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The collective talent pool here at Excelisys have spent years working with Filemaker Pro and various other technologies. Having learned our fair share of tricks of the trade, we sometimes enjoy giving back to the world at large by sharing some of these quaint little tidbit collections of 1's and 0's. So here's an assortment of various stuff that you can put to use right now as is, or tweak and use in your own solutions. Many of these free downloadable demos contain embedded PDF white papers explaining their specific technique and usage. Have fun & enjoy!
This 4 part series article explores the use of recursion and virtualization (through global variables) in solving complex data interconnectivity challenges using FileMaker Pro 12 in a multi-user client-server environment. Using a specific case study of an Excelisys project/client in the medical manufacturing industry, I will discuss and demonstrate the dramatic performance benefits that can be gained with the techniques involved.
Have you ever had a project where each task depended on other tasks to be completed before it could start? How would you keep track of the projected completion date of the project as various tasks were completed or delayed? What if the project involved hundreds of tasks and tens of thousands of dependencies? In this first installment, we take a look at a couple of potential approaches.
Doug West, Product/Project manager of Excelisys, has now made this advanced technique, originally designed and developed by Andrew Persons, even easier! 'HierarchyLite' is an EXcellent demo file which outlines how to create those cool hierarchically organized portals in FileMaker Pro 12, similar to the Macintosh Finder's list view or Window's Explorer view.
The general idea of this simplified no-frills version is to make this desired effect a tad easier to implement. The hierarchy concept is achieved with fewer fields and featured without the potentially unneeded distractions such as the category field, portal row highlight, and drag-and-drop functionality for moving items between groups.
When you open the file there are instructions and explanations on how it all works and how you can incorporate this technique into your own fabulous solutions!
Since its earliest days, FileMaker™ developers have come up with amazing workarounds to solve problems that could not be solved using the built in tools. As FileMaker™ developed and became more powerful & creative tool, many of those workarounds disappeared and were able to be done natively. However there have always been, and will continue to be, developers who push the envelope...
In this article, I'm going to deal with a report generation problem that couldn't be done natively with FileMaker™ layout tools, but with some imagination and envelope pushing we will make it look 'easy'...
Due to popular demand, we've overhauled the Drag and Drop Demo and White Paper for use with the separation model. The demo includes consolidation of several of the 'Move' scripts and removal of extraneous ones. We've also included a new approach for the 'Sort' technique that removes the need for two adjunct TOs. There have also been various smaller enhancements/cleanups.
Portals have been around, in FileMaker™, for as long as I can remember and they are an ubiquitous part of the program. Portals have both positive and negative points to ponder, which can be maddening! This article explores what they are, when to use them, and the pros and cons associated with them to try and keep your database solution from the Edge of Forever failure.
This is yet another sorting technique based on its predecessor yet simpler, that allows for dynamic multicolumn sorting. The user can click a button to sort a column, shift-click to add additional columns, click or shift-click sorted columns to reverse the sort order, AND option-click sorted columns to remove them. The scripting is even designed to allow the user to un-sort the list. It can handle sorting all ?eld types and it can sort by value lists. With only one minor difference the technique can be used to sort both list view layouts and portals. And each list can have it-s own unique sort order. How's that for some fancy schmancy FileMaker trickery!
This demo and white paper outlines how to create hierarchically organized portals in FileMaker Pro, similar to the Macintosh Finder’s list view or Window’s Explorer view. It utilizes FileMaker 7 features to enhance the interface, but this method can be used with versions as early as FileMaker 4.
This useful demo shows you how to send email from FileMaker Pro using your default email client and the OpenURL script step. Simply fill in the fields for “To:”, “cc:”, “bcc:” and “Subject:”, etc. As you type, you will see FileMaker Pro compose the mailto: URL in the Result box.
“I need a reminder to pop–up every month to close out the books.” “I want our readers to have the option of auto–renewing their subscriptions.” There are lots of reasons to use them. This file, along with the accompanying documentation, demonstrates the steps needed to implement true recurring events in FileMaker Pro.
This demo provides a familiar, intuitive color wheel interface to allow users to choose a color. They can also enter either HSV or RGB values and the corresponding fields and the interface will automatically reflect those changes. Graphical and text areas preview the color for the user. The file is designed to be dropped into any solution easily. Simply change the interface of this file to match your solution, use it as a pop–up window, and reference the “Red,” “Green,” and “Blue” fields to set and retrieve the color. No plug–ins are used!
We are reasonably certain that sometime in the future, FileMaker will add a script step called “Sort Portal Rows.” Until then, building a user–controlled variable portal sorting interface involves a couple of fields, a calc or two, and a script. This demo and white paper will show you how.
It is easy to add mail merge functionality to your contacts databases in FileMaker Pro. This can be accomplished by adding a Letters table to your contacts database and a calculation field using the Substitute() function to insert actual data into a letter template used to print or email personalized letters. In this file, we will demonstrate the management and usage of letter templates.
This is a sample of easy record navigation using a portal. Click on any of the listed records on the right side to navigate to that record. Notice also that the item on the portal itself becomes bulleted to indicate that you are viewing one of the selected records. This type of solution can be useful when you need to add access restrictions to your layout and or menus, and want to limit access to certain categories, or record types in an easy manner.
If you've ever wanted to generate specific reports for different groups of users, but are intimidated by FileMaker's, somewhat complicated security schema, this PDF shows you an alternative methodology that is very simple and easy to implement, using FileMaker Pro privilege sets.
For your convenience, this whitepaper comes with either a black background or a white background (for printing).
This demo is a basic demonstration of accessing a web service from FileMaker using the Insert from URL script step introduced in FileMaker 12 (no plug-ins!). The web service is called Ziptastic and provides the corresponding city, state, and country for a given ZIP Code. The scripts in this file parse the JSON-formatted response from the web service into the appropriate fields.
One of the coolest features in FileMaker™ is conditional formatting. With it you can draw attention to fields that need entry, add color coding to areas of your screen that will change according to what type of record you have and much, much more. In fact, the only real limit is your imagination... so let's explore!
Adding records to a portal is easy but are you doing it the right way or the wrong way. In this article we describe three methods, and which one you should never use even though FileMaker lets you. If you have found yourself or your users spending their entire day trying to delete portal rows that aren't even there, then read this and be amazed!
Perhaps one of the most significant advances in FileMaker™ was the introduction of native tab panels. There are many different ways to use tab panels... good, bad and cool - so let's EXplore some of these tab techniques and uses as I share some tricks I learned along the way!
With this amazing demonstration file and accompanying white paper, you’ll learn a technique on how to provide familiar and elegant drag–and–drop functionality to your FileMaker Pro solutions! (Requires FileMaker Pro 10)
The ability to create Custom Functions in FileMaker Advanced introduces the possibility of looping calculations, otherwise known as “recursion.” In this demo you’ll see several good examples of recursive calculations in action. A complete white paper covering this topic, which de–constructs the example calculations, is included as a PDF within the file authored by our own Andrew Persons.
One of the staples of many FileMaker solutions is the calendar navigator. It provides a quick, easy and intuitive way to specify dates and date ranges. In previous versions of FileMaker, one had to either create a large number of calculation fields or (more elegantly) use pre–created graphic calendars and link to them with a concatenated key. Since FileMaker 7, all that has changed. Check out this demo and white paper, and find out how!
An oft–requested feature for FileMaker Pro solutions is an audit log – the ability to track relevant changes to a record. This tip, accompanied by a white paper PDF, outlines how to do just that. This method will automatically track each change to the fields the developer specifies, including who made the change, when, what the old value was, and what the new one is.
It is highly recommended that you familiarize yourself with the basic concepts in the Hierarchical Portals demo (above) before delving into this one. The purpose of this file is to take a look at ways to extend the functionality of hierarchical portals with finds and sorts that take advantage of their unique characteristics.
FileMaker 10 introduced native script triggers as a tool for developers to utilize in their solutions. This example demonstrates the usage of a search filter, which many FileMaker developers are familiar with in complex portal filtering solutions. Now, with the use of script triggers, it is simple enough to implement the same functionality but you are not restricted to displaying results in a portal, and therefore have much more flexibility in the interface.
Let’s say your a capella band, the ‘B’ Naturals, has a gig coming up. You have a database of 12 songs that you want to be in your first set. Since you’re musicians, you will argue about the order of the songs, and need a quick way to reorganize them. Portal Line Shifter to the rescue! This demo shows how you can slide your songs up and down the portal to the optimum position.
This is an interface technique you could implement with your contact management modules, as well as other situations that require multiple selections, such as when you have checkboxes to select from a group of people you may want to send an email to.
