How To - Create relationship across forms in Zoho Creator

Creating relationship across forms in Zoho Creator is easy. You can also create combined views with two or more related forms.

Creating relationship using single-select lookup field

Assume you have a Form called Employee to add employee details and another Form called Department to store the department details.  Typically an employee will be assigned to only one department and hence a relationship between the Employee and Department form is created using single-select lookup field. To do this,

1. Add a Lookup field in the Employee form

• Specify a label name, for example, “Department”
• Import data from Employee Manager – Department – Department Namewhere,Employee Manager is the application name, Department is the form name,Department Name is the field whose data is imported.
• Display as Dropdown/Radio-button (Single select) 

2. In the Employee form, the Department lookup field will display the name of all the departments from the Department Form.
Creating relationship with multi-select lookup field

Assume you have a form called “Roles” that stores the different type of employee roles. Typically an employee can be assigned to one or more roles and hence a relationship between the Employee form and Role form is created using multi-select lookup field. To do this,

1. Add a Lookup field in the Employee form

• Specify a label name, for example, “Roles”
• Import data from Employee Manager – Roles – Role Namewhere ,Employee Manager is the application name, Roles is the form name,Role Name is the field whose data is imported.
• Display as a multi-select lookup.

2. In the Employee form, the Role lookup field will display the name of all the Roles from the Role Form. You can relate one or more roles to each employee by selecting the required options.

Creating Combined Views from Related Forms

You can create a combined report that displays certain fields from one or more related forms. For example, we created three forms – Employee form, Department form and Roles form and connected them using Lookup fields. You can create connection between the Department and the Employee reports and display data in one report.

For example, in your Employee report, you can see the email address of the department that employee belongs to. Here’s how.

1. In the edit mode of your Employee report, select Column Properties. On the middle pane, you’ll see the fields currently displayed in that report (they’re called the columns of that report) and on the right you’ll see the other system-generated fields in the form. Below that is an option to Select Related Form.
2. If you select a form it’ll display the fields in that form as well. For instance, when we select the Department form, all the fields of that form shows up.
3. You just have to drag and drop the “Email alias” field on to the middle pane, and it will show up on your Employee report.

Take a look at the screenshot below.

Here’s how it will appear when you access that report.