CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi,

I'm investigating CiviCRM as a tool for tracking potential carers in an organisation that provides foster care to children in need.  So far it looks very good and they are definitely interested in using it.  One question I do have is to do with setting up the data base and the use of custom fields.  Is CiviCRM able to utilise nested or sub-fields?  For example one field in the data base would ask how a potential carer heard about the organisation. Then depending on the answer there would be a sub filed to add more info.  For example if the entry in the first field was News Paper then a sub-field would be available to provide the name of the news paper.  In the entry in the first field was the organisations website then there would be no need for a sub-field.  Another example of this is asking about a potential carers ethnicity in the first field there would be a selection of general ethnicities. For example, Polynesian, European, Asian then depending on what was chosen in the first field a sub field would be available to enter specific ethnicities.  For example Polynesian was chosen in the first field and then a sub-field would be available which would list specific Polynesian ethnicities such as Samoan, Tongan, Nuiean, Cook Islander.
Is this sort of design  possible with CiviCRM, or is there some sort of effective workaround that could be used?

Regards,

John Curwood

From your reply I have a couple of questions.
1) is there any other sort of work around that could produce a similar effect?
2) with regards to creating custom coded fields, how involved is that as there are only a few instances in the database where such fields are required.

Regards,

John Curwood