Welcome to the
KnowledgeSync Educational Bulletin for Business
Partners and clients who are using KnowledgeSync.
This week's question:
We are trying to create an event that sends an Order
Confirmation to a client when they place an order.
The KnowledgeSync manual says that only one column
in a query can be unique, so we chose the "order
number" field as our unique. But when the event
runs, the order confirmation email shows only the
first line item of each order - what are we doing
wrong?
Answer:
The first part of the answer is that the "order
number" field is not unique for every line item - in
fact, every line item in a given order has the same
order number. So, once KnowledgeSync processes the
first line item of an order, it remembers that
line's unique value (the order number) and then -
when it sees the other line items for that order
(with the same order number), it skips over them,
thinking that it has already processed those
records.
Although the order number is not unique for each
line item, the combination of the order number AND
the line number is unique.
But hold on there . . . didn't we say that "only one
column in a query can be unique"?
Well yes - but you can combine the values from
multiple fields (such as from the order number and
line item fields) into a single column and then make
that column the unique for the query.
And that is the answer. Although a query can have
only a single unique column, there is nothing to
prevent you from concatenating the values from
multiple database fields into a single query column.
Just remember this - you can concatenate fields only
if their format is "character" (i.e., you cannot
concatenate numeric fields), so if it turns out that
you do need to concatenate a non-character field, be
sure to convert that field into a character format
before doing so.
(And the KnowledgeSync "Calculated Column Editor"
shows how to do this, so you don't have to know any
programming or SQL syntax to do so.)
If you have any questions on the use of the "unique"
field within a query, please contact Don Farber at
farber@vineyardsoft.com.
Vineyardsoft Corporation
(800)850-8055
info@vineyardsoft.com
www.vineyardsoft.com
