

Hi Tom and thanks for the input once again.

While I appreciate what you are saying about the blank records in the browse, they are far easier to remove should they occur than the operator having to either Tab thru the client detail form or worse still have to reach for the mouse to go into the browse and then page down to the last record.

I actually managed to achieve what I wanted by using the skip field rule but when I tried to edit an existing record I couldn't get into the field! Well you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men!

So I obviously need to find another way round this.

If you can think of any other way to achieve this I'd be very grateful :)

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: How to skip from form to browse?

Themis,

Ok, how about this ?

Add a logical field to the primary table in your set. Call it something like "DetailsDone". Arrange to set it True when the user fills in the last required field. This will become a flag of sorts to tell Alpha to jump to the browse.

Then, in your data entry form, when a new primary table record is fetched arrange for a script to check the value of the new 'DetailsDone' field. If it's True, have the script shift focus to the browse and begin a new record. Otherwise, have the script put focus on the first missing required field in the primary table.

-- tom

[Themis Skiathitis]

RE: How to skip from form to browse?

Hi Tom, that sounds like a good idea!

So much so that I have created the field and marke all completed records accordingly.

Now we use a simple find to bring up the customer details, would we attach the script to this find?

Could you please give me a simplified version of what the script may look like? Especially the area that deals with changing focus as I have tried looking thru the help files and can't seem to find anything that relates to this type of "focus" the only references I can find are to ODBC, etc.

Thanks again :)

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: How to skip from form to browse?

Themis,

Assuming the flag field in your primary table is 'DetailsDone', and assuming the Browse object in your form is named 'Browse1'...

you could attach the following little script to the OnFetch event of the form:

IF DetailsDone then   'shift focus to browse
   this:browse1.activate()
END IF

The user can then scroll or enter new
transaction record in the browse.

-- tom

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: How to skip from form to browse?

Themis,

A5V4 won't be able to understand the reference to DetailsDone in the previous example. Use this instead:

''XBasic
tbl = table.current()  
if tbl.DetailsDone then
   this:browse1.activate() 
end if