Hi all!!! My question might be a little complex… So I’ll ask everyone if I can do this… We have a database that receives pages… and they people here have tasked me with trying to figure out how to do this… they want to see a view of the top 5 messages in the database… I know that I can total a specific field (like meeting type (“scheduled”)) in a new column… but how do I use 1 column to total all of the different type of meetings??? For example there are 10 items in the view… one of the columns is meeting type… with 2 different types of meetings available… How do I total the 2 different types of meetings in the same column and have the larger group at the top of the list? Here’s an example of the list…
Meeting date Meeting type
6/21/2005 Scheduled
6/20/2005 Scheduled
6/18/2005 Emergency
6/16/2005 Emergency
6/15/2005 Scheduled
.
.
.
And they want to see
Meeting Type
Scheduled 3
Emergency 2
Subject: You pretty much CAN’T do that
“they want to see a view of the top 5 messages in the database”
Your big problem here (that none of the other posters have addressed) is your desire to show only the first 5 documents in the view. This is trivial in a web app, but pert near to impossible in a Notes app, because it requires that a view be able to select documents based on something other than information in those documents – which is a fundamental impossbility. The only ways this could be done in a view rendered in the Notes client would be to write an agent that runs through all the documents every time one is added/edited and either (a) sets an order value (1, 2, 3…) in a field so that the view’s selection formula can select only those documents where this field’s value is <= 5, or (b) adds those documents to a folder, and then your “top-five report” would be this folder. This agent would have to be called from both an update-triggered agent as well as the database’s postdocumentdelete event. Not only would there be performance issues, but there would be delays, since update-triggered agents run by default no more often than 5 minutes after an update, and no more than every 30 minutes in a row.
I would implement this in a form instead. Go ahead and create your view, but create a form containing list fields which use @subset(@dbcolumn(…); 5) to display the first five entries in the various columns of your view, and to calculate, for example, the Emergency total, use @elements(@trim(@replace(MeetingType; “Scheduled”; “”))).
(MeetingType in the above formula is the presumed name for the field in your form which displays the five meeting types.)
Subject: How do I…
Your first column will display the type of meeting it is (scheduled, emergency, whatever).It should be categorized.
The second column should be a number column whose value is just 1. It should be set to total and hide detail rows.
BAM! You’re all set.
Subject: RE: How do I…
and If you have any responses in your view, change the value to @If(@IsResponseDoc;0;1) so responses aren’t counted. 
Subject: RE: How do I…
Thanks for that!!! I really don’t have any yet… but will keep that in mind just in case that problem should arise!!!
Subject: RE: How do I…
Thanks for that!!! After I posted this, I played around a little and got what I think might work… and its is pretty much what you had suggested… I had also placed the “sections” (some people around here call them “Twisties”) on the type of meeting and all I get are the totals… now, how do I sort by the totals? I want highest number of occurances at the top, lowest at the bottom…
Subject: RE: How do I…
That’s something you simply can’t do. The totals only exist after the document has been selected into the view, its column values have been calculated, and its position in the sorting order has been determined. That is, Notes sorts first, then totals.
Subject: RE: How do I…
How do I set the column value to 1?
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Just simply put a 1 in the column value window for the total column (in the bottom right of the designer, same place where you have the field name for the meeting type)
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I didn’t see it when I change the column properties… Do I put in the columns value? If so, would it be considered a formula, a field or a function? Sorry, I’ve been using this for only a couple of days…
Subject: RE: How do I…
That’s ok, I was lost once with it too. I honestly learned a lot from just reading posts on here without even knowing what the heck they were talking about! 
Yes, you put it in the column value. It is a formula, and you just put a plain old 1 there.
Did you get the properties for the column to total set correctly? It’s in the properties box, the second tab (with the up/down arrows) at the bottom. Select ‘Total’ and click the ‘Hide detail rows’ box.
Subject: RE: How do I…
Well, I tried that… I placed a “1” (With not ") in the Column Value and had also set the totals to “total” and checked the hide details box… but the column still won’t total… any ideas?
Subject: RE: How do I…
Never Mind… I placed “twisties” on the column and it made the count disappear… so, I moved the “twisties” to the meeting type column… Thanks for all of your help!!!