ISO FileMaker Magazine

With a short break from our series about building a Scheduling application, I offer a fun technique which shows you how to control the visibility of layout elements. Many popular development environments offer control over element visibility, why not FileMaker Pro as well.

If you've ever had the need to hide fields or buttons, based on various criteria necessary, then this technique will teach you a great way to control visibility. Along the way you'll pick up a few tips about Graph management and using dedicated environment tables. Watch it now!

Every FileMaker Pro solution uses a number of individual techniques to provide the user interface with the functionality it needs. In the video and files of this segment, we look into adding the functionality of a navigation calendar. This feature is highly dynamic and allows anyone to implement a calendar into any solution both quickly and easily.

The Scheduling solution is growing into a dynamic application that will fit many needs - and most of the major features have now been implemented. If you're still unsure about the Relationship Graph and how the whole of a FileMaker solution works, then this video will provide more insight into the types of decisions made as you create a FileMaker solution.

Every application has a few cool features you really enjoy working on. In this video, of this multi-part series, we add the feature of being able to apply color to selected calendars. The implementation uses an easy-to-use system of dragging a color on top of the name of the calendar.

Useful, not only for this particular solution, but anytime you want to allow a user to select a color to be applied to text based data. We pick up where we ended in part 1 of this series - with adding new features to our growing Scheduling solution. Whether you are following along for the application, or you just want to use the cool coloring feature, this video will show you how to make it happen!

If you aren't tracking something, which is somehow related to time, then you're in the minority. One of the most common applications built within FileMaker Pro is a scheduling application. Even if a database starts out lacking a scheduling component, it often ends up needing one sooner or later.

This first part, of a multipart series, will walk through the process and creation of a scheduling application. Whether a schedule is something you want to build yourself or something you should integrate into your existing solution, this video will provide the groundwork for a powerful solution to manage time-based activities.

It's unlikely that all of the users of your database know how to find everything they are looking for. While FileMaker's query-by-form method of searching is pretty intuitive, the concept of multiple requests may be foreign to many users.

This is why you often want to provide an easy-to-search find dialog. The trick is making it easy enough for the most novice of novice users. Fortunately, the automation provided by ScriptMaker helps us achieve that task. Using a single script we can provide a dialog that will search any layout from any window in a given file. Watch the video and give it a try. This may be just what you were looking for!

It's a whole new database world we live in, and knowing who did what to which field on which record is on your auditor's mind. Even if you don't have an auditor, you may want to know who did what.

Whether it's CFR 21 Part 11, HICFA requirements or any other requirement for knowing what happened in your database, you need the easiest, most comprehensive method for adding audit logging to your system. If you've already started working on it, or know you're going to need it soon, then watching this video will give you everything you need to implement a comprehensive system!

Whether you're using Mac OS X or any flavor of Windows or Linux, there's one thing you come to expect - and that's sorting list views. Can you really imagine a modern day interface which does not offer both ascending and descending views on each and every column shown in a list? I didn't think you could. Now can you expect your users to do with any less?

Adding the ability to sort on each column in your FileMaker list views is an easy task to accomplish. You simply have to think of the core pieces to the puzzle. Once you know what you need to track you can put the system together. If you can't figure it out on your own then watch this video for all the details.

Accessing information quickly is what it's all about. Portals present the perfect opportunity to show a smaller subset of a larger amount of data. The trick is getting the smaller subset to be recognized from the larger set. This is when we arrive at the FileMaker 7 technique for filtering portals. It's a little known trick that will let you add power filtering with little (if any) cost to the size of your database.

The older method was to break out a string of text into each of its possible combined parts. You know, "matt" would be "m", "ma", "mat" and "matt". Well, do away with the costly older method and use this new power method. Watch it now and know within minutes!

When simple related value lists just aren't enough, you have to come up with a solution that allows for the assignment of a hierarchy of values. The trick is creating a method which limits any subsequent selection to staying within the hierarchy of the parent selection. You may be working with the classification of organisms or tracking all the various parts that make up a computer circuit board. Whatever the task is, there may be a need for infinite assignments.

Working off of what we learned in Infinite Hierarchies, we can create a system which is not only structurally correct, but allows for an infinite level of flexibility!

Ok, so it sounds like your standard late night infomercial, but this is real! You can add a system for managing tabs, which is not only dynamic, but also supports as many languages as you want. This is dynamic design at the best level.

Need to add a new tab? Don't waste time dragging graphics around. Just duplicate the layout and type in the name of your tab. It really can be that easy. Watch this video to learn how quick it can really be.