Why Draw in Parent Fields in to a Child Record using a Knack Database App?

Sometimes you want a value in a parent records to be present, natively, in child records too. Some Knack database app functions only allow access to native fields (fields that are part of the child table itself). These include sorting, display rules, emails, and others. Here I give you the lowdown on this topic ...check it out. Thanks!

Interested in my Knack database app services? ... Book a call with me here: https://calendly.com/daveparrish/callwithdave

Full Transcript

I'm doing another

video if you like these please

like it on YouTube subscribe to my

channel too please uh today's topic

let me grab it

why draw in a parent field into a child

record Knack database app

in my last video I was talking

about conditional rules and using text

formulas or other things to draw on

values natively because there's some

cases where you want that to happen so I

thought I'd explain that a little more

this won't be long I'm just going to

give a few examples

um but let's go for it thanks

thank you

okay here's the lowdown let's get this

started

I'm just going to talk about some

examples what you're looking at here let

me make myself smaller

it's the back end but it's an invoicing

system so here up top we have

information about the invoice

and if you know anything about invoices

I have video on that too

what you're going to do

is to an invoice you're going to add a

line item

and then each of these are expense items

and they're

the expensive build against something

but I'm going to give you an example

here you may have a date related or a status

related to the invoice overall

and there's lots of cases where you want

that date and that status to also apply

to the line items itself

now you can make a view when you're

building all your pages and draw it in

from the parent but there's

a number of times and I'll give you an

example sometimes in these invoicing

things we do a view that is all expense

line items and they may be grouped by invoice but

we want we want the date to we have to

start with a table of line items

so here's the deal with date on any

table if we wanted to sort those by

date like through source

and through sort

this sort function only uses native

fields so if we wanted to sort them by the line

item not not buy the the invoice we

would want to go use uh we could use an

equation field

put it natively into meaning over here

when we're at line items

we could draw it in and say whatever

the invoices date is make the line items

date that too

and there's so it's always going to

be whatever it is

I'm going to give you another example

back to this page

something else could happen too if we're

if we edit have the ability to edit the

invoice and we want to change a date on

that if it's connected through an equation

that will automatically apply

to all the child line item records so

you don't have to make a bunch of record

rules to capture things

um I'm gonna give you another example in

this case with invoices the invoice has

a status

invoice status so let's just say it's

paid or not paid on every whatever they are

here's another typical one where

whatever the invoice overall invoice is

status you want to have a matching field

down here that is connected to it via

likely a text formula so every single

there might be several line items for

one invoice will always have the same

status as whatever you've set the

invoice so you set the status once to

allowance paid let's say

you don't have to do it through record

rules you could but it's more tedious

building out if you make every line on

them like this and then here's what the

deal with statuses and a lot of these

things uh once it as that's it is at

some status let's say it's just under

review there's there's draft it's

submitted for review and that's paid

once it's submitted you do not want them

making changes to an invoice that you're

now reviewing because it doesn't make

sense here's what I got let's see what

how we're going to review it they can't

be changing at Mid so whoever's making

these invoices you want to not be able

to change it so if you're drawing the

status natively I'm going to give you

this edit when you edit a particular field

there's something called display rules

and this this example if the payment status is

paid the value means it's going to hide edit

so they have no longer are able to edit

it and you could do the same thing with

the ability to delete here

a similar type of thing where you're

you're making some value

in the parent record that applies to all

the child records so because these

display rules only use stuff that's

native so you want to get it down if

you're the parent you want to get it

down as easily and consistently as

possible into the child record without

you having to do a bunch of stuff

and another thing too is uh

let's let's go to let me find it here no

uh let's just do an edit form this isn't

a specific thing emails

when you have emails

when you want to select fields to put in

here they only allow you to have native

Fields you don't see any connection

stuff here so you're depending on the UK

use case I'm not even going to give an

example if you have a piece of content

that you want in the email this could be

done here or through tasks the two

places you do emails

um you want to draw it in natively so

again I have videos on that but you're

either going to use

you're going to put the field first

into the child record let's just say

this is line items you're gonna put the

field in here you can either do it

through a text formula

depending on what it is

or an equation that just grabs a value

and they're going to only let you get

certain things the equation is not going

to let you get a text

um or you can create record rules which

is a little more tedious but sometimes

you might want to do that

that's what I got these are real typical

things that I always use to draw in

natively and I'm sure there's a bunch of

others and Native when I say that means

it exists here on its own it's not

something you can go grab

in the table itself it exists

it doesn't it's not on a Pages side where I I can

go grab a parent value or I can do it

the other way around too and just drop

it in and then it works when you're

looking at your app but there's cases

where it has to be present and this is

what I'm talking about with this video

that's what I got today thanks