The FileMaker Collective

August Meeting Date Changed

louisville — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:42:45 +0000

We had a good time at our Little Things that Reap Big Rewards meeting on the 15th. More than one person left saying that a particular tip was worth all the time to come to all the meetings put together. What were they? You missed them.

No. Just kidding. They’re posted on the blog entry below.

NEW AUGUST MEETING DATE
Because we simply can’t wait to get talking about FileMaker’s newest products (well that and a scheduling conflict) we are changing the August meeting from the THIRD Thursday to the SECOND Thursday. We’re sorry if you had your heart set on the 19th, but this month (only, we hope) the Kentuckiana FileMaker Users Group will have their monthly rendezvous on the 12th! Same time, same location though.

DESIGNING FOR IWP
After Alan Bird’s presentation on Instant Web Publishing in June, Byron Songer is stepping up to show you how to prepare your solutions to work efficiently with your new-found power. From visual design issues to some of the under-the-hood things you’ll need to know, now you can take full advantage of the the absolutely easiest way to take your data to the web.

GO-GO FILEMAKER MOBILE APPS!
“What are these new FileMaker products you are talking about,” you ask? Well, last week FileMaker released their long-lusted-for apps that run on the iPhone, Touch and the iPad (called FileMaker Go)! We are having fun playing with our new toys, and you will too! Various members of the committee will share their experiences with these game-changing new tools and we’ll pass around examples to play with your very own self.

Get a look a the future of FileMaker!

TIME/LOCATION:
August 12, 1:00 pm to 3:30-ish
1234 S. Third Street, Louisville

Info & RSVP: http://fmpug.com/scheduleMeetings.php

DON’T FORGET, NEW MEETING DATE!

See you on the 12th!

July 15th Tips-and-Tricks Event

louisville — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:37:52 +0000

Discussion notes from June 15th meeting.

Filemaker tips and tricks (Brian)

SugarSync and DropBox - off-site backups with restore of last 3 if needed!

Various ideas from the videos from the February Pause On Error: https://pauseonerror.pbworks.com/Tips-and-Tricks which came from http://twitter.com/campsoftware/filemaker ( This is Hal in Orlando FL )

Freeze Window

This script step freezes the redraw of the window while scripts process in the background. It saves time like crazy! Processing 12000 took 32 seconds in “real time,” then with the “freeze window” it took 4 seconds! NOTE: It does not work in IWP.

Copy Records

You can copy a record in form view or list view. Choosing Copy from the Edit menu copies the current record in tab delimited format to the clipboard. Add the option (shift on a PC) and it copies the same data from the entire found set! It only copies the fields on the layout. Also we found that Excel has a character limit and would not accept all the data from a larger set so keep an eye our for that.

We discussed some find techniques and talked about one that would look for “James” in both the first name field and the last name field. You’d enter find mode, then type “James” in first name then create a new find request and type “James” in the last name field. When you hit enter it will find all the records that had “James” as either the first name or the last.

Dates search >[Data] is the same as [Date]…

Put quotes around more-than-one-word searches to find exact matches like =”of the”

Bill demonstrated using auto-enter calcs to format entries–such as phone numbers and social security numbers–no matter what format the user entered it in. Phone number formatting is a simple start of the talk that leads into using Custom Functions to handle them.

On a side topic, Bill showed a custom function that generated HTML5 primitives (boxes, circles, triangles) in a FileMaker web viewer object!

Lotsa cool stuff!

FileMaker Go! Hello iPhone and iPad…

mnavarre — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:55:17 +0000

This week FileMaker made a huge announcement:

http://www.filemakertrial.com/go/

Given this great news, we’ll take half of the Tuesday meeting to discuss FileMaker Go for iPhone and iPad. We’ll pass around a few examples in case you haven’t gotten your hands on it yet, and we’ll talk about what we’ve learned so far in this very exciting first week.

Matt Navarre and John Sindelar will co-present this FM Go section after John’s presentation on Filtered Portals using the new feature in FileMaker Pro 11. John will make a strong case why Filtered Portals is the sleeper feature in FileMaker Pro 11.

Then we’ll open it up to general discussion and Q&A.

This is a game-changer. Come see why!

Please RSVP for this meeting at FMPug

FileMaker Go

steve — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:56:58 +0000

Like most FileMaker users, we were excited to learn about the release of FileMaker Go for the iPhone and iPad. It promises to offer a new level of flexibility in connecting with your data that many of us have been looking forward to for a long time. FileMaker has done a very nice job with this product.

FileMaker Go

steve — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:56:58 +0000

July 26 – Matt Navarre & FMGo

jsindelar — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:32:23 +0000

The Evolution of Search

Overview. Matt Navarre of MSN Media will be speaking on The Evolution of Search.

We live in the age of Google, and work in the land of FileMaker.

User expectations of how search works in a database has changed over the years, and as developers, we have both followed and led that shift. We’ll discuss some different search techniques that have been successful, and some that no longer are. We’ll look at Google search, and learn how close we can get to that within a FileMaker system.

To cover that ground, our discussion will include:
• Standardizing on single-field search
• The new QuickFind feature in FileMaker Pro 11
• Anatomy of a Google search
• Other tools such as Bing and Wolfram Alpha
• Commercial products such as fmSearchResults and ScriptMaster
• Different methods of ranking results
• Multiple-datatype search
• Mini-search tools to replace value lists

Matt Navarre is a regular speaker at DevCon, FBA Platinum, host of the FileMaker talk podcast, and author of fmSearchResults.

FileMaker Go for iPhone and iPad

In light of FileMaker’s recent announcement…

http://www.filemakertrial.com/go/

…we’ll take half the meeting to discuss FileMaker Go for iPhone and iPad. We’ll pass around a few examples in case you haven’t gotten your hands on it yet, and we’ll talk about what we’ve learned so far in this very exciting first week.

Matt Navarre and John Sindelar will co-presnet this section after Matt’s presentation on FileMaker Search techniques, and we’ll open it up to general discussion and Q&A.

This is a game-changer. Come see why.

Pizza and soft drinks provided if you RSVP.

RSVP for this meeting today!

Matt Navarre
MSN Media

Questions?

Something in particular you’d like to ask Matt? Leave a comment below and we’ll get it to Matt to make sure he gets to it…

Building a Relational Database in FileMaker

audreyakhavan — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:51:42 +0000

Join us on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010, for a preview of Jerry Robin’s FileMaker DevCon session, “Building a Relational Database in FileMaker Pro.”

The session will run approximately 2 hours. At this year’s DevCon, it will be presented as a Pre-Conference session, and will be offered for an additional fee of $149.00. But you can see the preview in Phoenix for FREE!

Although this is positioned as a beginner-level session, Jerry promises that even experienced developers will pick up some useful nuggets of relational design wisdom. It’s always a good idea to review the basics, since they are the foundation of good database design.

Here’s the official description from the FileMaker website:

In this presentation, you’ll learn the theory and practice of building a relational database in FileMaker Pro. We’ll begin with some basic relational design theory and terminology, and show you how to plan the structure of your database. You’ll learn to identify and diagram one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many relationships. Then you’ll learn how to build relationships on the FileMaker relationships graph, including how to resolve a many-to-many relationship. You’ll learn how to define key fields and you’ll see how easy it is to create and use portals to display information from a related table, or even from multiple related tables. And finally, you’ll understand the concept of “context,” which is fundamental to almost every aspect of FileMaker development, from scripting to calculations to reporting.

Topics Include:

Understanding relational design terminology
Understanding and setting up various types of relationships
Understanding “context”
Creating and using portals

About Jerry Robin

The owner of FMPTraining.com, Jerry Robin is an experienced consultant, trainer and developer of custom FileMaker Pro databases. Jerry has been a presenter at eight FileMaker Developer Conferences since 1997, and was ranked among the top-rated speakers from 2000 to 2008. A FileMaker 7, 8, 9 and 10 Certified Developer, Jerry was a Technical Editor for “FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual,” wrote and presented a highly-praised FileMaker Pro 7 CD training series in 2004, and won the FileMaker Millionaire prize at the 2001 DevCon in Orlando.

When he’s not doing FileMaker, Jerry performs stand-up comedy and is also the throwing half of an award-winning competitive Dog Frisbee team (with his Australian Shepherd, Dakota).

Please send an email to audrey@fmugaz.com, if you plan to attend. Your RSVP will be especially appreciated and will help us in planning.

Shhh! How to Silence the “Only variable references should be returned by reference” Notice

Tim Dietrich — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:29:00 +0000

This is one of those weird issues that I've probably run into a half dozen times, and it gets me every time.When using the FileMaker API for PHP to call a FileMaker script, you'll sometimes get this notice:Notice: Only variable references should be returned by reference in C:\inetpub\www.somewebsite.com\data\FileMaker\Command.php on line 127I'm still not sure what causes this notice to be

Shhh! How to Silence the “Only variable references should be returned by reference” Notice

Tim Dietrich — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:29:00 +0000

Little Things that Reap Big Rewards

louisville — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:50:23 +0000

Anyone who has been developing in FileMaker for any length of time will have discovered some serious time- and effort-saving techniques in their everyday work. Your User Group Committee already has a few doozies up their collective sleeves that you’ll be hearing more about, but this may be your big chance at that 15 minutes of fame you’ve been waiting for. If you have a trick you employ that you feel makes your life even a little easier or cuts down the amount of time you spend on a task, let us know and we’ll include it in this presentation at next month’s program. If you wish, you can even present it yourself. Drag ‘em out and pass ‘em on. Email them to jonathan”at”fletcherdata.com and we’ll sculpt them all into the general shape of a presentation!

Info & RSVP: http://fmpug.com/scheduleMeetings.php

TIME/LOCATION:
July 15, 1:00 pm to 3:30-ish
1234 S. Third Street, Louisville

See you on the 15th!