A READER ASKS: FMP 10 Automatic Sorts And Schema Changes

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

APPENDIX 4: FileMaker Pro 10 Changes

A READER ASKS:
I’m considering upgrading to FileMaker 10 but I have a couple questions about the automatic sorting feature.

If the sort order is based upon a field that is changed from text to number, will this trigger a re-sort automatically?

If the sort order is based upon a value list of options, if you change the value list in schema, will this trigger a re-sort of the found set?

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DWAYNE RESPONDS
What great questions and this is an aspect of the FileMaker 10 sorting I had not considered before! I had to open up a copy of FileMaker 10 and experiment with this myself.


There is a related movie on this topic! CLICK HERE!



From what I can tell in my testing and shown in the movie link above ...

If the sort order is based upon a field that is changed from text to number, will this trigger a re-sort automatically? YES!

If the sort order is based upon a value list of options, if you change the value list in schema, will this trigger a re-sort of the found set? NO!



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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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A READER ASKS: Multiple Request Search

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

APPENDIX 1: A Reader Asks

A READER ASKS: We are trying to sort out our contact who are architects and have email addresses. I can do a find with architect selected in the contact type field and then type " = .com" into the email field, but this only gives me the ones with .com addresses. Any pointers?

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DWAYNE RESPONDS
What you want to do is a multiple request search, here is how it goes.

- go into find mode and enter in “architect” in the contact type field
- under the Requests menu, choose New Request
- enter in “=” in the email field and click the omit button
- then perform the find

Under the hood, FileMaker will find the architects and then omit any records where the email address field is empty.

Here are some links to other posts that might be of interest in regards to this topic...
EXAMPLE: Omit In A Multiple Request Search
Omitting Records From The Found Set
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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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EXAMPLE: USPS Leased Facilities 2009

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

APPENDIX 5: Snapshot From The Real World

This is a FileMaker database that was built upon the Excel downloads from
http://www.usps.com/foia/readroom/leasedfacilitiesreport.htm .

I had a client that wanted this and thought I’d go ahead and make the FileMaker version of this available. The USPS web site decided to make this data available in 50+ different downloads and no version that combines them. Here is a blurb from the website ...

The Postal Service maintains more than 25,300 leased spaces in its facilities inventory nation wide. Below is the current national listing of leased postal facilities which includes all fifty States and U.S. Territories.

An example file can be downloaded at ...
http://www.dwaynewright.com/blogfiles09/USPS_Facilities2009.zip
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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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FILEMAKER: Temporary Calculation Vs Replace Command

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

CHAPTER 5: Working With Found Sets

Followed a twitter post from Larry Nichols to his blog (http://larrynichols.posterous.com/) where he talked about a work around for using the replace command. I had known about this technique for many years but not sure how practical it is. Here is a link ...

http://larrynichols.posterous.com/quick-way-to-populate-a-new-field-across-many

If I remember correctly, this is wicked fast for files that are not being hosted. Doing any schema related changes to hosted files has “some” risk. I think it is minimal risk but don’t ever take schema changes like this lightly.

In most cases, you would want to use the Replace command. Neither technique would insure you against record locking in a shared database.
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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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FILEMAKER: Follow Up - FileMaker 10 Saved Finds And Custom Menus

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

APPENDIX 4: FileMaker Pro 10 Changes

So this is a follow up to my previous blog posting ... FileMaker 10 Saved Finds And Custom Menus. I’ve gone back to my FileMaker based CRM product (InBizness) and looked at how I wanted to integrate the new FileMaker 10 saved search sub-menu into the system. This is going to have to be delayed for version 3.0 of InBizness. I’ve closed development for version 2.9 and doing the QA and documentation for it.

So InBizness has a large amount of FileMaker custom menu implementation and it took me a moment to figure out how to blend in this new FileMaker 10 feature. Every layout that the user goes to has a custom menu and they are consistent in their look / operation.

Here you can see the menu commands for the clients module and the invoice module. The only difference for each module is the second menu set. This is a menu that is customized for the modules you are in. So in the Clients module, the menu set is called Clients and has client related actions available. In the Invoice module, the menu set is called Invoices and has invoicing related actions available. This is the same for all the modules within InBizness, so they can have targeted unique options.

Under my General menu, I have all the traditional menus you would find with FileMaker. They are simply moved from the top to the General menu and work like sub-menus. In find mode, the requests sub-menu item is available to you.

At first, I thought I’d put my FileMaker 10 saved finds sub-menu under the Requests menu. But that only shows up in Find mode and it makes sense for this sub-menu to be there in Browse mode. This saves the user from going into find mode first. So I added it to both areas. When I did my testing, I noticed an odd behavior.

In browse mode, choosing a saved find option performs the find. In find mode, choosing a saved find only inserts the saved find criteria. It does not perform the find. I’m sure that is in the documentation somewhere but I must have missed that. Because the behavior may be confusing to my customers, I removed the saved find sub-menu from the Requests menu.

THE INBIZNESS SAVED FIND MENU
A couple versions ago, I started adding some saved searches custom menus to compliment my report custom menus. So you can quickly run a search or a report within a module (other than) the one you are in currently. I know that the FileMaker 10 Saved Searches is table dependent. I doubt there is any way to see the FileMaker 10 saved searches for a module other than the one you are in.

So I decide to add the saved finds sub-menu to the bottom of my Searches menu. It will show any of the Saved / Recent finds for the current module just fine and it seems to make sense being there.
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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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FILEMAKER: FileMaker 10 Saved Finds (Constrains And Extend Routines)

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

There are some situations in which the new FileMaker 10 Saved / Recent finds might have troubles covering you. These situations are pretty complex however and I’m not sure how often you would run into this out in the field.

You see, it is challenging sometimes to communicate all the great things that FileMaker searches can do. As a longtime developer and a person that has written about the found set quite a bit ... I still uncover unique combinations on a regular basis.

I’ve had mixed success in spreading the gospel of constrain and extended finds to users. Some folks really get it and some just do not. The below FileMaker 10 saved search limitation would involve someone ...

- implementing constrain / extended finds regularly
- immediately grasping FileMaker 10 saved search feature
- immediately trying to blend the two

If you perform a find, get a found set and then perform a constrain/extend find, FileMaker does not track both of those search processes as one saved find. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it. How would FileMaker know these two independent finds should be combined and saved as a recent find?

The trick (when possible) is to integrate both process within a single find and you are good to go. Multiple find requests in a search allows you the option to make your search more robust. For example, what if you want to find records that match one thing but you want the found set to not contain something else.

Similar to the task of creating new records in browse mode, you can create new find requests in find mode. The first request in the request order runs first and following requests in line after that.

Many users don’t utilize multiple find requests because they don’t know or are not comfortable in using them. However, after you get a few successful multiple request searches under your belt, you may find that you use them all the time.

Here you can see the Requests menu, only available when you are in find mode. You can see the add, duplicate and delete request options. Much like what you can do when working with records in browse mode!

Here are some links to other posts that might be of interest in regards to this topic...
EXAMPLE: Multiple Find Requests Counter
Constrain Found Set
Extend Found Set
EXAMPLE: Omit In A Multiple Request Search
The PERFORM FIND script step
Scripting Your Own Search Process
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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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FileMaker 10 Saved Finds And Custom Menus

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

APPENDIX 4: FileMaker Pro 10 Changes


There is a related movie on this topic! CLICK HERE!


FileMaker 10 Saved Sorts And Custom Menus
I had a devil of a time figuring out what was going on with FileMaker 10, its new saved find features and the custom menu sets that I have in my existing FileMaker databases. The problem had to deal with the ability to add the Saved Finds sub-menu into any of my databases created before FileMaker 10. I thought something was corrupted with my files ... and ... this isn’t the first time I thought this while working with FileMaker 10. Just like the previous times, I was over reacting and there is a simple work around.

Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, as a test, I created a file from scratch in FileMaker 10 and then looked at my custom menu options. Here you can see that my Saved Finds sub-menu is available as a custom menu option.

Next I created the very same file in FileMaker 9 first. In fact, I copied the entire table from my FileMaker 10 database and pasted it into my FileMaker 9 database (using FileMaker Advanced with both versions). I then quit FileMaker 9 and reopened that file with FileMaker 10 Advanced and the Saved Finds sub-menu is missing.

Conclusion, the FileMaker 10 Saved Finds sub-menu is missing from all files that were created with a previous version of FileMaker Pro.

So here is an example where the $99 annual fee to FileMaker TechNet came in quite handy. I looked in my email archive for any recent posts about Custom Menus. Sure enough, there was a posting about this and a resolution described by Geoff Coffey of Six Fried Rice. This pointed me in the right direction and I also received a twitter reply from one of the FileMaker faithful.

The answer is to simply add the sub-menu back to the system. At first, this advice didn’t help me because I was interpreting it incorrectly. I would edit one of my menus, click the custom menu button and the Saved Finds option was not available.

The answer is that I wasn’t going deep enough or perhaps I was going too deep. Yeah, it is that weird but thankfully you only need to do this once per file. Simply click the create button in the custom menus and then immediately scroll to the bottom of the list, you can add the Saved Find menu back into your Sub Menu choices. Once it is there, you can add it to other menus at your hearts content.

The movie link above, probably does a better job at explaining this.

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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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Help support this blog by considering a donating to its ongoing growth. For more details, please visit http://www.dwaynewright.com/donate.html