"New Message" Alert

[mikemccloskey]

I have a file that is shared between my secretary and myself that is used for passing messges that are viewed in list form. When I have a message I want to send her, or vice versa, it is as simple as marking if for the appropriate person and viewing the found set. My problem is this. When she sends me a message, I would like the message to be visually marked in some way to catch my attention in the midst of all the other records that may be displayed at any given moment. (These other records may be to do items, call lists, etc.) Ideally I would like to find a way to change the background color or have a colored field or something like that to alert me that she has sent me that particular message. Is this doable? Thanks

[keshalyi]

Certainly!

What you would need to do is create a field marking whether the message had been read or not. When she creates a new message, you would want it to auto-enter 'unread' in this field.

Then, make a global container field, filled with a big red box (or whatever color you want to highlight with). Now, make a calculation field whose result is a container, and have it be 'if the message is unread, make this equal the global red box field, if not, than have it equal null).

Almost done.

Now go into the layout where you view the messages, and in the very back, put this container field, expnd it to fill the entire background of the m essage, make the fill transparent, and then set the picture to stretch to fit both directions in this box. Now, you'll need to trigger a script when you read the messages (however is easiest with your particular system) to tell the computer its no longer unread. Then, the background should dissapear.

Make sense?

[mikemccloskey]

Makes sense mostly. How do you fill a global container field with a color. Also in the "calculation field whose result is a container", is that an "if then" calculation?

[Fitch]

Filling the global:

1. Go to Layout mode

2. Draw a small box with the rectangle tool. Select a fill color, and line should be 0 pt.

3. Copy or cut the box.

4. Go to Browse mode

5. Paste into global container.

Calculating the other container, the one that goes on the layout:

Case (messageFlag = "unread", gContainer)

Another approach to this idea is to use a global container with repetitions, and each rep can have a different icon. So the messageFlag field might have values like "unread," "urgent," "complete," or anything you can think of. Then, rather than a box that colors the background of the record, you might put the calc field next to the message so you'd see a different icon,

like this.

Case (messageFlag = "unread", GetRepetition(gContainer, 1),

messageFlag = "pizza", GetRepetition(gContainer, 2),

etc.

)

[keshalyi]

Beyond his suggestion, if you want a wide variety of status codes, with different colors, etc, I have found it easier to just make a seperate file, with two fields - a text field holding the status code, and a container field hodling the colored box. Then, you can just make a relationship in the original file, by message status, and put in the conatiner field from the related file.

[mikemccloskey]

Thanks, I think I got it done. Very helpful.

One other question, perhaps I should post this elsewhere:

Is it possible to trigger another user's open file to run a script from their computer? For instance in my above example, can I, from my computer, trigger her computer to run a script to update her records to immediately display any records that would apply to her?

thanks again