Creating tables and links

[Jamesbird88]

Hello everyone,

My first post here so I hope you can help me.

I am trying to create a document to describe some configuration files, the layout I am hoping to achieve is by first listing each parameter in alphabetical order and then under each one state which section that parameter is under and under that which of our products is affected by the parameter.

From that I was hoping to create a content table of sections and content table of products which will auto fill when you input the details under the parameter. This eventually will mean that you can choose to look under: Parameters, Sections or Products to find the answers. The section part will only list the parameter and which page it is on, the product part will list the parameters that effects it and the page they are on.

I did take 2 photos of my rough design on a whiteboard but I am unable to upload .jpg files.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and if you need any further information please do let me know.

**EDIT**

For more detail.....

Lets say I have 3 parameters A, B and C. Parameter A goes under section rules, parameter B goes under section File and parameter C goes under section system. Parameter A effects product Cat, parameter B effect product Cat and Dog, parameter C effects product Dog.

I was hoping it would look something like this:

Parameter A: (Description)
Section: Rules
Product: Cat

Parameter B (Description)
Section: File
Product: Cat, Dog

Parameter C (Description)
Section: System
Product: Dog

Sections
File
Parameter B, Pg 1

Rules
Parameter A, Pg 1

System
Parameter C, Pg1

Products
Cat
Parameter A, Pg 1
Parameter B, Pg 1

Dog
Parameter B, Pg 1
Parameter C, Pg 1

I hope this clarifies your understanding of my issue slightly better in the hope there might be a tool I can use on Openoffice to create the content tables rather than having to manually type them out.

Many thanks

[acknak]

Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

... From that I was hoping to create a content table of sections and content table of products which will auto fill when you input the details under the parameter.

Sorry, I'm not sure OO is going to be much help with this. I can't think of any way to have content automatically generated like this. OO Writer can generate a table of contents from headings and/or index markup, but I'm not sure how that would fit with your workflow.

I did take 2 photos of my rough design on a whiteboard but I am unable to upload .jpg files.

Images are fine; probably the file size: the forum is limited to 128k in an attachment. You can re-sample the images to make them smaller, or upload to an image sharing site and post the link here.

[Jamesbird88]

Thank you for the reply Acknak,

The table of contents is needed for the Parameters, section and products section so:

1 Parameters
1.1 A
1.2 B
1.2 C

2 Sections

Etc etc

But from what you have said there would be no way to somehow manipulate OO to pick out the system names and the product names and place them in a separate table with page references on?

Please find links to the photos

https://ibb.co/gQd2DG
https://ibb.co/gUGptG

Again thank you very much.

[RoryOF]

This sounds like a task for a macro, which might have to be run regularly to update the table and also to generate reverse hyperlinks (if that is possible from a macro)

More likely this is a database project, with customised reports. In either case there is a substantial learning curve.

[Jamesbird88]

Thank you for the reply Rory,

I use OO fairly regularly for documentation an manuals but as you said this is a very big jump from our usual usage. It will in essence become the companies bible for our system configs and how they link in with our number of products.

Any advice on how to use the tools mentioned in our customised setting would be greatly appreciated.

Again thank you for the response

[RoryOF]

The main books on writing OpenOffice macros are the works of Andrew Pitonyak, downloadable from
http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php

They'll provide several months of detailed study.

There is documentation on planning a database, such as
Base Tutorial: From Newbie to Advocate in a one, two... three!

In the event that a database implementation needs macros, Andrew Pitonyak has a book on Base macros (also at same address).

[Jamesbird88]

Both,

You have been very helpful and with some studying this should solve my issues.

As a first time user of this forum it has been such an easy and helpful process

[LilZebra]

You could use Open/LibreOffice Base and use the Report generator. In the Report generator use Group By.

YouTube - FrugalComputerGuy - LibreOffice Base - Intro to Groups
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuqM0_0hXdw

[Jamesbird88]

LilZebra,

Thank you very much for the response.

As we are pretty much a Linux OS based company we use Libre too as it links with OO.

I will have a look at this now.

Many thanks