Hi Coda Community! Today I was working in my billing app and found a problem that i dont know how to solve.
I have a page where I create delivery note templates, I add the customer who I’m making the note for and the items he wants to buy, whose price and article ID values get calculated via lookup columns.
Here you can see Customer info and Article info on the template page:
This information is later stored on a table that connects the customer and article rows via a shared ID.
My problem is that I also need to be able to modify those delivery notes in case I made a mistake or want to later change something. The way I thought of doing that was a view of the database, filtered by the delivery note ID, and directly editing the rows from there.
Now if you think about it, the price of the articles changes from time to time, so the price column must be static…
How do I modify the Customer/Articles with the lookup columns working as I do on the template?
I think that the solution could be simple but i’m also not sure if i have understood the problem correctly
From what i’ve understood you’d like to “save” that note on a table and you would like to easily change it in a later moment if needed but in an easy way, am i correct?
Could you share a dummy copy of your doc so i can try my “stupid solution” and see if it works?
Hi @SureKT
The doc is in “view only” so i cannot put my hand on it
In any case i’m pretty sure the “problem” can be solved using just one table to keep all your notes!
You just create a view of that table in the “modify” section and you can filter it, finding the precise row you want to edit (i would use interactive control btw )
Little suggestion: You can also incorporate buttons if those notes are “compiled” by people that are not you because not every new users not familiar with coda is going to just create a new row, it could be an UI/UX cool improvements (but you will need a new “input” table somewhere )
P.s. @Jean_Pierre_Traets is way more knowledgeable than i am so he is probably going to find another hot solution for you
Thanks for the help @Mario, and sorry for the viewpermissions, I already changed them to edit… (First time sharing doc)
I already use a view of the database with filters for the respective ID, but I can’t edit it with the respective lookups that autocomplete a lot of columns.
Also nice idea about making it easier for new people to use, I’ll definely make it easier than it is now, but i’m first trying to make it work
Hi @SureKT
I’ve had give a shot to your doc and it’s… (in my opinion ) …overcomplicated!
But if you find yourself comfortable in it it’s fine
My best is probably to convert all the “options” to be lookup and so select list on the main table
I’ve made an example here
in the " Forma de pago" column, if you convert those text in “link” to other table you can then use the easy interactive filter, and you can then manage those different “Forma de pago” like a link of the table “devCLI - Forma de pago”
This is not possible to “make static”, but in this case you can just write the data as you do in “Precio” and create an interactive filter from here:
(or in a more advanced setup you can configure 2 slider to create your intervals of value to filter for like that: )
If you need those data to be connected with other data remaining static you have 2 options in my opinion, the easiest one is to write those other data in some other column in their row, i would prefer this one.
The second one is to create a db where to store changing values in time with an intervals of validity date, so then compare those with the delivery notes date but it is a complicated approach…
Now, there a lot of complicated interrelationship in your doc so if those ideas are enough for you to overcome this issue i’m happy, if not just tell me what specific filter you would need and i can try to understand better the issue
Then i have some idea to make it more “easy” to work with, like some detailed view but let’s first make it work
Thanks for your ideas @Mario! I think I already found an approach to the solution I was looking for, but your additions might help a lot and I will definely take a look back at them when the doc is working fine
The biggest problem I had was the “Modify” concept, as for already existing delivery notes you can’t have dynamic prices.
My take on this is to copy the rows I want to modify into another table, which does have lookup columns that auto complete price, article ID, taxes etc… and then when you’re done, return the columns back to the database table.
If you have any other suggestions please feel free to comment here, and thank you
Would you mind to update the sharing settings of your embedded doc?
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