Sending an IM from Filemaker

[TaiChi56]

At work we run Groupwise 5.5. I want the teacher to be able to contact all four of the administrators when a referral is sent. The program I have built will reside on the teachers desktop. They will fill out information and the administrator will be able to go to their desktop look at the information and finish the referral. Is there a way to send just a pop-up message from FileMaker? I have to make it easy for the teachers. Something like click on a button and an Instant message box pops up on each administrators computer. Something like "A referral has been sent." Hope there is something. I know there is a program called "boardroom" but that is an IM like AOL or MSN. I just want a one message pop-up box. Thank you.

[Charles Delfs]

If everyone is using FM why not just create a record in a sharred referrals database and the teacher fills in the first bits of information.

The administrators layout can filter the same records to show the new ones that have not been handled yet.

By doing it this way and not using am IM type program information will never be lost when some one does not see the popup.

Charles

[TaiChi56]

I will be doing that. The whole point of the IM or popup is to warn the administrator that a referral has been done by a teacher. We cannot always count o n the student to show up when told to do so. This way the administrator is warned that a referral has been done and should be expecting to see the student soon. If not then the student is tracked down by our security force.

[andygaunt]

You may want to look into Troi Activator.

It is a plugin, but it allows you to capture the IP addresses of the computers and send out messages (or run a script to show a pop up) on specific machines.

Because you capture the IP address when the user's log in to your system, FileMaker Pro will know where each admin is located and notify them accordingly.

HTH

[RickGrundy]

TaiChi56,

Why not just have FM send an email to the administrators when a new referral is entered? I would assume that the administrators would have an email client open and automatically checking mail on a regular basis (every 5-10 minutes). Using this method, a hard-copy of the referral notice will be recorded in the teacher's outbox and in the administrator's inbox so the 'I didn't see the message' excuse can be avoided. Also, in the email, you could include a summary of the referral in the body so the administrators don't have to go into FM if all they need is the student's name, ID#, etc.

[Mariano Peterson]

If you know the name of the computers on which the administrators are working, you could force the pop up using the Send Message script step with a command like:

cmd /c net send <<computer name>> <<message text>>

An example:

cmd /c net send homeComputer "A Referral has been sent."

Of course, this only works on windows.