officehelper Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 I am new to Filemaker. I am the executive assistant in this Company and we use Filemaker as our database. There are several things I know you can do with Filemaker but I dont' know how to do it. 1. I want to link a scanned PDF file to a button. 2. I want to set it up to do email blasts to clients 3. I want to create a layout that will become our billing side (long and detailed need lots of help with this) it will include being able to print invoices, Envelopes and link to a master billing spreadsheet 4. I want to link our most comonnly used letters to our layout and enable us to print envelopes as well. any help would be great Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitch Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 Billing/accounting is a fairly advanced project. Have a look at some of the templates and commercial solutions that are out there. There may even be one for your specific type of business. I would consider hiring a developer for this part of your solution. What version of FileMaker are you using? Printing letters and envelopes is not too hard, there is a wizard that guides you through creating a new layout. Linking files has improved in FileMaker 7, but in version 6 you may need to use a plugin such as Troi File, or use some kind of OS scripting. Are you on Mac or PC? For email, FileMaker is OK, but for mass email you'll want a plugin such as SMTPit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruceR Posted September 18, 2004 Share Posted September 18, 2004 A master billing *spreadsheet* ? Ack. Sounds like a prime candidate for conversion also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LiveOak Posted September 18, 2004 Share Posted September 18, 2004 If you are using FM 7, I'd start with a free download of Business Tracker. Taking on an order/invoice systems shouldn't be the first (or 10th) project for a FM novice. If you just want to learn FM, it's as good of a challenge as any. If you are really trying to produce a usable product for your company in some time frame, hire a consultant. The probablity of producing a good product of such a complexity on your first try is pretty much zero. Let us know what version you are using and on which platform. -bd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
officehelper Posted September 20, 2004 Author Share Posted September 20, 2004 I'm using FM 5 on MAC OS9 we are going to be purchasing new computers, Emacs for employees, and a G4 for the server. We will be upgrading to FM 6 but are wondering if we should go for FM 7. OUr FM developer who is no longer with us said that we should get FM6 and NOt FM 7 any one know why that would be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fenton Posted September 20, 2004 Share Posted September 20, 2004 When did your ex-developer say that? Perhaps Server 7 was not out yet? (It is now.) Perhaps he was worried that 7 was still a little buggy. I think version 7.0v2 is quite usable (I have a few clients using it with no problems), though there are still a couple problems you need to be aware of (imports still have a glitch which requires a work-around). But if you start development now I'm reasonably certain the next update will be out before you're done, and that it will fix the few remaining real problems. 7 is so more advanced that 6. Especially in the 2 areas you mentioned, links to external graphics files, and line items tables (not files, tables). OS X gives you built-in support for dealing with PDFs (more or less). FileMaker 7 has a problem printing PDFs at native resolution, but you can always just open the external PDF file for printing. This is another area I hope they address in the next update. It would be kind of crazy to start a new project in 6. BTW, I'm running 7 on 1.25 MHz eMac. Runs pretty good. I was running it on 700 MHz eMac. Not so good. You should have at least 512 MB RAM to run OS X. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LiveOak Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 In a Mac shop there could be a couple of considerations. 1) The available computers (e.g a bunch of 400 MHz iMacs with 64mb of memory) are not good candidates for OS X. 2) There are a lot of FileMaker files in use which while working fine now, would require extensive review and effort to convert (read $). -bd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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