Web Clients - Generate Email

[wjmartin]

I have remote web clients filling in a form and commiting their record with a scripted button click. Problem is, whenever a new record is created I want FM to fire off an email to alert the DB admin that a new record has been created - but email generation is not actionable by the web client.

Anyone got any ideas - just basic pointers - on how I can trigger an email whenever a web client makes a new record?

[Pat Monks]

There may be a much better solution, but this is one way to accomplish your goal.

Take an old lime green Imac from your basement. Install FMPro client. Write a script that checks for a new record in your shared file every 60 seconds. If it finds a new record it triggers your email operation, marks the record as acknowledged and continues on checking.

[wjmartin]

Excellent - thinking out of the box - thanks

btw - how did you know the old iMac in my basement was Lime Green? - and is your middle initial K - Pat K Monks?

[xochi]

Another way if you don't have a spare machine:

Find a machine that is never turned off, and set up a 2nd account on it. Use Fast User Switching to go to that account, log in via filemaker, then use FUS to go back to the normal os x user.

Rumor is you can even use FUS on the server machine itself, though certain folks will claim it's an unholy abomination and will cause the filmaker gods to strike you down, etc.

[Pat Monks]

Hi William,

I think lime green was the most popular color of iMac so it's a pretty safe guess.

I noticed that you are a printer. I own a small print shop in Seattle and we have a couple of iMacs in our business that just run FileMaker scripts all day to print invoices and package labels. They just search for flags in certain fields that mean a label needs to be printed. They do the work, clear the flag and go on with their searching.

This same basic process could work over the web because the remote user is simply placing a value in a field or running a script that places a value in a field. The computer that actually does the work is a regular FileMaker Pro client with the ability to print, email, fax, etc.

FileMaker robots are great employees. Our two robots have have worked for the company for about 5 years and have never had attitude problems or asked for a raise.

Pat J Monks

Nikkomedia.com

Seattle, WA

[FMWebschool]

Take a look at this movie, http://www.fmwebschool.com/resources/iwpphp/iwpphp.html I use IWP and PHP to fire off emails every time a new record is created

In Kindness

Stephen K Knight

http://www.fmwebschool.com

[winklestork]

I fire off an email from a variety of actions, including adding certain types of records, changing their status, etc.

Using FMP8A as the server, you have a client running. Using a similar tech to what someone mentioned, it is running an event loop, pausing itself for a minute, checking for work, and looping. Events that need to send mail write a message into a mail queue. The event monitor checks the queue for mail and sends it using "SendMail" plugin (most will work). The event queue also automate's backup, checks for certain constellations of data and triggers a message, prunes logs files, etc.