Need Relationship Advice

[gigiz]

Hello – I’m an author…using tap forms for a myriad of things and love it, but I’ve never tried using relationships before and I don’t know how to do it serve my needs.

What I’m trying to do at the moment is create forms for brainstorming and outlining my novels. *cough – what an author procrastinating writing her novel – looks like*

Can anyone help?

—-

The first form I created is called “Outlining Worksheet”, uses Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat methodology. I can use it to brainstorm plot points and fill in gaps as I think of them.

So, as an example, here’s a tiny part of my table setup.

Table Name = Outlining Worksheet

Working Title – (Text)
Series Title – (Text)
Word Count – (Number)
Genre – (Text)

Act 1 – (Section Header)

Opening Image – (Note)
Theme Stated – (Note)
Set-Up – (Note)
Catalyst – (Note)
Debate – (Note)

And on and on this form goes, I won’t spell out the rest – you get the picture.

Then – I want to take that rough outline and turn it into a chapter by chapter roadmap – so here’s the form I want to link and then subsequently autofill with the data from my Outlining Worksheet form.

So –

Table Name = Chapter Roadmap

Working Title – (Text) – these fields will all equal the fields from above – either I can enter them manually or they can autofill in someway, I really don’t care about this part too much – except to point out that the field “Working Title” will be essentially my “Primary Key” if I were using, say Microsoft Access (which I do know a little about using relationships in).
Series Title – (Text)
Word Count – (Number)
Genre – (Text)

Act 1 – (Section Header)

>>setting this all up in layouts, so off to the side there I want there to be autofill fields pulling the NOTE data from “Outlining Worksheet” into the bracketed areas below<<

Chapter 1 – (Note) –> {Opening Image – autofill from Outlining Worksheet}
Chapter 2 – (Note) –> {Theme Stated – autofill from Outlining Worksheet}
Chapter 3 – (Note) –> {Set-Up – autofill from Outlining Worksheet}

Chapter 4 – (Note) –> {Catalyst – autofill from Outlining Worksheet}
Chapter 5 – (Note) –> {Debate – autofill from Outlining Worksheet}

My question — HOW do I make those parts autofill? I know it has to do with relationships, but I don’t know how to set it up.

Can anyone help? :)

Best
Michelle

[Brendan]

Hi Michelle,

Relationships aren’t necessarily used for auto-filling in data. They’re used to just link forms together.

So with your Outlining Worksheet form, you could have a Link to Form field which connects to your Chapter Roadmap form. Although perhaps your Chapter Roadmap form would link to your Outlining Worksheet form. It all depends on how you look at things.

But perhaps if Outlining Worksheet is the parent form that links to the Chapter Roadmap form, then when you select an Outlining Worksheet record, you could see a list of the Chapter Roadmap records that are related the selected Outlining Worksheet record.

An easier example for me to comprehend, and hopefully you too, would be a Customer form that links to an Orders form. If you were selling multiple books, perhaps you would have a list of customers and a customer could have one or more book orders. So you would select a customer and then see the list of orders they’ve place for books from you.

So that’s how relationships work. It’s basically just one form linking to another form.

But perhaps you could upload your form template and I could take a look at it and see what you have in Tap Forms so far. Or email it to me at support@tapforms.com

Thanks,

Brendan

[Author]

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