How to transfer forms to a related record

You've posted this request in the section of the forum intended for reporting possible bugs with the software. Had you posted in the FM GO section you would have received an answer much sooner and from more people.

Please look up "Portal" in FileMaker help. This is a frequently used tool that can help you here.

You need at least two, or possibly three tables for this, depending on whether you can use one table for both forms or not.

Patients---<Forms

Patients::PatientID = Forms::PatientID

Patients::PatientID should be an auto entered serial number and "allow creation of records should probably be enabled for Forms in the above relationship. (IF you need two tables for your two forms, add a third table with a similar relationship to Patients.)

Now a portal to Forms on the Patients layout can list all the existing forms for that patient and you can always add more Forms without losing the existing forms simply by adding more records to Forms with the same PatientID field.

Have you checked out "portals" yet?

Can you set up portals to your Form tables on your Patients layout? (Even if it turns out to be impractical to use the portal to display and edit your forms, being able to get this far tells me a lot about what you currently can and cannot do and the portals may prove to be a useful way to select a specific patient form for viewing/editing/printing.)

If you had looked up the term in Filemaker Help like I suggested, you would know the answer to that question.

Portals are an extremely useful tool for working with related records in Filemaker. You have three tables, one for Patients and two more for your different "forms". They should be related by a PatientID number so that you can see all the forms of one type for a given patient in a list. That "list" is very often produced in a portal in FileMaker.

But of course. The portal was just a step to get you started. If you can list the records from your forms in your portals, you have working relationshps that will help you work with your forms more easily. You can actually add a button to such a portal that brings up that specific form for the doctor to read.

But let's get you started with a button and script that creates a new form record for the current patient.

If you were able to get a portal working, you should have this relationship for both of your forms tables:

Forms1>----Patients-----<Forms2

Patients::PatientID = Forms1::PatientID
Patients::PatientID = Forms2::PatientID

Write this script, I am likely using different layout, field and table names, so change the names to fit your database:

#This script must be run from the Patients layout
Set Variable [ $PatientID ; Patients::PatientID ]
Go To Layout ["Forms" (Forms)]
New Record/Request
set field [Forms::PatientID ; $PatientID ]

Put a button on your Patients layout set to run this script. Since you have mentioned two forms, each in different tables, you can create two such scripts and a button to run each.

Some additional info that you may or may not have figured out already for the design of your forms:

Any data you collect in fields on your Patients layout need not be re-entered on the forms you pop up. Using a Patient Name field as an example, you can enter layout mode on your forms layout and then use the Field tool to add the Patient Name field to your forms layout, selecting the Patients table from the drop down list at the top of the specify field dialog and then selecting the patient name field from the list that appears.

With this set up this way. You'll see the patient name already entered on your form when you click the button you've just created for this purpose automatically.