Trying to auto-mail

[digitas]

I'm sure this has been answered many times but I'm somewhat of a beginner and am going to ask anyway.

I'm having problems setting up my database (FM 5 on OS 9.1.2) to auto email users when a return by date has surpassed. Can someone tell me where I can find step by step procedures for setting up an email script or email me some procedures?

Any info would be extremely helpful. Thanks.

[Chuck]

The easiest way is going to be to set up a script to run at startup time to check through the database for any records that satisfy your criteria and loop through them to send an email for each one. Does this help?

Chuck

[digitas]

I'll give it a try. Thanks.

[spymaster]

I have a similar problem in that I need to send an email out once a certain date has passed, but the DB needs to stay open b/c of web access, and the script needs to check every day whether it needs to send out an email. Is there any way to schedule a script to run once every 24 hours? or any workarounds that might have similar results?

Thanks

[Fitch]

Since you're on a Mac, you can use the ido Script Scheduler. It helps if you know a little bit of AppleScript too.

[cinolas]

And if you're on a PC, use the scheduler (Scheduled Tasks) to open a FileMaker Pro file (scheduledScript.fp5)that's setup to run a script at startup. This script should call the script your wanting to schedule then close scheduledScript.fp5.

I use this technique and it works great !

[spymaster]

Is there any task scheduler that runs natively in OSX?

[Fitch]

OS X being essentially UNIX, you're going to see tools like Cron.