Hi guys,

I have 4 basic tables which are related and I would like to show as much info as possible in a single form like this:

The tables are:

• Insured: Main parent table
• Policy: related to Insured
• Vehicle: related to Policy
• Driver: related to Vehicle

What I am trying to do with the above form layout is to have the Insured data upfront and then allow the user to enter any detail data via the ListView at the bottom.  I am not sure if the above relations can be handle by SF on the same form in order to show all related data to its parent as well as to update the FK fields in the child BOs?

I would appreciate any suggestion/indication for the above form layout.  At this point I am exploring all new things I can do in .NET.

Thanks!

Edhy Rijo

Edhy,

By "training issue", I meant training your users! (not your training   )  The "flat" presentation in your example is clean and may be easily understood by them once they've had enough training.  

If this isn't enough for them to understand the parent -> child relationships, maybe there are some visual cues you could add to the form.  I don't know, maybe aligning the list boxes vertically (parent above the child) and indenting each child level a little.   Maybe some way to use a mini treeview on the page to manage the children.  Not sure.

Good luck

Larry

Well, I also need training

Once again, thanks for your input and I will show the final screenshot when ready, but before that some other posting may be needed from me.

Edhy Rijo

Hi Edhy,

I have struggled with similar UI presentation with my customer maintenance window.

I opted to utilize the tab control.  This allowed the most footprint for the window.  There are seven related chunks of data that I am displaying on each customer record (notes, addresses, contacts, quotes, orders, shipments and invoices).  That is a lot of data to squeeze into an itty-bitty living space.  There are far more than seven related tables, however.  Each tab may reference several other tables to get the data presented. 

In addition, I also use a modal window when adding a note, address, or contact.  The rest are view only, but a double-click on the appropriate line item (and with the proper authorization) will open a maintenance window for the object.

It is all quite fast.  Quite painless to put together.

The main reason that I bring this up is the possibility that your interface will grow.  For example, what if the user desired to see a list of dependents.  The way you have it structured, the addition will put you into a tailspin--where do you fit another group box in?  For a tab control...just add another tab and fill it in with the data that you need.

I am still working on the customer maintenance window.  Always will.  Users keep coming up with good ideas to implement.

HTH,
Bill

Hi Bill,

Thanks a lot for the reply and the screenshot.

If you don't mind, could you please email me this screenshot since it did not come up nice in the forum so I can have a better look.

Also you are right about future expanding, this is something that will never end

Edhy Rijo

Hey, Edhy...maybe this will look a little better.  I attached a jpg of a screenshot.  The embedded image in the body of a thread does gets a bit distorted.

Talk to you later,
Bill

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the screenshot, it is much clear.  Now I see what you meant, believe or not I have done this kind of design in Visual FoxPro long, long time ago and I think I will follow the page tabs even though the relation of my child tables are not to the same parent table, but guess will look better than the plain ListView control and will give me a chance to incorporate any new data.

One question, how do you get the combobox to display the message [Select an Address] for NULL/empty values? 

Edhy Rijo

Edhy, check out the TopMostValue property of the combo. I think that is how Bill is doing it (that's how I'd do it). Set the text to whatever, the value to the value you return in your BO if the value is NULL (from BO mapper settings).

You can be rather creative in the tab pages...not limited to ListViews, of course.  So far, I have kept them to a toolbar and listview; however, the sky's the limit...charts, graphs, reports, etc..

Greg is right (hey, Greg!) about the combobox.  I use that to try to prompt the user into proper action.  For some reason, a blank combobox is usually left blank.

Bill