Serial Numbers as Sales Orders

[Scott Pon]

The original programmer used a Number Field with a serial number, incremented by 1, to assign sales order numbers.

Everything was working fine in version 5.0. but now in version 8, there are times where a sales number would be missing.

I believe that the user is not "committing" the record to the database. However I'm not sure how that is happening.

How can a user not commit a record? What can I do to make the user commit the record (therefore saving it to database!).

Thanks in advance.

[sandman18]

One theory is the user is closing FM after entering the record. The record is saved/committed but since FM is closing it does not have the opportunity to assign the serial number - again this is just a theory. I suspect you have seen the attached help page describing when a record is "committed". You may want to make sure the user is doing one of the actions that result in commitment.

Otherwise, have you considered changing the assignment of the serial number to "on creation"?

_.pdf

[Fenton]

1. Is this a real FileMaker auto-entered serial number field, ie., using the real auto-enter, increment by 1? Or is it some kind of custom-built auto-enter by calculation? The latter may work differently in FileMaker 7+, as the order of evaluation has changed slightly,* often making it necessary to uncheck the [ ] Do not replace existing value. But that has unwanted side effects of its own, during Imports, etc..

Basically it is not a reliable method to assign primary auto-enter serial IDs, for use in positively identifying a record, for relationships, etc.. Use the real auto-enter serial number option.

2. There is, for each layout, an option to [x] Save record changes automatically. Obviously if this is off and someone closes the file, those changes would likely be lost. I don't really know, as I've never unchecked it (the default is checked).

*I know this is true, but I'd be hard put to say how exactly. Anyone who can, please do.

[Breezer]

To add to the suggestion by Fenton

1. Is this a real FileMaker auto-entered serial number field, ie., using the real auto-enter, increment by 1? Or is it some kind of custom-built auto-enter by calculation? The latter may work differently in FileMaker 7+, as the order of evaluation has changed slightly ...

Open up the field options for the field, you will notice that there are two options for theserial number generation, one is Generate "On Creation" the other is "On Commit." If the records are creating via a script, you can use either "On Commit" or "On Creation" since you can add the script step "Commit Records/Request[]" to commit the record. Otherwise, I would recommend using "On Creation" that way as long as the record has been created, it will have the serial number. The disadvantage is if the user created the record in error, a "revert record", will not reset the serial number in the field definition.

Edited February 3, 2008 by Guest