Hello all you FileMaker Gurus -

I was wondering if it was possible to either A) clear out the username that gets automagically entered into the "Open DB using:" dialog box, or make your own login form that hides the character input for the PW field. What I mean in is - is it possible to make FM display dots instead of characters when you enter a password that is really set up as a text field? I'm thinking of something similar to what happens when you have an "" in an HTML form...

My problem is that FileMaker automatically fills in the Account Name field of the dialog box with whatever value is set up for the Username in that particular copy of FileMaker. At my company, this is the person's first and last name. What I need to use for the actual FM Account Name (to open the file and assign the necessary permissions set) is to use the person's Windows username, which is their first name and last initial. I'm just concerned that people will see their name already displayed in the Account Name field, think that it's good to go, and proceed to type in their password without changing to the correct Account name. This will give them an error because they will have the wrong account name, even if the password is correct. Then they'll be confused and complain to me that they can't open the database.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Wim Decorte has a very good white paper on "External Authentication" and it may be what you need.

http://www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/techbrief_fm8_server_auth.pdf

The best way is to use External Authentication. Failing that, have your network admin guys write a little VBscript to be used as the Windows logon script that will write the user's logon name to the FM preference section in the registry where the FM username is stored. This way the FM login prompt will show their Windows logon name.

Under no circumstances though try to roll your own login scheme using data fields. In 99% of the cases this will severly reduce overall security.