Good afternoon,
I am hoping to get some help with the multi-select dropdown tool or if anyone has any other suggestions for how to achieve what I am trying to accomplish. Right now I have a database for jobs and a database for skills that have a multi to multi relationship. The skills database is pre-filled in with skill options. I would like it so that when you are creating a new job you can select some skills needed to do that job from the list created by the jobs database. Then after the is created view the details of the job including what skills were selected for it.
This screen shows the list of skills to choose from, from the skills database. I would like these selected skills to somehow be added to the jobs database so that on the next screen I can display the jobs that are needed.
Right now I don’t see an option to show the skills that were selected on the previous page.
Eventually, I would like to be able to do some cross-referencing, like show a candidate what jobs are out there based on the required skills, I would have thought that the best way to do that would be with a database that listed all of the skills.
Thanks in advance for any help or direction I can get with this because it is a feature/method that I would like to use multiple times for my app.
ETA: trying to make this as clear as possible by adding information as I discover it and change things. It seems that when the user clicks on the desired skills from the dropdown the last selected skill gets added for all four skill slots, however I do know that the other selected skills are being added to the job because I can see them in the database.
It seems that you’re using 2 approaches at the same time I’d advise to select one and use it.
The 1st approach could be: you have a Jobs collection with 4 Key Skill text fields. In this case you don’t need multiselect dropdown. Instead, you can put 4 dropdowns (for 4 key skills) and add the skill name manually.
A modification of this approach - instead of having 4 text fields, you can have 4 relationships with Skills database (1:M)
Another approach will be to have many-to-many relationship between Jobs and Skills collections (i.e. one Job can have many Skills and one Skill can have many Jobs). With this, you can use multiselect dropdown, and add an actiont to add/remove a skill to/from this relationship.
(unfortunately, multiselect dropdown won’t work for editing such relationships - it doesn’t pre-populate them).
The 3rd approach (which I like most) is having a separate JobsSkills collection, where you can store the pairs of Job - Skill. This collection should have relationship to Jobs (M:1, one JobSkill belongs ONLY to one Job), and to Skills (also M:1, one JobSkill belongs ONLY to one Skill). Such collection will work faster than many-to-many relationships, and you can also create search lists easier. Similar approach is explained here: Adalo Mini-app series: Followers, Influencers and follow requests - using separate collection - YouTube
Thanks for the help! I think the second approach there is really the one that I want to go for with the many to many relationships. That was what I was trying to go for initially and I got that approach to work for the most part but on the screen following the one where they pick the skills, I would like to display the skills that were picked. The only option I see in the magic text for that though is the count that displays the number of skills that were selected but not what those skills were.
Thanks for the link to the video too, not sure that is right for what I am doing right now but I think that will for sure come in handy for another feature I have been thinking of adding to the app!
Unfortunately, with multiselect dropdown it’s not possible to “pre-populate” it with checkboxes, based on the existing relationships… most probably you will have to use a custom-built list with filters.
I think that I found a workaround to do what I wanted by using the horizontal chip list to display the skills after they were selected. This worked because I could assign the data to the list where the magic text did not have access to that data all it could retrieve was the count. Thank you for all of your help!
I’d advise to select one and use it.