form import

[lsmall]

Hi. I'm looking for some suggestions here. I'll start by saying I am by no means a developer. I'm good with FM, but I'm fairly limited when it comes to things like PHP etc. I have made a scheduling solution for about 60 physicians. At the moment, requests and availability for each physician are input manually by myself. Usually transcribed from an email. Within FM I have a form setup with a calendar where I can select availability options for each physician. I want to role this out so that the physicians can select availability themselves. IWP works fine, but it is a bit quirky owing to the static pages. I have to make the process as easy as possible and I don't think IWP will cut it for the end user.

So really what I need is an online or almost standalone form that the physicians can fill out and I can import. The form would have to be dynamic (eg each day has a number of availability options, but there's also an option for each week that would automatically block out everyday of that week etc.) I think my options are an online PHP form from FM, an excel form for import, a word form for import or a PDF form for import.

I've started working on an excel form, but frankly it's clunky and the users may find macros disabled on their computers so it might not work.

I'd appreciate some ideas here. I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible. I want it to work without the user having to get any additional software other than what would be expected on a basic PC.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

[comment]

I want it to work without the user having to get any additional software other than what would be expected on a basic PC.

How about a Filemaker runtime?

[Lee Smith]

Or FileMaker Go if you upgrade to 12?

[No_access]

I use IWP for this type of thing, however if you do not want to use it their are several options.

You could make a simple php/html form they could fill out and save the data to a csv file and have filemaker import, this is simple and clean.

if you are unsure about how to do this, try this link http://www.rochester.edu/it/web/WebHelp/filemaker/form.html

You could also make use of Filemakers PHP site assistant.

You could add a email plugin to filemaker and have it pull the data directly from their emails.

the only issue I see with this is how they enter their data.

[lsmall]

Thanks for these replies. The idea of a runtime solution is appealing, if I can get it to work. I will give it a try. Otherwise I'll try one of the other suggestions.

Thanks