Chris Echols

I'm trying to make a form letter, but I want to include multiple records to my form letter so as there a way to get filemaker to do this like: Dear <<First Name>>: Our records show you have the following items missing from your rental return: <<related record line 1>> <<related record line 2>> <<related record line 3>> <<related record line 4>> Please return them as soon as possible...

I did get a chance to look at the code and it is a bit tricky and since I effectively have 5 different calendars I'm working with, it's going to take me a lot more time than I think I'm willing to put into this project for work since I'm doing this as a proof of concept for our particular application. I took a look at http://www.qutic.com/product/FM-iCal-Connector and it looks promising and works beautifully since I'm already using the Google CalDav tool...

I know that this is simple to do, but somehow I can not figure out where to start. I made this really involved and detailed flat file and I simply need to get the number of records created on a per month basis. I need to turn in a report listing the number of items created on a per month basis over a three year period. Do I need to some how make a related table to count how many per month?

So, after RTFM, I'm well on my way to making this thing do what I want it to do, but as with anything, I keep wanting it to just one more thing. So disregard the above post where I could get the portal thing working. Now I need to know how you guys handle fields in those related databases that are the same. If I got the address in one table, do I really need it in another table? I think I do for various reports and what not, but maybe that's just me being anal. Since I can get at any related field from any layout, it seems that I can do without the redundant address fields... What is a good rule of thumb?

Well, I thought I could use my Venue Form as the main form and just add new contacts through the portal, but I'm finding that it is not a straightforward as I thought. How can I ensure that new contacts I want to make are correctly associated with the venue I'm working on? I'm playing around with the scriptmaker to make this work and trial and error is killing me right now. Anyway, thanks for your help so far...

OK... that helped me figured out the first thing I was doing wrong (I'm new to relationships). I saw a tutorial that told me to try to have only one to many or many to one relationships. So now I've figured out that the company/venue table needs to be a parent of Observations and Contacts, while the Purchase Orders table is a parent to Vendors and equipment. In my first post I was torn between whether to have a venue table and a separate company table, or whether to somehow just make myself a company/venue table so that the few companies that have different venues would just have more than one record. The concern being, that just because it was a different venue, doesn't mean that there would be different contacts. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the "similars" keys used in the demo contact table. After fixing my "primary" keys, I realized that I needed an invoice table to be a parent to Purchase orders since I would have a client (Venue) that would need to make purchase orders from various vendors to complete one project that I would send them one invoice for. Now I just need to redesign the layouts to take advantage of these relationships. I think, which will surely bring me back here. Last time I did a portal, I couldn't get it to do what I wanted to do, but I can address that later. One table I'm not clear about is the VendorEquipment "join" table. I know that vendors can have lots of equipment and I know that equipment can be carried by lots of vendors. But which table determines (or should determine) the device ID, the Observation table, or the Purchase Order Table? Is it possible to have two parents? In the observation table, it really is a list of equipment present at the venue. So now my final questions are: How do I deal with the relationships between services and PO's? Is it ok to have the many to many relationship there?

Just in case someone needs it, I needed a calculation that automatically assumed an area code if I entered only 7 digits... I thought I'd share: Let ( //define variables: [ rawNumber = Filter (Cell; "0123456789") ; length = Length (rawNumber); //set error flag for a phone number that's too short error = If ( length < 7 ; "error"; " " ) ]; //now apply the phone formatting and return results If ( error ≠ " "; error; If ( length = 7 ; "(205) " & Left (rawNumber; 3) & "-" & Middle (rawNumber; 4; 4) ; " (" & Left (rawNumber; 3) & ") " & Middle (rawNumber; 4; 3) & "-" & Middle (rawNumber; 7; 4) & //This condition tests for extra digits //that well treat as an extension If ( length > 10; " x" & Middle (rawNumber; 11; length - 10); " ") ) ) )

Being a newbie, I always start databases with templates and work my way up. I started using a contact database for something I'm doing on the side, but then figured out that I needed to use the P.O. template to make a quick invoice for services rendered. Then of course I thought about all of the other things I needed to track. (I didn't plan it out.) Luckily, I don't have a lot of records in this database, so I can afford to start over with a plan, but I'm stuck on step one - the ERD. I have contacts and there are many contacts at different churches or venues. I perform observations at the different venues, but then I ran into one church that has 2 venues. If I have to do an invoice or P.O. for the church I'll need to keep track of services rendered and equipment suggested. Now I want an equipment table to be related to both the invoices or course, but also to the observations (where I make a list of all the equipment that I observed and/or tested). I know I'm probably wanting to do a whole lot with this database, but that's why I have filemaker, so that I can... See the attached pic and let me know where I'm messing up.

I've read somewhere, thought it was here but I can't find it, where someone suggested that phone numbers have a related table to be able to pick type much like Address book in Mac. That way I can put in a number and tell the database what kind of number it is. Anybody know the best way to do it, or where I saw that?

Sure... Here ya go... I thought about that, but since I've never had to build a table with portals at all, I'm missing something to make it work like I want to. Volunteer_Time_and_Task.fp7_2.zip

I thought I had a handle on relationships but obviously not. I'm trying to make a database to keep up with volunteer hours. I'm at the point now where I have to update all of the flat files that I've made to make input and reporting a little easier. I have 3 tables, volunteers, time cards (the FM stock file) and tasks. I want to use the time card as my parent file, so I have the relationship with the time card and the volunteer table working ok. I'm using lookups to actually get the names. The problem is that I made this button to "add a task to this day" and I want it to make a new record and record the related name and the associated time card. Multiple tasks can be related to one time card. How do I get the lookups to work for names, dates, etc? Or should I be using portals? Right now I have the volunteer ID related to the volunteer ID on Time card and the Time Card ID, related to the Time Card ID on the task record. Do I need to somehow relate the task ID back to the time card?

I made a mistake by not entering serial numbers in my flat database files because I had not yet gotten a grasp on using relationships. How do I go back and repopulate the serials in the records that I've already created?

I'm trying to do something similar, but I'm still not clear on why I have to create another databse and write a script to print 50 of the same labels. I'm not good with scripting and I'm simply trying to print out cassette tape labels. Does anyone have an example?

Thanks Paul... I didn't find what I was after. I already have accordance, but I was looking at something more like the programs I found on FM Files website. Why don't some of the older standalone solutions work with OSX?

I want to make my own bible database in Filemaker 7. Where would I get the bible text in a data format that I can import into filemaker?

I've read other posts but none are working for me. I'm building a simple inventory and want my quantity field to count how many records contain the same model number of the record being browsed. We may have 10 of the same item, but each needs a different record because of different serial numbers. So I tried the count(solution::model) and that is not updating the quantity like I'm expecting it to.