Customer Inquiry Form / Customer Contact Details

[Rodney_Reid]

Hi Team,

I'm probably overthinking something that will have a simple solution so I need to bounce it off some fresh minds and get a different perspective.

I have a simple Enquiry form for a consultant to complete. The customer details need to either be selected from an enum-drop down list or the details need to be captured and then displayed on the inquiry form.

Now my train of thought is there should be a task option on the Inquiry form that if a customer's details are not on the drop list a task can be called to open a new form whereby the customer's details can be captured and then divert back to the original Inquiry form whereby the customer's details can then be chosen from the enum list.

So something in the line of 

IF NOT ON ENUM LIST -> OPEN FORM (TASK) -> CAPTURE CUSTOMER DETAILS -> SYSTEM SYNCS -> REVERT BACK TO INQUIRY FORM ONCE SYSTEM SYNC DONE WITH DETAILS PREFILLED IN

Not sure if I'm perhaps overcomplicating the process ? The train of thought is easy, but the implementation is a different story.

Tx,

R

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Welcome to the AppSheet community!

Maybe you wish to consider the options of Allow other values and Auto complete other values options.

Drop-down from simple list of values - AppSheet Help

[Rodney_Reid]

Thanks Suvrutt, but that does not capture the data in a separate table. The customer's details(Name, Email, Cellphone, address, etc) get used and referenced by various other tables and slices so the data needs to be in a table and not in an enum virtual list.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Oh okay. Thank you Rodney. Could you share how you are currently getting those customer details in the Enquiry  form? And are Enquiry form and Customer details tables different?  In Short how is your current data  schema?

[Rodney_Reid]

Currently, the information gets captured using the Inquiry form to the [INQUIRY TABLE] and then with a function gets added to the [customer contact table]. The problem with that is that the customer contact details then can get duplicated as there is no way to check on the inquiry form if the customer details haven't been used yet and using the customer contact details to reference is then unreliable.

So we would like to rather change it so that the customer details get pulled from enum and populate the rest of the customer contact fields, but should the customer details not be on the enum list the consultant can either continue to capture the details on the inquiry form with the function then adding the data to the [customer contact table] or have a separate form open to capture the details into the [customer contact table] which then when saved populates the customer's details on the inquiry form as if the consultant has chosen it from the enum. 

[Suvrutt_Gurjar · Accepted solution]

Okay , thank you. Please take a look at referencing  and dereferencing in AppSheet that helps in easier exchange of related information between tables.

References between tables - AppSheet Help

Dereference expressions - AppSheet Help

Also please take a look at the following sample app.

Order Capture How-to

In that app, when the user adds a new order, the can select a customer name that is referenced from the Customers table. If the user wants to add a new customer, the user can use the add option shown with the dropdown.

Now in the sample app, the order form just references the customer name from the customer table. In your case you could use dereferencing to add other fields such as customer phone , address and so forth, once the customer name is selected. Please take a look at the dereferencing expressions article that I have mentioned. Instead of dereferencing, another option is the user can simply tap on the customer name to navigate to that customer's more details.

So in the Enquiry form, if the customer exists, all his information is referenced from the Customers table, using referencing and dereference expressions.

If the customer is new the "Add" option will open a form of the Customers table wherein new customer details can be added.

[Rodney_Reid]

An easy solution to what was thought would have been a massive task!

Thank you Suvrutt! Your assistance is appreciated!