Roark Holz

OK now I understand, thanks again for your help!

Ok, thank you for your response, that was helpful. Our FileMaker server is running on a Hyper-V guest but there is some limitation as to the drive space available so I thought it would be advantageous to store these attachments elsewhere, especially since they will only be accessed rarely. I do think there are some third party solutions that add this functionality so perhaps I'll look into one of those. I am still confused however as to what the "Manage Containers" menu option does if you can't change where your container data is stored? And I'm also still confused as to why those buttons are grayed out to me. Not that I guess it matters much if I can't use them the way I was hoping to. Thanks again for the clarification.

Hello, I am wondering if someone can help me understand how external container fields work in FileMaker 15. For testing purposes I have created a very simple database shared from our FileMaker 15 Server, the database has two fields, a single text field and a single container field. I have set the container field to store files externally which works, the files end up in a subfolder on the FileMaker server where the database itself resides. Now I would like to change the external location where the files associated with the container are stored, I found a section in the manual called "Managing external storage of container data" but this is where I am running into a problem. While logged into the database as the admin user I go to File-->Manage Containers. There is one location listed under Base Directories: "[hosted location]/Container Test/" however all of the buttons that I should be able to use to manage my containers are grayed out (New..., Edit..., Delete and Transfer Data...). The only buttons in there that work are cancel and OK. It seems like a permissions problem but I am logged in as the admin user with full access. Can anyone tell me what I might be doing wrong? Ultimately I would like files uploaded to my container fields to be stored on a file share, either referenced by UNC path or by mapping a network drive. Thanks in advance for any assistance anyone can provide.

I went ahead and created a simple file to demonstrate the problem but everything seems to work as expected in it. So I just added the additional fields I needed to it and so far so good. Not sure what I messed up originally but I think I'm pointed in the right direction now so won't waste any more of your time with this. Thanks again for your help.

Absolutely, I am about to leave for the day and will need to customize the DB a bit to get rid of some personal information but I'll put something together and post it tomorrow. Thanks again for your generous willingness to help with this.

I went ahead and tried to make this work using the "sort" method but am still running into problems. When I first open up the database and sort it by the proper field it does work. However, if I perform a search to limit to a date range, and then sort by the proper field the field that should contain the number of unique entries in the found set goes blank. Also, the field I am trying to calculate needs to be displayed in the footer of a layout that contains a list of all the records above it, however, the list needs to be sorted by date, not by the field I need to sort on to calculate this number. It seems as though I am trying to do something that seems very simple to me but I just can't get my head around what I need to do to make this work. I'm just trying to find a simple way to calculate the number of unique entries for one specific field in a found set. Thanks again for your help.

Thank you, you confirmed what I thought was happening. I didn't word what I said about not wanting to sort very well, I just meant that the other method seemed simpler to me. I'll go ahead and try it with the sort method and see if that works.

Hello, I am still on FileMaker 11 and am having a problem I'm hoping someone might be able to assist me with. I have a very simple database as an example with one table and two fields, date and customerid. I would like to create a field that counts the number of unique customerid's in my current selection and have been following the FileMaker knowledge base article here... Counting the number of unique values in a field The article describes 3 methods to do this, the 1st uses the ExecuteSQL method which won't work for me because it requires a newer version of FileMaker. The 2nd requires a sort I'd rather not do so I have been trying to do this using the 3rd method titled "Self Join Method". 1. I created a self-join relationship matching the customerid field with a table ocurrance named selfjoin 2. I created a calculated counter field using this expression: counter = 1 / Count(selfjoin::customerid) 3. I created a summary field totaling the counter field. If I have every record in the database selected then this method seems to work fine. But if I perform a search on just a specific date I am finding that the calculation seems to break down if there happens to be any omitted records that have the same customerid defined. Can anyone give me a hint as to what I might be doing wrong? Thank you.

Thanks Steven, I'll give that a try. Luckily changing someone's group membership is not something that will happen often so I can live with rebooting the server if I have to I guess.

I have a FileMaker 9 Server (running on Mac OS 10.4 Tiger, not server) that is set up to externally authenticate to our Mac OS 10.4 Server (configured as an Open Directory Master). For the most part everything works great, I added the necessary groups (fm_supers, fm_admins, fm_casemanagers) to the Tiger Server, assigned the proper groups to the users and everything worked perfectly. The problem comes when I need to change the level of access an existing user has. For instance, I removed one of my members from the fm_casemanagers group and then assigned them to the fm_supers group (the user was not logged into any database while I made the update to group membership). When the user logs back in for some reason FileMaker is still picking them up as being in the fm_casemanagers group rather than the fm_supers group. I tried shutting down and restarting the particular database and it did not help, I also tried stopping the FileMaker database server and restarting it but that did not help either. So far the only way I can get the FileMaker Server to recognize the group membership changes is to reboot the FileMaker Server. Does anyone know what I need to do to make these updates just work without the need for a FileMaker Server Reboot. I must be missing something obvious here. Thanks in advance for any help that can be provided.

Yes, that makes perfect sense now that I look at it. I'm not quite sure why I set up the relationship that way in the first place. You have really helped me and it is very much appreciated. I was spending all of my time trying to determine why the case statement I was using in the validation calculation was not working and it never even occurred to me to check the relationship. Thank you so much, you have helped stave off the onset of my complete insanity for at least a little while longer. Roark

I appreciate your help, as I said I am fairly new to Filemaker so it is quite possible that I am missing something obvious. Here is a link to the file... http://roark.oppco.org/PurchaseOrders.fp7.zip I have made the admin password admin. The password for the different users is simply their first name in lower case but you can test the problem I am having now logged in as admin, just create a new PO and enter something in the "Inv. #" field of the line items. Eventually I will assign the validation calculation to all of the enterable line item fields but for testing purposes it is only set up on Inv. # right now. The calculation can be viewed by looking at the LINE_ITEMS table and the field name is li_invoice_number. Thanks again for your help, it is greatly appreciated. Roark Holz

I thought that that might be the problem too so as a test I created a script that basically did a new record step and commit record step but when I entered into the Line Items table I still had the same problem. Also, if I monitor the po_status and po_originator fields they set themselves immedately upon creating a new PO.

I have been working on a purchase order database and have run into a bit of a brick wall. Basically I have a "Purchase Orders" table and a "Line Items" table. When a user creates a new purchase order I want to limit their ability to add entries to the "Line Items" table based on certain criteria. There is a field in Purchase Orders called po_originator and another called po_status. I only want a user who is the originator of the PO to be able to add line items and only when the po_status is set to "Pending Approval" In Define Accounts and Privileges I can use "Limited" for their ability to edit records in Line Items by doing the following... Records can be edited when: ( PURCHASE_ORDERS::po_originator = Get ( AccountName ) ) and ( PURCHASE_ORDERS::po_status = "Pending Approval" ) but there is no option to set up limited privileges for creating records. So I tried to do it by validating the fields that can be entered into Line Items, right now I have just this one validation on a field called li_invoice in Line Items... Case ( ( ( PURCHASE_ORDERS::po_originator = Get ( AccountName ) ) and ( PURCHASE_ORDERS::po_status = "Pending Approval" ) ); 1; 0 ) but the validation always fails when entering the first line of data onto a new PO and for the life of me I can not figure out why (I will admit that I am fairly new to FileMaker so may be missing something very obvious). The weird thing as that the validation does seem to work on PO's where there is at least one line of data entered already. I have used the Data View to watch the value of my fields at the moment I create a new PO and it seems that the validation should pass. Is there some better way to do what I am trying to accomplish? Thanks in advance. Roark Holz