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FileMaker 8 FileMaker Discoveries FileMaker Tips

Relationship Graph Post-it Notes Pay Off

Sm8 Relationships Graph 480-1

It took me a while, but now I am a believer. I just posted 2 notes into the relationships graph for Studio Manager 8. One note is a legend that shows what all my abbreviations mean and the other note is a general guide to how I have set-up and organized the relationships graph. I now see that these two notes should be a standard practice for any FileMaker database these days. Nice.

You can pick your colors for the post-its from the color wheel, so have at it!

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FileMaker Add-Ons

Address Book Manipulator Looks Good

Address_book_manipulator

Productive Computing has just released version 2 of their Address Book Manipulator plug-in. They’ve done a lot of work to make it easy for the rest of us to talk to Address Book from our FileMaker databases. With the help of this plug-in, you can push a record to address book and you can pull an Address Book record into FileMaker.

One of the buttons available on the Pull tab is All Contacts. That lets you pull every Address Book entry you have into the demo FileMaker file. With the demo! I just imported all 1588 Address Book entries I have in my Address Book into the demo file. I could now import this data into the FileMaker file of my choosing.

That’s great for starters. But the most important functionality here is that you can keep the two in sync by moving data from Address Book to FileMaker or FileMaker to Address Book depending on where you happen to enter the data first.

Because Productive’s plug-in is probably written in a low-level language like C, performance is, as they say, lightning fast. Also, I’m running on a MacBook so I am also getting the benefit of the fact that this is a Universal plug-in that works optimally on both PowerPC and Intel processors.

Here’s the link for their press release dated November 7.

The Plug-in is selling for $60 for a single-user license, $270 for a 5-user license and $432 for a 10-user license. If you have a mission-critical FileMaker application in your company or work group that includes a contacts table and you are Mac-based, Address Book Manipulator v2 could be just what you need.

A free demo version of the plug-in is available with a full-access demo FileMaker file that can push and pull data and demonstrate various additional functions including search. I’m using it right now.

Here is what the relationships graph looks like. On the left is a *viewer* table and on the right is the *data* table where the contacts are stored in flat records.

Ab_manipulator_rel_graph

Categories
FileMaker Discoveries

I Love FileMaker 8.5 Tab Controls

Picture_14

Yes. I know Tab Controls were released in FileMaker 8. But, without a Go to Object command and other niceties like the GetLayoutObjectAttribute function, they weren’t ready to replace all tabs all the time.

Many of you might still cling to your homemade tabs. Not me. I’ve committed 100% to tab controls to handle all (well almost all) of my tabbing needs.

You can make fancy fake tabs and use any graphics you want for the tabs. But that’s so FileMaker 7 of you. The problem is fake tabs are not end-user friendly. They aren’t even developer friendly in my opinion.

Instead, use tab controls. They can look pretty boring by default. But take away some of the old-fashioned styling and they become elegant. Native vs. bolted on. Native looks better my friends. Since most of my customers are designers, I pay close attention to ways to make my UI look better.

Tab controls can be used to simplify. Compare the default User tab above to the Admin tab below. Users, even Admin people, don’t need to see all the information all the time (Keep in mind that there are other fields on the screen. The user is just not being bothered with all the information as he or she uses the database).

Admin_tab

Tab controls are revolutionary because they let our users customize their own interface. That’s heresy you say. That breaks the rules of keeping the user in his place. Yes. And that’s the wave of the future that you might want to embrace. FileMaker is the database of choice because it empowers the user.

You know that thing where everything isn’t top down. That user who is on the front lines where all the new information is. That’s the user who knows what he or she needs.

I go on about tab controls as they pertain to my Studio Manager product over on Studio Manager Bulletin. The treatment there is not very technical but is very enthusiastic. I’m thrilled to be using tab controls instead of fake tabs in my product.

One of the main features of Studio Manager is that it maximizes user customizability. Studio Manager is not a black box. Not to developers and not to users. Deal with it.

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FileMaker Utilities

FMDiff is Very Useful

Fmdiff_icon
I just found a really helpful tool. It’s called FMDiff and is made by Huslik Verlag GmbH in Germany. It’s late on the Labor Day weekend day 1 – Saturday and I don’t have a lot of time to write.

The important thing is that FMDiff will identify places where there are differences in scripts, fields, value lists and layouts between any two FileMaker files of the same file format. And it does the comparison in less than a minute even with my big Studio Manager product.

Just like anyone else, I occasionally have a confusion about which version of a FileMaker file is the most recent. And sometimes, I have guessed wrong which has led to there being some things added or modified in File A and other things added or modified to File B. This tool will help me resolve those questions. Invaluable!

I’m very pleased to have a tool that can do this so simply. By the way, the tool doesn’t use FileMaker at all. It is written in C++ and just somehow manages to compare the two files piece by piece.

If you think you might be interested, there is a free, limited version which you can use to try it out. FMDiff costs $199. As a professional FileMaker developer, I’m glad it wasn’t more because I have to have this tool.

HVG has another product that also seems very interesting called FMChecker. The version that will work on FileMaker 7-8.5 files is not yet available but scheduled to be released in early 2007. It seems to have more valuable features that I’ll want.

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FileMaker 8

FileMaker 8 Certified

Fm8 Certification Certificate 480

I’m a member of a group of Marin county FileMaker consultants. In April we decided to use the group to study for and try to pass the FileMaker 8 Certification test. We bought copies of the big FileMaker Professional Training Foundation Series III book for FileMaker 8.

Then we divided the chapters among us with various members choosing chapters to teach to the rest of the group. We met every two weeks for about 3 hours on Monday evenings. In between meetings we did our homework which was to read the chapters and do the practice exercises.

At the meetings, we had two presenters for two chapters (along with 2 backups in case someone had an emergency and couldn’t present). One of our members brought his projector and one donated the conference space available to him for our meetings. We met at 6:30 pm in downtown San Rafael and grabbed a burrito, sandwich or ate prior.

All of us were already very busy with our FileMaker consultancies but we wanted to master FileMaker 8 and figured the certification credential wouldn’t hurt. If others were getting certified, what did that say about those of us who weren’t?

It seemed like a perfect opportunity. We agreed that members who had an area of special expertise would teach their strength to the rest of us. Since most of us do training in the course of our work, we had the benefit of some pretty good trainers within our group.

Our group was all about sharing knowledge and learning anyway, so why not point it at the certification credential and see what happened? We saw it as a kind of bootcamp team. Imagining that if one of us was struggling to make it over the fence, others of us could help.

We had agreed to take the test together at the end of our studying in July. When we finished our studies in mid-July, all but one of us felt ready to take the test. As planned, the day before the test, we did a 4 hour review together on Sunday and then crammed individually that night and the next morning. The five of us took the test on July 24th at 3 pm allowing time for celebration afterwards. Happy Day, we all passed!

When you take the test, you are swarn to secrecy (sign a non-disclosure agreement) to not reveal anything about the nature of the test itself, so I have to end my story here. Framed certification certificates arrived by FedEx within the week. It actually looks really good hanging in my office where my clients and colleagues can see it. Of course, probably most important, where I can see it.

It felt good to do the work. It was great working as a team. And well, we learned a lot. Filling in the holes in our knowledge where they existed. The learning makes me all the more enthused about FileMaker 8.5 and FileMaker in general.

I’m really enjoying my development work these days. The kick in computer work has always been that feeling of awe and accomplishment when you build something really cool. I’ve got lots of neat tools (toys) to play with these days. They make me look good.

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FileMaker Tips

Duplicate Record with AppleScript Trick

I received a request to tie my Studio Manager product to iCal yesterday. This is not the first time I have received the request. I am just recovering from a brief illness today and with that excuse thought I would see how hard it would be to AppleScript between FileMaker and iCal.

I have two books that should help me: AppleScript: The Missing Manual and AppleScript: The Definitive Guide. I looked at their tables of contents but didn’t see any reference to iCal. So, I then typed "AppleScript+FileMaker+iCal" into Google. I got plenty of hits to investigate.

One of my first hits lead me to reading a comment about speed. And Bruce Robertson had a tip. He said if you run the following two line Applescript in FileMaker you can instantaneously duplicate a record and all of its children records.

So I decided to try it myself.

I created a FileMaker database called AppleScript_Playground and added three tables Contacts, Jobs and Tasks. These are tables in Studio Manager. I put in a few fields in each table. I figured eventually I would get to trying to import a set of tasks for a job into AppleScript.

But for now I wanted to try the trick.

So I created a layout in Jobs with a few fields and a portal to tasks. I entered some tasks. See illustration below.

Applescript_example

Bruce said you should not have any calculated fields on the layout if you want the trick to work. I have no idea why, but he was right. Until I removed the last calculation field from the layout, it wouldn’t work. You also need to have the ability to create the child records turned on and don’t have the auto-enter serial number on the screen.

Anyway, if you have an auto-enter serial number for Jobs and that serial number is part of the key that links tasks to jobs, you are in business.

Here’s my applescript compliments of Bruce:

Set sourceRec to (get current record)
Create new record with data sourceRec

There’s only one script step in the script: Perform Applescript.

Bruce says it should be instantaneous with up to 50 related records.

At the moment this small triumph encourages me to continue my quest. Maybe this AppleScript stuff is worth looking into. I know a lot of FileMaker buffs swear by AppleScript…

UPDATE: I just tried it with Job Specs, a second related table. The duplicate as is above duplicated the original record plus the related records in both portals on the screen instantly! Try this out as a 20 minute project if you aren’t already an AppleScripter who knows this stuff backwards and forwards.

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FileMaker News

FileMaker Pro 8.v3 Released Today

Fmp8 Box Green Bkgrnd

Good news. The eagerly awaited version 3 of FileMaker 8 was released today. It is available as a free 12 mb download from FIleMaker’s Downloads page.

The update works on FileMaker Pro 8 v2. If you haven’t updated to v2, you’ll need to use the FileMaker Pro 8 v2 updater first and then run the v3 updater.

This updater will update both FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Pro Advanced.

I installed the updater and it installed without difficulty. It did take about 4 minutes or so on my G4 Powerbook though.

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FileMaker 8 FileMaker News FileMaker Tips

Documented Issues in FileMaker 8 v1 and v2

Fm8 Adv Box

According to FileMaker Inc., there are some significant issues in both FileMaker 8 v1 and v2. The company is working to release v3 soon which is expected to resolve the new issues introduced in v2. There is a good summary of the issues at the FileMaker Knowledge Base. It looks to me that you might be better off with the v1 release for the time being. If you are using FileMaker 8 or just about to start using it, you should read this yourself

There is one corruption issue in each of the versions which is my main concern. In v1, some batch operations and schema changes can corrupt indexes. Fortunately, those indexes can be easily rebuilt by turning the indexing on and off for that particular field with index problems. In v2, recovering a file corrupts the variable names in calculations. If you are using lots of variables, a new FileMaker 8 feature, you would want to check your variable names if you have to recover the file.

Developers might want to have a copy of both FileMaker 8 v1 and FileMaker 8 v2 around in case they want to switch between the two. For example, if you need to recover your file and you use variables a lot, you’ll want to be recovering with v1.

Anyone with more real world information about this is welcome to share it here in the comments. We will revisit this topic with an update when additional information is available or when v3 is released whichever comes first.

On a personal basis, I recommend Studio Manager customers use FileMaker 8 v1 until v3 is available. Neither of the two issues identified in v1 should present problems in Studio Manager. If you are customizing Studio Manager extensively, you should keep these issues in mind, however.

Knowledge Base article #5907 says this about the issues in v1:

  • Some calculations that require local client information (such as Get(WindowHeight)) are incorrectly calculated on the server. There are no known workarounds in this version.
  • Certain batch operations and schema changes might cause indexes to become corrupt. These indexes can be rebuilt via the Define Fields dialog box by turning the index off, and then on again.

Knowledge Base article #5907 says that “while FileMaker 8.0v2 addressed key problems in 8.0v1, it introduced some new issues”:

  • When using a FileMaker 8.0v2 product (Pro/Pro Advanced or Server/Server Advanced) as a host with clients prior to 8.0v2, performing find requests on unstored calculations result in all records being found. This is particularly dangerous when used in scripts that perform operations across the found set, such as replacing data or deleting records. To avoid this, make sure that all clients are using FileMaker Pro 8.0v2 or FileMaker Pro 8.0v2 Advanced. You may utilize the Get(ApplicationVersion) function to check the client version.
  • When using a FileMaker 8.0v2 product (Pro or Server) as a host, unstored calculations are always processed by the client application. In some network scenarios, this creates a significant decrease in performance, particularly when searching on these fields.
  • When printing from Windows based clients, layouts that use fixed margins will experience a shifting of the image by several pixels.
  • Recovering a file corrupts variable names in calculations.

Here is the advice from FileMaker Inc.:

During the period prior to this upcoming release, we recommend that you study the list of issues above carefully to best determine which version is right for you.

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FileMaker 8 FileMaker Discoveries FileMaker Tips Web/Tech Weblogs

Useful FileMaker Blog for You to Check Out

Mikhail

I discovered a new FileMaker blog today that looks good. I’ll probably have some more soon as I search for what’s available these days. This FileMaker blog is called Bits and Pieces and it is written by Mikhail Edoshin who has been a FileMaker developer for about 8 years. The photo here is of Mr. Edoshin.

At first glance, Mikhail’s blog seems to mainly have explanatory posts about various FileMaker calculations. But, there are some longer articles if you go back a little ways. The post I found most useful was called FileMaker field naming conventions written on November 6, 2005. Mikhail says that he’s tried very complex naming schemes in the past but has decided that simple, natural-sounding field names like First Name are better than the coded ones. He explains why.

A couple other posts I thought looked especially interesting were Merge Expressions and Custom functions to simplify reading the current state of modifier keys.

All of this content is valuable and should be on your required reading list if you are a FileMaker developer or intermediate to advanced user. The value a developer like Mikhail can add is all the real-world, in the field detail and context that isn’t provided in the online help or user manual.

Instead of merely responding to a filemaker forum question, a FileMaker blogger is choosing among his wide experience and picking something he thinks is worth sharing with a wider audience. Generally speaking, you can expect the shared item will have value to the community whereas a forum question might apply to only a few other FileMaker folks.

These experience-based reports and explanatory articles are really valuable. At minimum, they (1) give you a different slant on something you’ve read before, (2) remind or introduce you to functions and aspects of FileMaker development that you may not have found or thought about on your own and (3) provide extra commentary based on road-testing in the real world.

Blogs can add a lot to the FileMaker community. And some FileMaker developers, who may have previously relied on static web pages are, like Mikhail, have started blogging. Blogs, comprised of chronological posts, are convenient to create and operate, tell users what is most current, have great automatic archiving features and are linkable by post rather than whole web page.

A blog is much easier to maintain, gives you more Google juice due to the metadata it provides automatically and offers the ability for users to interact via comments. While providing a great service, Mr. Edoshin also introduces himself to colleagues and prospective clients. Speaking for myself, blogging is a great way to contribute and participate in the FileMaker community and incidentally gets the word out about you and your FileMaker business.

Prior to establishing Bits and Pieces in September, Mikhail created a website in 2000 that was devoted to filemaker. Some of that material may be migrated over to the blog over time but I wasn’t clear that any has been migrated so far. If you would like to take a look a Mikhail’s previous contributions about FileMaker, check out his Onega Software: FileMaker from the other side website.

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FileMaker 8 FileMaker Tips Migrating to FM7

You Should be Accessing Your FileMaker Database from Home

Fm8 Adv Box

If you are running FileMaker 7 or FileMaker 8, there’s no excuse for not using FileMaker’s robust and speedy remote access capability. All it takes to get it going is to have a fixed IP address for your FileMaker server (even if it is run from FileMaker Pro not FileMaker Server) and holes in your firewall for 5003, 50003 and 50006.

I’m not a networking expert, but the typical in-house IT guy or gal can handle this with a quick look at the documentation for the device on your network that is running your firewall. If you don’t already have a fixed IP address, you can either get one or use a DNS service for a small monthly fee (less than $10) that will make your dynamic IP address operate like a fixed IP address.

You don’t even need extra copies of FileMaker for home use. Just install the same copy of FileMaker that you use at work on your home machine. Since you can’t be in two places at once, you’ll never have a conflict between your identical installation codes. If you are already using a Powerbook as your main machine, run don’t walk to get this remote access going. It’s way too convenient to miss out on.

You and your employees should set-up your FileMaker database at work as a favorite host so you can easily log-in and get things done when the need arises. Most executives have days when they don’t need to be in the office except for perhaps one little thing. If you’ve got your business data in your office database, you can usually do that one little thing and avoid the commute.

Also, if you’ve got your database set up for remote access, I can log-in and fix things on the spot even if I’m at my local Starbucks having coffee and away from my office. This is an amazing safeguard and convenience. Instead of your sending me your file(s) by email, I can often do a quick fix in 5 or 10 minutes and we are done. Same day, same hour as when the need arises.

My clients are designers. They often travel for press checks, photo shoots or simply meetings with clients in other cities. With remote access set-up, you and your employees can log-in and get very good performance from any broadband connection wired or wireless. Life goes on. Nothing changes. No disruption. Just a lot more convenience.

If you are still using FileMaker 5 or 6, remote access is a good reason to seriously consider an upgrade to FileMaker 8. Already some of my clients operate one database from multiple locations. If you are one of those firms and haven’t upgraded yet, you need to check this out.

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