Locked records message

[millmaine]

Over the years, we've run into a situation where two people try to access the same record at the same time. A message is displayed saying "Name (username) is modifying this record. You cannot use this record until Name (username) is finished."

Two responses are offered "Send Message" and "OK".

If you click "OK", the message simply comes up again, so as well as being locked out of the record you are effectively locked out of using Filemaker.

If you click "Send Message" a dialogue appears headed "Message to Send" with a field enabled for a message to be written. Despite having tried this many times over the years, nobody has ever received the message.

Does anybody know more about this?

Edited June 9, 2020 by millmaine
grammar

[Wim Decorte]

7 hours ago, millmaine said:

If you click "OK", the message simply comes up again, so as well as being locked out of the record you are effectively locked out of using Filemaker.

I've never seen anyone being locked out of FM because of a locked record...  The only scenario I can think off is some sort of scripted loop?  Can you explain the circumstances here a bit more?

The most common way around this is to take full control as the developer:

- turn error trapping on so that no default messages are shown to the user

- and then very diligently trap for errors and handle them yourself.

 

[millmaine]

The scripted loop may be the case re the continuing lockout. I'll look into that.

My real query is why does the option to send a message to the other user appear but never work. It seems to have been that way since at least FM7. During that time we've moved from peer to peer, to FM Server, to FM Cloud for AWS to FM Cloud. The same circumstance has always offered the send message option and it has never seemed to work. It's not referred to any documentation that I can find.