Date Based Ticklers

[jwallace]

Need help resolving this:

I have a DB that allows clients to assign dates to records. When those dates have arrived FM does a search for records whose dates are valid and displays the items. It works like a To Do list. Problem is this: Clients need to be notified daily of birthdays. Birthdays are in the past. So a simple Status (Current Date) match does me no good, but I need to be able to find birthdays that are today and any days that have not yet been checked. (If my clients do not run Filemaker for a few days, they need to be notified of all birthdays that have happened since the last time they were notified.) Another trouble area for me is the fact that if they run FM on december 22 and then not again until january 5, then simply making the year field not matter for the search doesn't work. The dates from december 22 to the end of the yer are never listed because the computer doesn't "know" to list them. Does this make sense?

Any help?

[BobWeaver]

I'm thinking there is likely an easier way considering how Filemaker handles the rollover of years and dates etc., but the following will work.

Fields

--------

LastRunDate - global date: the date that the program was last run

TodaysDate -- global date: Today's date

Birthday -- Date: Employees birthday

BDay1 -- Date Calculation = Date(Month(Birthday),Day(Birthday),Year(LastRunDate))

BDay2 -- Date Calculation = Date(Month(Birthday),Day(Birthday),Year(TodaysDate))

Flag -- Number Calculation = Case(

(LastRunDate<=BDay1)and(BDay1<=TodaysDate),1,

(LastRunDate<=BDay2)and(BDay2<=TodaysDate),1,0)

Flag will be 1 for all dates in the required range, and 0 for all others. So, do a find for Flag=1.

[This message has been edited by BobWeaver (edited January 03, 2001).]