Calculating an automatic Job ID

[mothclap]

Hi,

I'm new to Filemaker,and I'm trying to put together a simple system to keep track of freelance clients.

I want to be able to enter a client's name into a 'client' field, and have the system automatically generate a job id in the form of a combination of the client name and a number.

For example, was I to enter the first-time client 'John Doe' it should give me the job id 'JOHNDOE001'. Or, if I entered the fourth job for 'Peter Brown' it would give me 'PETERBROWN004'.

Is there a way Filemaker can calculate this by checking for past instances of a job id, and adding a new one on to the end? For example, if the job id 'PETERBROWN004' already existed it would create 'PETERBROWN005'?

And one more thing - is there a way to only return the first five letters of a word? For example, if a client's name was 'Tom White' it would return 'TOMWH001'?

Any help you guys can offer me will be most appreciated!

Ta

[LaRetta]

and have the system automatically generate a job id in the form of a combination of the client name and a number.

Please don't do it. What you propose is very dangerous and will bite you BIGTIME. If you create a JobID called JohnDoe0001 and later you find out that John's last name is actually DOH then you might have already used that JobID to create related records. You cannot change the JobID at that point or it will break your relationships.

IDs should be meaningless. You already will know the client's name - John Doe. And you can have a JobID as just a FileMaker-generated auto-enter serial number. If you insist for display purpose alone, you can use a calculation which concatenates them into a display field of: JohnDoe00001.

But do NOT NOT NOT use this concatenated calculation to hold any relationships together.

[mothclap]

Thanks for the advice!

You're probably right.

I think I just need to look at a few tutorials and get my head around how it works, and what I want it to do ...

Thanks!