Automation Help

[Jim Gill]

This will put a smile on a childs face if you can help me... I'm the owner of a summer camp and I would like to have an email sent automatically to campers on their birthday. It seemed like a very straight forward task however then I realized the "Save as a PDF" function is to compatible to run on a server.

As a work around I wrote a simple opener script in a seperate file that would run on a client machine at a perscribed time an run the script on the server. The problem is this file on the server is passworded so the script pauses to allow the user to input their password.

Questions:

Is there a work around for the save as a PDF or

Is there a way to login to a file simply by scripting it rather than having direct user input?

I've attached the script I'm trying to run on the server - it works great on a client platform. Don't laugh - I'm a self taught hack with filemaker! ;)

Edited April 24, 2009 by Guest

[bcooney]

I'm surprised that this works on a client since I see some issues with your looping structure. I believe that the Gtrr and Go to First Rec should be before the Loop script step.

But that's not what you asked. You can't use Save as PDF in a server run script, as you are aware.

Why not have a button on the Main Menu that runs this script? You could have a calc that tells you if it's anyone's bday. Another question is do you really need a PDF? How about an Install OnTimer Script?

[Jim Gill]

Thanks for your help - I haven't had more than one camper have a bday on any particular day - you're right about the goto first record - it should be outside the loop.

As far as a Install OnTimer script - in looking at the example in FMP Help I still don't see how I can use this without saving as a PDF. This will run the script at the inverals defined (campers with birthdays) but recieving a plain text email to a 10 year old is not really that exciting. Do you is the third party pugins tthat send html emails are server compatible?

[bcooney]

I've worked with 360email and it can run from the server, sending html email. (So, you won't need a pdf).

I'd have a server script that finds all kids with birthday=today and loop thru sending an email. I'd create an activity record for each email sent (a log).