Business Form Question

[javabandit]

Hi All,

This is more of a theory question than a "help me with my problem" question.

We have a number of small databases that we use to generate forms of various types. In most cases these forms are controlled documents. So, for instance, we have an official "Product Approval" form in Filemaker. In that form, a user can fill out the customer name, part number, date, etc... to request the customer's approval of a product. It has certain wording on it in sentences and paragraphs. The form is also given a designation: Form105. We also keep revisions of those forms. So, in my example the form is Form105 Rev A.

Now, I want to make a revision to the form. That's easy enough. I can change some wording on the layout, I can add or move fields around. Then, I can increment the form to Revision B.

But, what do I do about all the former records?!?

Suppose that there were 2,000 records made when it looked like Revision A. Now that I've changed it to Revision B... those records aren't really quite accurate, since the wording on the form has now changed.

Hopefully this makes sense. What recommendations do you have to manage this situation? Is there a "best practice" I should be following?

Thanks in advance.

Edited August 6, 2010 by Guest

[comment]

It seems somewhat similar to merged letters: if you had a table for the forms/revisions, you could note on each document which form/revision was used.

[javabandit]

Is there an example of the merged letters that I could look at?

I can see how it would be easy to set up an auto-enter field to keep track of which revision of the form (which layout) was used. But, what I don't know is how to set things up so that you could do a find and get a meaningful display. For instance, suppose I performed a find for all the approvals by company XYZ in the last two years. I'd have a found set, but how do I move through the records so that I'm seeing the correct layout for each one?

Wait, wait, wait... I may have just thought of it. If I hide the status toolbar and include forward/backward controls on my layouts, then I could script a "Go To Layout" for each click of the forward/backward buttons. If I do it well, the user wouldn't even know that they were changing layouts... it would just look like they were viewing different version of the "form" based on the date the record was created.

Sorry for my rambling... I would appreciate any examples to look at, though.

[comment]

Is there an example of the merged letters that I could look at?

Here are three:

Vaughan:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/99166/

Ender:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/165807/

Ray Cologon:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos9/demo913.html

I am not sure you need to do the actual merge, though - perhaps a simple relationship (Templates -< Documents) would be sufficient. The Documents table would have all variables (form fields content) and the Templates table the fixed text of the form.

If I hide the status toolbar and include forward/backward controls on my layouts, then I could script a "Go To Layout" for each click of the forward/backward buttons.

With version 11, you could leave the status bar and use a script triggered OnRecordLoad. But again, I am not sure you need that many layouts. If the physical layout of the form is important, you could scan it and keep a PDF of it in a container field.

[javabandit]

Thanks comment.

I haven't needed to do a merged letter before, but I'm sure I'll learn some things by looking through these files.

I like your idea of the record load script trigger. It would be fairly simple to just keep a "formID" type of field and use that to trigger which layout to load. You're right, I don't really have a lot of layouts (forms) here. Most of these documents will remain the same for years before a revision needs to be made. So, it would be rather easy to keep the old layouts around.

Thanks for the ideas.

[Lee Smith]

On 8/6/2010 at 2:12 PM, comment said:

Vaughan:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/99166/

I can seem to find the post, but here is the name of the topic: FieldSubstitute() Custom Function (MergeLetters.fp7) was the attachment

and this one is still good

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos9/demo913.html

Lee

MergeLetters.fp7