Notify User of Updates

[levi777]

I have a contacts database where people in our home office assign new contacts to our salespeople and sometimes update information of a record that the salesperson allready has.

I'm looking for an easy way of showing upon the users next login which records have been updated or are new.

I may be making it too complicated, but here's what I've come up with. First I check if the dateupdated > the users last logout (which is set in a script that runs on close). It that's true and updatedby or created by (autoenter fields) change I get the current user and if that does not = the salesperson I set a field called notifyOfUpdate = 1.

Then I have an on open script that gets the current user. If the current user is the salesperson then I search for all records with notifyOfUpdate=1. I have the user click a button to basically add the records to the main database. (They're obviously allready there, but the button changes notifyOfUpdate to 0 so that next time they login they won't be notified of the update). OK, now my problem. When the user clicks that button to set notifyOfUpdate = 0 that in turns changes the updatedBy field to the salesmen and the time of the update. I can't figure out a way around this. I know this is exactly what filemaker's suppose to do, but I somehow want to make it so that changing notifyOfUpdate from 1 to 0 does not "count" as an update.

Make any sense? Probably not, it's still early here. In the future (once I get my hands on a smtp plugin or if filemaker 8 supports it) I will need to email the user when an update or new record is made by someone other than themselves.

Has anyone ever done anything like this before. If so, can you point me in the right direction?

[Kent Searight]

If you already have an audit log or change log you could use that as a trigger for an auto-enter calc for your update flag field and then just parse the info from the log field however and whenever you want.

Database Pros has a good change log available for download at their website. .

Nightwing has a terrific Audit Tracker at his website.

Either one of these is how I'd collect info on updated records, and then script it from there to see what's been updated.

As to the update you don't want to record as an update, simply omit that field from your audit log and it won't be added to the log. Then have an auto-enter calc set your update flag field to 1 if any changes are made to the log. This should solve your problem with your flag field.