Limited record access help please..

[bmusee]

I have 15 salesmen that access the FileMakerPro 6 database from all over (they use their office computer as well as their own home computer-which limits my use of Auto Enter Creator Name). I have them in a Record_created_by field that has a drop down list of their names(value list). I want them to only be able to access the records that they create. I have tried various variations of limited password protection but everytime after creating a record --they can't see it. I tried limiting password...Record_created_by=Status(Current Fieldcontent)--doesn't seem to work. Any help is apprectiated..

[hayesk]

In FM7, you have true username/password accounts. In FM6, you need to develop your own login system. It's a bit cumbersome, but it can be done. There are probably examples of it on the web. I developed one for a solution that's pretty complex, but it worked.

Basically you need an "Account" file that has all of the accounts in it. When a user logs in, they enter their name/password into global fields (the solution contains a startup script to force them to the login layout). The if the user logs in successfully a "logged in" field is set to yes in the accounts file, and a global field is set to the current username (remember, in networked DBs, the global field is unique for each logged in user so it works with more than one user). All of the other files in the solution have the security set to require that logged in field to be "yes" in order to view/edit/create records. To check this I made a relation based on the current logged in user global to the accounts file's username field. If the related logged in field was "yes" then it's ok. I also used the "current logged in" global to automatically enter the username in the created_by field. There is also a default close script to set the logged in field to No when the user closes DB.

You can extend this by adding read/write permission fields to the accounts file. My solution had this for every other db file in the solution, and even using the Web Companion (which was fairly tough and complex, so I won't try to explain it here).

Tips:

- make a demo database to try this on first

- for your datafiles, to get the current logged in user global from the accounts make an all-to-all relation (relate a field always containing 1 to the same field from your data file to the account file). Then make a calc field in each of your data files: CurrentUser = AllRelation::CurrentUser

- it requires a fair bit of fiddling to get this right. Plan on spending some time implementing and testing this.

Or, upgrade to v7 and use the built-in security.