I am currently using filemaker to track appointment and results for our company. I have come across a problem when I add a second appointment.

Filemaker generates an ID for each customer and we make an appointment for them. When we need to set a second appointment for the same customer, we enter the information on the same record for that customer/ID # as "appointment 2". The problem occurs when we need to do a search for the appointments within a given time period for our schedule. Because the fields have two different names (appt 1 and appt 2), we have to specify in which field we are searching, which eliminates the appointments in the other field.

Is there a way to avoid this issue? I’ve thought of having different ID #’s (i.e. 12a, 12b, 12c) for each new appointment, but then all the client data has to be entered again for each new appointment. Additionally, there is the problem of making filemaker automatically create those ID #’s.

Any ideas? Thanks!

You need to study how to relate tables and what parent and foreign keys are. Your file should have, at minimum, two tables: Customer and Appointments. You can use CUST and APPT.

Each APPT record would have the foreign CustID, as well as an auto-entered serial number for the parent key field, ApptID.

Then, on a Cust form, you'd have a portal to the related Appointments.

Edited October 26, 200916 yr by Guest

Wow, this helps so much! There are still a lot of bugs to work out, but this has definitely helped streamline our database.

Thank you!