Hi everyone,

I'm going through the (basic) training on SLX web development in SLX 7.5.4 and I've come accross something that I would like to know how to do but the training does not provide me the information I need.  What I am trying to do is create an association of contacts to a project, but have the AddEditProjectContacts dialog display only those contacts that are associated the project's associated account.  As it is right now I see all contacts, regardless of whether they are associated to project's associated account or not.  I know that this can be done, especially since the training manual from Sage states the following.

"Although it would be ideal to default the current project and show only contacts in the lookup who belong to the associated account, we'll skip that customization in class because it is time-consuming, and we want to get through all of the material.  If you're interested in learning how to do this, explore another out-of-the-box form that implements the same kind of functionality or request a video in the Developer Subscription".

Now, I want to learn how to do this, and I would prefer to do it now while I am going through these exercises so that it is in context.  Could anybody tell me how this is done or point me to a video tutorial somewhere?  I would really appreciate an answer!

I also found info in the Developer Subscription Videos a reference to the following video.

Correlate Lookups When Launched in a Dialog
SalesLogix Platform: End User – Web
Version:v7.5.3

This sounds like what I am looking for but I do not have access to the video or can find it anywhere.

Thanks

Hi Dejan,

To get started take a look at this post and look at the Seeding info under Lookup Restrictions.

http://customerfx.com/pages/integrationblog/2009/09/23/the-saleslogix-web-slxlookup-control.aspx

-Ryan

Hi Ryan,

I think that this is in the right direction but not quite what I am after...if I may explain exactly what I want to do then maybe it will make more sense.

The user navigates to a ClientProject entity denoting a project associated to a given client (Account entity).  There is a tab below named ProjectContacts that lists all project contacts (Contact entities) associated to that project (this is a 1:M relationship).  The tab gives the user the ability to add new associated contacts by clicking on the "plus" icon to add a contact.  Once the user clicks this button a form is displayed that allows the user to select a project, contact, and specify a role for the contact.  Now what I would like to do is the following.

1. Pre-populate the project element with the currently selected project and prevent the user from changing this.


2. Have Contact lookup show only those contacts that are associated to the account defined on the specific project.  For example, if contacts X, Y, and Z were associated to account A1, and project account (client) was defined as A1, then adding a new contact would only let the user select from contacts associated to A1, in this case X, Y, and Z.

I think that right now I am running into two issues.  First, I need a way to pass the related values from the parent form, and second is restrict the lookups based on those values.

I hope this clarifies it.  If I am misunderstanding something please let me know.  I'm learning this tool for the first time and App Architect is not proving to be a very simple tool.

Dejan

For #1 you need to set that in code. See this article to get the parent project http://customerfx.com/pages/crmdeveloper/2009/04/08/accessing-the-current-parent-entity-from-a-code-snippet-action.aspx. Once you get the parent project you'd set that in the lookup using mylookupcontrol.LookupResultValue to that project. You can set additional properties to make it so the user cannot change the value.

For #2, the article I linked to previously (http://customerfx.com/pages/integrationblog/2009/09/23/the-saleslogix-web-slxlookup-control.aspx) is exactly what you need. You'll set the SeedProperty to ClientProject.Account.Id (assuming your entity is named ClientProject and it has a relationship to a parent account named "Account").

Hey again,

For #1, I will try that later.  I did not realize that it had to be done programmatically.

For #2, something is not right still in my implementation of this feature.  I will try to explain the full relationship below in hope that this will help answer the question.

The AddEditProjectContacts form is the form that needs to exhibit the "dependency" behavior.  This form belongs to the ClientProjectContact entity which is in a M:1 relationship to ClientProject entity and to Contact entity (ClientProjectContact is really a linking entity used to connect many contacts to many projects).  ClientProject entity is in a M:1 relationship to Account.  Therefore, it should be possible to get the Account.Id all the way from ClientProjectContact entity by accessing the property ClientProject and then Account.

Now, on my AddEditProjectContacts form I have 3 fields, Project, Contact, and Role.  Role is just a text box so it is irrelevant.  Project is a lookup for ClientProject and it returns a ClientProject entity.  Contact is a Contact entity lookup, and it returns a Contact entity (this is represented as MainEntity.Contact where MainEntity in this case is ClientProjectContact and Contact is its parent property).  I have to restrict Contact lookup in this case to allow "lookup" only of those Contact values that are valid for the currently selected ClientProject.Account.Id in Project.  In other words, users selection of the project dictates which contacts can be looked-up.  I have tried specifying a SeedProperty on Contact lookup as ClientProject.Account.Id with no effect, I have also tried specifying ClientProject.AccountId (ClientProject also has the Account Id as one of its static properties) also with no effect.  I even tried a combination of SeedProperty and SeedValue (SeedValue was set dynamically in the Data Bindings) to no effect.  In every combination I still get all of the possible contacts associated to all accounts as the lookup results.

Now, I am either doing something very wrong, or I am missing a crucial piece of the puzzle here.  I still do not understand how the SeedProperty would even know what ClientProject was selected (or ideally set) in Project when I cannot see a method anywhere to "notify" the Contact lookup of the ClientProject currently selected on the AddEditProjectContacts form.

Is it just me or is this stuff kind of messy?  Oh and, thank you so much for your help.  I just wish that there were more openly available tutorials and guides to get me started, but sadly there are not