Q: I have a customised entity called Monthly Output Profile (my source table) which reads like this:
Month No Start End Output Name Target Number
1 1 April 09 30 April 09 Workshops 3
2 1 May 09 31 May 09 Workshops 4
3 1 June 09 10 June 09 Workshops 2
Etc. for 18 months. This is inputted all in one batch on 1st April 09 and never again altered.
I then have to input on a monthly basis my Actual Outputs for that Month just passed and I input on another form “Evidence for Output”, the Workshop details and the date the workshop was run, which looks like this.
Date of Output Output Name Actual Number
16 April 09 Workshops 1
17 April 09 Workshops 1
4 Jun 09 Workshops 1
At a later stage I will run a report that would look like this:
Month No Output Name Target Number Actual Number
1 Workshops 3 2
2 Workshops 4 0
3 Workshops 2 1
TOTAL 9 3
Which basically brings the two tables together linked by Month No and compares what was profiled for the Month and what was actually achieved.
In order to get these two tables to link up nicely in one report, I need to populate into my “Evidence for Output” table the Month Number as found on the “Monthly Output Profile” - so for the record dates 16th and 17th April the Month Number is 1, whilst for the date 4 Jun 09 the Month Number is 3.
I’m simplifying the problem somewhat for brevity and clarity, as I’m happy with the integrity of my approach with unique IDs and primary keys.
I would expect I need to run a workflow on the saving of the “Evidence for Output” that looks for the Month Number from the first table (Monthly Output Profile) that corresponds for the date of the Evidence record and then populates a field (Month No) into the “Evidence for Output” table.
I’ve a reasonable (gifted amateur) understanding of workflows and would be grateful on views as to:
1) whether this approach is possible using a workflow, if someone like me (gifted amateur) could do it and if there are any comparable samples) I could follow to get me going.
2) Any other alternatives that may work.
We have a few options to enforce or capture this within CRM
1. Create a relationships from the Actual Outputs and require the user to select the month it is in relationship to when they create the record. Then if you are worried that soem users will enter bad data either build a Plug-in to stop them from saving bad data or build a report to show any missmatches when the data is created.
2. Build a plugin that does the searh for the month on create and update of the Actual Outputs to fill in the correct month.
3. Build a worlkflow extension that will look up and get the correct month. Use it within the workflow on Actual Outputs to fill in teh correct month.
4. Build the logic into your report and never store the link but use the dates to build the report. Only problem here is that if you over time build up lots of data this will slowly take a long time to run basing your linking on dates.
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