Author: Janet Tokerud

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FileMaker 19

Mac Mini Perfect Low-End Server

Think small. This new Mac Mini rocks! It is tiny which is what anyone at home or in a small office needs. With 1.25 or 1.42 mhz G4 processor and 40 or 80 mb RAM at $499 and $599, the affordability is to die for.

The Mini has the latest OS X Panther plus iLife ’05 (iTunes 4.7, iPhoto 5, iMovie HD, iDVD 5 and GarageBand) on it. You can always steal the iLife stuff for one of your client machines because I’ll want you to keep your Mini as a pure FileMaker server (even if it is just running the FileMaker client as opposed to the FileMaker Server software).

The $500 price leaves you with no excuse for trying to serve FileMaker files from one of your regular work machines. Keep FileMaker serving files with 100% reliability and keep those files in pristine condition!

Remember that it comes sans keyboard, mouse and screen. So you may want to buy a brand new mouse and keyboard for it and a tiny monitor – or use an existing monitor. You can get a 14″ flat panel for something like $200 these days.

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FileMaker Apps Macintosh

Mail to FileMaker Importer Rocks

If you have a need to get some or all of your email into FileMaker, Mail to FileMaker Importer is your application. I’m using their latest version 1.1 for FileMaker 7. It is simple, well-documented and does its job beautifully.

Mail to FileMaker Importer is made and published by by Automated Workflows, LLC . They describe themselves as:

a leader in professional AppleScript and workflow automation and software integration services and technology

If this app is any indication, I believe them.

You can meet Benjamin S. Waldie, president of Automated Workflows at the Apple Consultants Network booth on the Macworld Expo show floor on Tuesday, January 11th, from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM. He will be available to answer AppleScript-related questions. Mr. Waldie writes the Applescript Essentials column for Mac Tech Magazine.

If you are reading this, I have no doubt that you think getting your email into FileMaker is a really good idea. Besides a cool place to archive email, sometimes you may want to process data that you get from web apps that send you email into your database.

When someone downloads my Studio Manager demo off the web, the fill out a little contact information form and a little PHP script sends me an email with lines something like this:

Name: John Doe
Company: ABC Inc.
Email: john@abcinc.com
etc.

With Mail to FileMaker Importer (MFI), I highlight the new download emails every so often in Apple Mail and then push the button in MFI to import that mail into my Email Archive database. That gives me all the usual fields including the Body with all the contact information.

I then run a looping script that parses the data into separate filemaker fields. It’s that simple! I love it.

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FileMaker Deals

FileMaker 7 for $107.99 at Hardcore Mac

I was googling for FileMaker-compatible credit card authorization software and saw this ad from Hardcore Mac at store.yahoo.com in the Google adsense ads. You get a full original CD and a serial number, no user manual. Seems legit. Several readers have saved thousands on some of the other deals I noted on this site and thanked me. I can’t vouch for the vendor but I would be surprised if it’s not OK. The other contact information is sales@hardcoremac.com – (702) 307-6251 – (702) 307-8774 fax.

They say the CD runs on Windows and Mac OS X. Even though I really have enough copies of FileMaker 7 already, I’m tempted to get another copy at these prices. Also, of course, FileMaker has a special deal on FileMaker going on called “Buy one FileMaker, give one Free” that amounts to selling the product with manual for $150. But that has some hoops to go through and you’ve got to coordinate with someone else. As usual, I make nothing on this referral. Just wanted to let you all know.

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FileMaker Resources

New FileMaker 7 Training CDs

A couple weeks ago, FMPTraining announced their new 8-CD set. The trainer, Jerry Robin, is known to be a great FileMaker trainer, so I was very interested to see this new offering. I spoke with Jerry and found out that it’s a hell of a lot of work to do something like this.

The price for each CD is a VERY reasonable $39. The set goes for $299 but there seems to be a special on right now for $269. Each CD has about two hours worth of training on it.

Here’s what he’s got:

Volume1: Using FileMaker Pro

Volume 2: Building a Database

Volume 3: Layout Design

Volume 4 & 5: Relational Database Design (2 CDs)

Volume 6: Importing, Exporting, and Reporting

Volume 7: Security

Volume 8: Introduction to Scripting

The material is beginning to intermediate. If you don’t know FileMaker 7, even if you are a hot shot with FileMaker 6, you are probably in the intermediate category with a lot of this material, especially the relational database design and security CDs.

As I see it, CD training provides us with a great compliment to our other FileMaker learning resources:

  • Books
  • An array of Classroom Training options
  • The FileMaker Developer’s Conference
  • User Group meetings
  • One-on-one tutoring
  • Matt Petrowsky’s FileMaker Magazine Online Training
  • FileMaker Advisor Magazine

What I like about the CD’s is that they fill needs that the other alternatives don’t such as:

  • Stimulation. More compelling. Lots of people these days have trouble getting through a technical book. Instead, you’ve got a real person talking you through a series of training exercises. A lot more warm and fuzzies than you can get from a book (Of course, a CD can’t beat the engagement you would have in a live training with a top trainer like Jerry).
  • Timeshifting and Personalizing the Pacing. Like a book, a CD can be used whenever it is convenient. You can do 2 CDs if you really want to learn something one day. You can decide to do one a day for 8 days for an intensive learning experience. You can watch something twice – either repeat the whole CD or just rewind a bit for something you need to hear twice to really get it.
  • You don’t have to wait until the class is offered in your area.
  • It comes to you. They ship you the CDs. You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to be able to afford the airfare and lodging and time off. This feature gets really important when you live in a remote area and don’t have the time and money to travel somewhere to learn from the best.
  • It’s Cheap. You get over 16 hours of training from a world-class FileMaker trainer for the price of 1 day of training at your local computer training outfit.
  • It’s Portable. You can take the CD’s anywhere. If you are going home for the holidays and you aren’t going to be busy with really fun stuff every minute, you could bring a couple CDs for a break from the festivities/family.

That’s probably enough of a prelude. Soon, I’ll be able to tell you firsthand what these CD’s are like. They are on the way and should be at my house by Saturday. I’ll report back to tell you how it goes. I’ll probably go right to relational design and security because I can use all the help and different angles on these topics I can get.

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FileMaker Decisions FileMaker Ideas Migrating to FM7

If it Works, it’s Obsolete

Changethis

I was just reading the #2-rated pdf manifesto over at Change This. The manifesto is entitled This I Believe! – Tom Peters 60 TIBs that he wrote right around his 60th birthday. I found the above quote by Marshall McLuhan applicable to FileMaker 7 and my product, which is still in Beta, Studio Manager 7. FileMaker 6 is solid as a rock and 7 still has teething problems here and there. FileMaker 6 is obsolete – it’s not built with FileMaker 7. Same for Studio Manager 4.6. If McLuhan could say this in the sixties, I hate to guess how utterly true it is now. Food for thought.

The work of building Studio Manager 7 has been monumental. But, I’m so glad that FileMaker Inc. had the courage and vision to create such a big, progressive, ground-up re-write of FileMaker that I would find the work so compelling. The possibilities so exciting. I thought Studio Manager 4 was a big deal. Little did I know…

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FileMaker Resources

FileMaker Advisor Magazine Rocks

Filemakeradvisor

I just renewed my subscription to FileMaker Advisor magazine. The reason I did with pleasure is that they’ve got all their articles for the last three years online. I didn’t have to wait after I subscribed. The subscriptions person I reached by phone (800-336-6060) was able to walk me through the process and even change my username and password for me to what I preferred.

Now, instead of waiting 4-6 weeks for a paper copy of the latest magazine to arrive, I have access today to all the articles in the Dec/Jan 2005 issue!

Plus, I get a retroactive 3 year subscription for the price of one future year. The subscription for 6 issues in 12 months is $49. Given the massive amount of new and valuable information that is being generated by top FileMaker developers in this magazine, the money is very well spent.

If you want a quicker and easier way to climb the FileMaker 7 learning curve, FileMaker Advisor is one of the best information sources there is. If you aren’t a subscriber or have let your subscription lapse like me, head on over and check it out.

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FileMaker Tips

FM7: Scripting in a Single File Environment

Scriptmaker

If you have a database with multiple tables in a single file, you will want to do things differently in terms of scripting. Here are some of the nuggets of advice I have on the subject:

Group your scripts by table. This isn’t quite as simple as it sounds because scripts in 7 can easily do work in several tables. So, a reasonable rule is – put your script in whatever table group it starts in.

All of a sudden, you have a very long script menu. It’s not fun dragging a script from the bottom to the top or even half way in one direction or the other. I hope a few keyboard shortcuts get added so we can move something quickly to the top. Or so that the scripts I import go in where my cursor is. Or so I can drag a group of scripts around and quickly put one table’s scripts in a different position in the list. Some sort options would be interesting. But that’s later.

Create a blank script with about 30 asterisks in it as your divider between tables. A bullet or 2 or the little hyphen divider isn’t good enough when you are speeding up or down the list. You need something very easy to see.

Eliminate a lot of scripts such as all the scripts that individually go to a particular table (used to be an Open File script) or individually go to particular layouts. You can use script parameters in buttons and in scripts themselves to give a parameter to a subscript

Combine scripts. You used to have a script in file A that did a little work in A and then called a script in file B to finish the job. Why bother creating 2 scripts? Just pick the script among the 2 that is longest and add the script steps from the other script in and delete the shorter script you started with. Cleaner. Shorter script list. You’ll have to decide how much of this demodularizing you want to do.

Modular is good. But long script lists aren’t fun. I might wind up taking 8 scripts and condensing them down to 2-4. I don’t have a modular script for its own sake – just because it does a discrete, logical part of the work. I l only create a separate script when that module gets used at least twice. And if it is 2 steps long, I’ll probably just put those 2 steps in twice.

Modules really work when they are used a lot or they are long. You fix it or change it once and you are done. That’s why I use single step scripts for page setup. If the script moves to a different environment with different printing requirements, I only have to fix the generic page setup scripts, not every report script I have.

Create generic scripts. With just a little thinking, you’ll quickly find ways to use script parameters to create generic scripts. Generic – most used scripts – go to the top of your list. It saves dragging.

Give up on showing scripts in the menu for your users to use. You only get 10 keyboard shortcuts. And it’s not going to be pretty if you show a lot of scripts. You’ll need to narrow down to some most important scripts for that menu if you use it at all.

Consider using a two-letter table prefix in front of script names. Try this: “CT New Job”. This script starts in the Contacts table and creates a new job. If you convert from 6 and import a lot of scripts from various files that are now all in one file, you’ll find that some of your script names duplicate. You get New Job, New Job2 etc.

Once you add a table Prefix, you don’t need to worry about duplicates anymore and get to use the name without the number at the end. Nicer. But do you really want to junk up all the script names with prefixes? I’m still just putting them in when I think it will help. Now the only problem is that my naming convention for scripts isn’t consistent. Oh well…

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FileMaker Deals FileMaker Tips

eMacs as FileMaker Servers

You may want to see my post on eMacs over at my Studio Manager Bulletin blog.

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FileMaker Discoveries

1 Drawback to the Single File Approach

The single file approach in FileMaker 7 is very advantageous in many ways. Being able to control your security settings in one place is incredibly convenient. However, there seems to be one drawback. It’s harder to segment out high-level security access to a particular part of your solution when it is all in one file.

Sure you can control layout and field access. But what about when you want to give someone the ability to create a new table? You have to somehow give them the ability to use the Define Database area. And that is an all or nothing proposition as far as I can tell. Either someone gets to be able to change fields throughout the file or not at all.

I’m hoping I’m wrong about this and will definitely post a correction if I find out otherwise. Corrections, anyone? I would like for there to be some gradations of access in field definitions. For example, you can let people have more privileges on new layouts. Could you do that for new tables, without giving away the store and allowing people to change existing database fields and relationships?

One solution is to allow the user in question to create the table as a separate file. Then, if desired the database administrator, could perhaps use FMrobot to bring the fields inside the big DB walls. The problem with this is that FMrobot only works on the fields and can’t bring in layouts and scripts. And it is unlikely that there won’t be need for some field definition and relationship changes after the initial try.

In a big, complex one-file database, you may just have to work around this limitation. There is probably a lot to be said for having a two-step process with end-user additions to the database.

You can give a user access to the Define Database area without them having Full Access. You do this by creating a script that uses the Open Define Database script step and make sure the script executes with Full Access. Because you have this option, you can use scripting controls to keep the lid on the database and retain control over management of Accounts and Privileges.

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FileMaker Discoveries

Cool FileMaker 7 Feature #1

FM7 Gift BoxI was pleasantly surprised just a minute ago to see that when I deleted a field that was used by a script, I got notified of that fact. First, it’s good to be reminded that I’ve got a script that uses the field I want to delete. But second, the even cooler part is that FileMaker 7 tells you the exact script that uses the field. FileMaker 6 doesn’t warn you at all when you delete a field used by a script.