Autofill in FM 7

[bookmanjb]

I own a used book shop. I want to create a database of sold books. In other words, when a customer buys a book, I want to create a record with title, author, price, category, etc., fields. The problem is that it's just too time-consuming if a customer buys 20 books. Bar codes are only of limited usefulness in the used book biz for many reasons. What I would like is something like the Quickfill feature in Quicken. You type the first few letters in the Description field and Quicken fills in the rest, not only the payee but all the other fields associated with the transaction. So what I'd like is to be able to start typing in the first field which most likely will be the Title field, and have the entire record automatically filled in. While not a complete solution, it would certainly help speed things up.

So my question is: Can FileMaker 7 do this?

I downloaded the demo and simply cannot tell.

[Fenton]

FileMaker can do a kind of "quickfill," which we call "type-ahead" or "clairvoyance" (from the file of the same name by John Mark Osborne which was the first example I saw of the technique). It does not happen "in line" like Quicken however. It requires a filtered value list or portal.

The basic technique is to build a multi-line key of the name, using the first letters (6 is about all you'd ever need)

O

Ou

Out

Outl

Outla

Outlaw

Calculation (TitleLetters_c) looks like:

Left (Title, 1) & "

[bookmanjb]

thanks so much for the info. Being a relative newbie to databases and having never worked with filemaker, I think I would need quite a bit of tutoring before I could implement (much less, understand) your suggestion. I was hoping there was a function I could simply activate. I wonder how they did it in Quicken and if there's some database app out there in which this very useful feature is built-in...

[The Shadow]

Bookmanjb,

Take a look at the example I made for you on:

http://www.spf-15.com/fmExamples/

(download "invoicing example")

It uses a pop-up list for the books, which is much easier to setup and allows for type-ahead.

If you require true Clairvoyance, its a lot more work.

[bookmanjb]

Wow. Thanks for doing that. It's way-cool. But I'm afraid the pop-up menu would soon have thousands of listings, making it impractical. Also, I don't see how to add to the popup menu. If it takes a lot of steps, then it isn't practical, especially for my clerks who are less adept than I with computers, hard as that might be to believe. Also, I forgot to mention another feature in Quicken's Quickfill: when you have multiple transactions that have the same payee but different amounts or categories or whatnot, you can down-arrow through them until you find the one you're looking for. A similar situation arises when I sell books: identical titles but different editions, different prices, etc.

So there's no ready-made Clairvoyance option? I am sure that if I had the time I could figure out how to do it, but that is just positively, absolutely not an option for me.

Thanks again for your time and effort. Very much appreciated.

[The Shadow]

Sure Bookman, it was easy.

The popup is just showing the titles from the "Books" table, I added a button that will popup the window to allow a new book to be created.

I also created another 2000 books that all have titles starting with "m". While it certainly cannot be described as "zippy", it isn't too painful to use.

Also, the popup list allows you to arrow up & down also. You can type-ahead, then arrow, type to move somewhere else, etc. It doesn't accept any input until you select one by typing enter.

Give it another try:

http://www.spf-15.com/fmExamples/

("invoicing example")

[DanBrill]

Hey Shadow,

I took the liberty of modifying the book example you posted. (Looks like you've posted another version. I was working on the first.) This is a concept I've been meaning to play with, and you prompted me along. Using the example plugin that comes with Dev7, I've set it up so that if a previously-unused book is added to the invoice a 'new title' dialog pops up automatically.

Any comments are appreciated. As with most of my ideas, there is probably a cleaner way to do this.

Dan

books.zip

[Fenton]

There's not a lot of "ready-made" in FileMaker. Because it has practically infinite uses. Whereas Quicken is what it is; it can't be made into something else.

We accept your challenge. I consider this "choice" technique in this file to be as useful as "quickfill." Yes, it's kind of complicated; more than a beginner could handle at first. But it's not that bad if you take it one step at a time.

It's also highly portable. It was created in another file, then imported into this. The scripts had to be redirected, but that's not a big deal. Once you learn the technique it can be used in any file that requires a choice from many possibilities.

Thanks and apologies to The Shadow, for the original example file, which I hacked -)

This file is not really finished at all, except for the invoice line choice.

books2.zip

[The Shadow]

Fenton said:

Thanks and apologies to The Shadow, for the original example file, which I hacked -)

I respond by stealing your "look" - and your cute little trashcan too!

Your "choice" thing looks very interesting, but I gotta get off to work now - I'm already late.

[The Shadow]

Fenton,

Yeah, your "choice" thing is pretty neat.

I wasn't getting a good feel for it with the 8 books, so I imported a list of 6000 real books (from http://www.knowledgerush.com - free books) - its really fast.

With your permission I'll put it up on my website. I put the real data into my sample on my website in case anyone else wants to try it. (290K download) http://www.spf-15.com/fmExamples/

Now then, back to my other point - even with 6000 books, the popup list is "acceptable" IMO, there's a slight delay, but not a show-stopper. Admittedly, I run on a beefy Mac (1.5 GHz G4, 1 GB Ram) - as I don't share Dan's "suffer with the unwashed masses" concept.

[DanBrill]

Well, after slogging through the layout mode issues, I've been shopping, and plan to shower soon. I've had it with users saying -- 'Gee, I run Windows 3.1 on a 386 with a screen resolution of 600 x 400. Why is your software so slow on my computer?'

Cheers,

Dan

[bookmanjb]

Thanks, everyone, for all the help. My 30-day trial with the demo is just about over. Because I have no other use for FileMaker, I can't really justify the expense of buying it on the hope that the Used book database with Autofill (kind of) can be perfected. I'd love to finish it myself, but I just don't have the time and I think I'd need tutoring in any case. Thanks again.

John

[ESpringer]

I know this is a little late... but just a thought: why is the ISBN not the bestway to proceed? A clerk with a num keypad can be pretty fast with them, and they're usually clear on the back of the book. If there's a match in your system (and if your inventory in FM7, there should be), various auto-enter fields could confirm it quickly. If there's not a match (if you have a big existing inventory of used books, say), at least you have a way to check up on the rest later without wasting checkout time, no?

[MoonShadow]

Go look at the Clairvoyance tips file in the Resources section at Databasepros.com.

And also keep an eye on the NightWing. Ray is planning to release a Clairvoyance for 7.