Windows 7 and up and Filemaker: automating access

[fmow]

 

I 'd like to automate a bit the way my windows user access the db.

First of all I d like to get rid of the annoying "feature" of windows using by default the Windows's user name in the user field in filemaker. It creates confusion to no avail because my users have to delete and re-enter.

In addition I 'd love to hear what others have done, and I am in particular looking for some sort of keychain type password manager for windows. Anything on the horizon? I ve searched hi and lo to no avail, so far. 

 

[Wim Decorte]

The user-name field is set in the FM Preferences, typically when FM is launched for the very first time.  In your solution you should however use Get(AccountName) and not Get(UserName).

The Get(UserName) reads from that preference.  The Get(AccountName) will use the name that the user logged into the solution with.

 

If you want the FM preference to reflect the user's account name then you can use a Windows logon script to write the user's account name to the FM preference area in the registry, where that username is kept.

 

Keychain-like access: if your FMS is a windows box and all workstations and the workstations are members of the same domain then I would look hard at using External Authentication.  In an all-Windows setup, FM will use SSO and users will not have to type-in their username or pw.

[fmow]

Hi Wim, and many thanks for taking this up.

 

I guess I still have many blind spots with filemaker, I wouldn't have guessed where that option was on my own probably. I thought it was a windows behaviour, to begin with. And thanks for the pointers re user and account name, surely, this would have been a future issue of confusion. At the moment I can see one use for this distinction (which has to be there of course) where I can check if someone's designated user name is indeed the one used to log in, or someone else is logging from that computer, for whatever minimal value this might have.

 

I think for my beginner developer standard I made the right choice to use the actual names verbatim for my users as account names. It pays back with ease of use. 

 

I ll try to follow up on your idea with the login script. For the time being I set explicitly the name of the account I now is using the computer. This kinda ties in with what you said next, but we don't have a windows setup, just a mac one, serving to mostly windows machines and some go devices. Sadly our windows server can only host up to fms 12. 

 

Thanks again!