In version 20.1, Act! introduced the Custom Tables function for users of the Premium Plus license level. This function allows for the creation of custom detail tables, which behave similarly to the standard detail tables, such as History and Notes. Reporting4Act! can report on these custom tables. In Reporting4Act!'s table list, an instance of each custom table will appear for each main entity it has been related to.

In the following example, custom tables Stonefield Query Licenses and License Activations have been defined. Stonefield Query Licenses has been set in Act! as related to the Company and Contact entities, so the tables Company Stonefield Query Licenses and Contact Stonefield Query Licenses appear in Reporting4Act!'s table list. License Activations is only related to Contact, so only Contact License Activations appears in Reporting4Act!.

In the Act! Custom Tables function, it's also possible to define one custom table as the parent of another. The existence of such parent relationships isn't included in the Act! data provider, so Reporting4Act! can't automatically handle such relationships. Instead, you can specify them in Reporting4Act!'s CustomTableParents.txt file. This file is located in the Data folder inside the main Reporting4Act! program folder. For each of these parent table relationships, add one line to the CustomTableParents.txt file. The line should contain the parent field and child field defining the relationship, including their table names, separated by a comma.

For example, if the Stonefield Query Licenses table is a parent of the License Activations table, this line would be added to CustomTableParents.txt:

QueryLicenses.QueryLicensesID,LicenseActivations.QueryLicenseID

With this line in place, Company Stonefield Query Licenses License Activations and Contact Stonefield Query Licenses License Activations items would appear in Reporting4Act!'s table list.

Under some conditions, Act! doesn't properly update its view data when custom tables are added or modified, so these items don't appear properly in Reporting4Act!. To resolve this problem, refresh the Act! data views by following the instructions in the Recreating Act! Database Views topic.