Articles, Tips, Techniques & Solutions

Using FM as a teacher

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:54:11 GMT

I've been using Filemaker as a college teacher for almost two years now, and I thought I'd share the fruits of my labors with others on this forum. I'm posting this here as a way of offering my help to others who are interested in using FM in place of a traditional gradebook or a spreadsheet. Please reply with any questions; I'm more than willing to offer further guidance or even post my FM solution as an example. I'm not posting it here now only because my actual FM solution has a lot of personal tweaks which will make it less than helpful to a newbie user.

What my FM solution does:
1) keep track of student data (grades, mostly)
2) produce grade reports for assignments and final grade reports at the end of the term.
3) email grade reports to students.

Data structure:
1) table with basic student info (name, picture, school id number, email) I call this table "Roster"
2) table of student grades (matched to table 1 by student name). I call this table "Grading"
3) table with key info for each assignment (matched to table 2 by assignment name). This includes grade weighting and instructions for creating the grade report for that particular assignment. I call this table "Report"

If you're able to download your classlist from the school's server, it's quite easy to import key info into the Roster table at the start of each semester.

Reports are produced by the following method.

Report::Form Letter is a text field, allowing me to customize the output for a given assignment.
Grading::Grade gives the student's grade on a particular assignment
Grading::Comment gives a personalized response
Roster::Report is a calculation field = Evaluate (Report::Form Letter)

There are other fields, but I want to keep it simple. As an example, if

Report::Form Letter = "Dear " & Roster::First Name & ", " & ¶ & Grading::Comment & ¶ & "Charles Henebry" & ¶ & "Grade: "& Grading::Grade
Grading::Grade = "B"
Grading::Comment = You really improved in this second essay. You still need to work on deepening essay structure, to keep your reader engaged.
Roster::First Name = John

Then Roster::Report returns the text

Quote:

Dear John,
You really improved in this second essay. You still need to work on deepening essay structure, to keep your reader engaged.
Charles Henebry
Grade: B

This grade report gets sent out to students using a custom applescript crafted by Fenton, one of the great champions of this forum. If you're just sending a simple email out to each student, you can use the send mail script step in Filemaker. The applescript is only necessary if you're trying to send a different attachment with each grade report (I will often want to return essays to students with my markup, and the send mail script step kept getting gummed up and sending the wrong attachment to students—a disaster that I fortunately caught in the testing phase). For details, see this thread, or contact me for help.

I'm currently experimenting with keeping track of attendance in FM (as opposed to keeping track of it on paper and then entering the total # absences in at the end of the semester). That has added an extra layer of complexity, but if anyone is interested I'll post more details.

Converting repeating field to separate records

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:33:02 GMT

In a record having a name field and a repeating field (say 5 repetitions), is there a way to create five records having the (same) name and one of each of the 5 repetitions.

Transferring tables to another file

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:02:11 GMT

I was wondering if there is a way to transfer (integrate) one or more tables in one file to another file (including field definitions)?

Named Buckets

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:14:15 GMT

FileMaker gives us local and global variables, which are quite useful. Further, these variables can have a "repetition number" in square bracket format such as $data[23] or $data[0] or $data[-128]. The repetition can be "sparse" - you can set rep #1 and 17 and 85 without setting any other rep numbers.

As it turns out, these integer values can be large. As in quite large; as in integers of over 400 digits.
Well - OK - but what good is that???

Let us consider another FileMaker feature. We now have the code() and char() functions. Code( "a") produces result 97.

Code( "FMForums") produces:
11500109001170011400111000700007700070

And it is reversible:
Char( 1500109001170011400111000700007700070 )
produces
FMForums

This reversibility works for a string length up to 80 characters (resulting integer is 397 digits )

This allows us to create "named buckets" which we can set and get and update.

Set variable $msg [ code( "Bruce technique #1")] = "some chunk of text"

See attached file for a crosstab technique which uses named buckets to give an "address" for each row/column intersection.

which licenses to invest in?

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:38:04 GMT

My current solution is in FM Pro10A I now need FM Pro 10 licenses for our work stations. I've seen some software sites sell an academic version at a savings. Will I have problems if i buy these versions? Their sites no.

Relationship Graph Organization

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:17:53 GMT

Here is an organizational concept for organizing the Relationship Graph.

Steps for Auto Enter

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:42:58 GMT

We get a questions about how to format a text field so that the user doesn't override fomatting set place by the users. In orther words, they paste in a clipboard item that uses different fonts, or they type in a phone number XXX-XXX-XXXX or XXXXXXXXXX, etc and you want it to display (XXX) XXX-XXXX etc.

You can control this somewhat by using the Auto Enter >> Calculated Value.

There are several example files showing the use of the Auto Enter Function, but sometimes we spend a lot of effort spelling out the steps involve.

The purpose of this tip, is to show visually the steps.

To start, you need to go into the Manage Database (a.k.a. Define Fields).

Next select the checkbox "Calculated value" or click on the button "Specify"

Next, type in, or select the Text Function to be use (or ganged)

close the window, and besure to deselect the checkbox Do not replace existing value of the field (if any)

Click Okay and leave the Manae Database if done.

HTH

Lee

Top Five Items

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:39:06 GMT

February 9th 2010

One month from today, March 9th 2010, will mark the sixth anniversary of the release of FileMaker Pro 7 and the advent of the .fp7 era. An auspicious anniversary it will be, to be sure, and worthy of appropriate commemoration.
I am curious what other developers may think are the top five items that characterize the modern .fp7 versions of FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Pro Advanced and that have come along as the product matured and advanced. Here are my five:

1. Security schema
2. $ and $$ variables
3. GetValue and List functions
4. Conditional formatting
5. Triggers

Steven

Emailing through a Script

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:36:52 GMT

I have a script which creates a pdf file of the current record and emails it to a specified address. The script works great on my computer and many others, but there is one computer that will not create a email through that employee's Entourage Email. Help!!

Databases and skills

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:39:21 GMT

Probably here is a bit more like just to make a relationship or calculation.
Making database for home movie collection is one thing.
Making database to register student activities is another.
Making CRM or ERP database again is different case.
Skills can be on the same for ALL variants and in a lot of cases some average or intermediate is enough.
Difference is in understanding FOR WHAT database is created.
As higher is knowledge "for what" as more complicated database you can create with the same skills.
What I want to say - you need to knew much more to develop good database for situation: how user and admin look on your created result, how easy is to implement in overall process, how the process is going, what are tendencies today in process, are there a new equipment that can be connected to or driven by database and so on.
Experience and knowledge about process is more important like database developer skills. Because FM is excellent for all up to medium scale databases.
So - from my point of view - determinate skills for FM user are useless.

Take a break and think about this:
"... U.S. adults are terrible at solving real-world math problems:
*Only 42 percent were able to pick out two items on a menu, add them, and calculate a tip.
Only 1 in 5 could reliably calculate mortgage interest.
1 in 5 could not calculate weekly salary when told an hourly pay rate." (link here )

Who will be the users of your very complicated database you have created with all Certifications? Or without any Certifications?
At least 50% of your database users will think different and try to use different your product regardless of your skills.
To avoid this you need to knew most about environment about database.

It will bee good to hear more opinions about theme.