Thank you all for your advice.

I have almost everything working the way I want except one thing:
I can't show a list of each teacher students with the information I
want.

In a teacher record I have a portal that shows information from
another table (Classes) with the field teacherID
In the Class table I have records with several fields like studentID,
teacherID, class name, grade, class name, etc.

when the teacherID is the same in both Classes table and Teachers
table, the portal I have in the teacher's record (pointing to the
Students table) shows me studentID, grade, but no class name ! why?

I tried to "point" the portal to the Classes table instead of the
Students table, but what I get is a lot of data and not only the ones
that have the same teacher.

I'm missing something, for sure. Well...I know I'm missing a lot...

Thanks
Pianoman
(Portugal)

"Pianoman" <pianoman.pt (AT) gmail (DOT) com> schreef in bericht
news:d48c4323-0cd8-424e-86ae-3f680f4361b5 (AT) e7g2000yqf (DOT) googlegroups.com...
Do you have join tables?
Are all your links correct?
Are all your linking fields of corresponding types? (text to text, number to
number)

be aware that you have to get your naming correctly. You are talking of
tables, where in fact you are talking about Table Occurrance (TO). It might
seem trivial to, you but there's a world of difference between them. One
table might have many TO's. What you see in the graph with all those lines
etc are TO's So when you are explaining about a portal from a TO, this TO
should have a name. If it is not clear to what table this TO belongs, or
what function it has, you will have to explain. (Or give the TO a better
name)

From TeacherTO you should be able to create a portal from ClassTO and
showing in this could be fields from StudentTO.
can you see the class name from the layout from teachers?

Solution:
Break it down by working backwards.
First what data is the most links away? Go there and check the data. Show
all your fields on the layout and make sure all data are correctly entered.
Actually look at them en remember them (or make a screen dump)
Go one TO down the flow, create a lyout from it, show all fields, create a
portal from where you came from, is it correct?
Work your way down all layouts with all TO's
Create as many temporary layouts as you need. Which is also a good idea in
actually understanding what you are doing and why something is working (or
not).

Be aware you are trying to create something pretty involved here without any
previous knowledge. Filemaker might seem easy, but with what you are trying
to do it is a mighty beast. You might try something easier first (a school
with class) and when that works as you need expand it step by step. You are
now trying to grasp multiple techniques at one time, which might actualy
work for you, but breaking them down in smaller steps might help.

--
Keep well / Hou je goed

Ursus

On 1 Mar, 11:12, "Ursus" <ursus.k... (AT) ziggo (DOT) nl> wrote:
Thanks a lot Ursus. I just got it right using your technique for
process verification.
Now I'm going to "attack" the report generation part.
Any basic advice I need to know?

I have one big doubt at this point: I think in the future I'll need to
separate data from this scholl year (2009/10) from other years (to
come). This data include mostly grades (evaluation) that students have
every 3 months or so.
My ideia was simply to use a diferent file for each year, but with
that (stupid) solution I will probably loose all the student history,
right?

Do you guys have any ideas about this?

Pianoman
(Portugal)

On 2010-03-01 15:22:20 -0800, Pianoman <pianoman.pt (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

The answer to "how do I track information from separate
years/programs/offices/etc" is NEVER, NEVER "I'll just make separate
files for each."

That is data structure madness.

Just put a Year field in each join table, and one in the table for
classes. Then you can track student enrollments and the classes
teachers teach each year. You can enter the year in a global field in
your Preferences or Settings table (read about 1-record tables for this
purpose) and have the data auto-entered on creation of records in each
of those tables. Then change that single field when 2010 becomes 2011.
Or Fall 2010 becomes Spring 2010. Whatever your divisions of time or
semesters or terms are.
--
Lynn Allen
--
www.semiotics.com
Member FBA
FM 10 Certified Developer

Try to work out the answer before I give it. Why have you put things
together in one file? Because they belong in one file. Why should another
year be any different? In the event you could always choose to anonimise
your data when doing statistics. BTW filemaker is not a very good number
cruncher. You can do some basic statistics on your data, but not complex.
Graphs etc can be done, but are a pain in the sit-upon. You will then have
to export (part) of your data to crunch them in an other application.

Answer: create a table for the years.

--
Keep well / Hou je goed

Ursus

After a short break, I'm back to my task.
The question for today is: how can I email several students at the
same time?

I have a portal that lists the students of a particular teacher. It
shows some basic information like: number, name, class name and also
has a "email" button.
This is fine, but sometimes I need to email ALL the students of a
teacher and also ALL the students of a particular teacher that attend
a particular class.

Is that possible? well...I know it's possible, but is it relatively
simple to do?

Thanks
Pianoman
(Portugal)

Pianoman,

You can better start a new thread in the group when asking a new question.
FMP is not a mass-mailer you might need a plug-in, but this is not my
strong-point.
--
Keep well / Hou je goed

Ursus


"Pianoman" <pianoman.pt (AT) gmail (DOT) com> schreef in bericht
news:9944aa46-4bc4-40fd-b549-fed7e048693d (AT) g28g2000yqh (DOT) googlegroups.com...