Hi,
I am essentially looking to find out if somebody knows of a product/solution that can do this that I can buy or learn from (legally and fairly). If this is not the case, I am happy to look into paying a developer to put together a shell for me that I can dress up.
Part of my job entails tracking clients' tape backups, and I need to develop something that helps me do this by recording this history of backup jobs. This in itself is not entirely difficult, however, I want to be able to be flexible in how it's displayed - this is where it gets tricky.

I have a solution now that has several tables in it. The simplified table of the list of backup jobs appears as such:
Client                     e.g. Name of the client company                         
Backup_Software            e.g. BackupExec, ShadowProtect
Backup_Job_Name            e.g. eMail, TS & DC, SQL
Backup_Job_Status          e.g. Active or Inactive
Server_Backed_Up           e.g. DC01, SYD-TSS-04 

Each client will have one or more backup software packages (Backup_Software), and each package will have several jobs (Backup_Job_Name), and each job may backup one or more servers (Server_Backed_Up). The Backup_Job_Status will indicate whether or not to display the job in the list of backup jobs checked each day - so is essentially aesthetic right now.

I want a second table to record the results of these backup jobs as we get the results each weekday. The technician will move down the list and fill in the result for each backup job. Such a simplified table (and I know it can be improved upon) would have the fields from the table above AND:
Backup_Job_Date
Backup_Job_Result

and these record the date the job ran, and the results (e.g. Pass, Fail, Missing etc).  If there were a total of 18 jobs, then 18 new records would be created in this second table every day, the date automatically populated with "today" and then the Result is entered in manually.
This may not be the most efficient or smartest way to do it but this is why I'm here. To ask.

It would need to be displayed in a spreadsheet-like format where each day would be per column, allowing technicians to move about checking other days of any given backup, filtering them by Backup_Job_Result, or Backup_Job_Date.  How I handle the layout to have columns "shift" horizontally might be tricky?

I have attached a basic screen shot of what It looks like now. 

Any suggestions (other than using a spreadsheet!) would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Greg

 

 

The horizontal direction isn't necessarily Filemaker's forte.

OTOH, for a limited, fixed number of columns you could use a relationship to the Plan_Results table that is driven by a global date range (and, of course, the Backup_Plan primary/foreign keys); put 5 portals on the layout, each one showing one related record.

Or use a repeating calculation in the Backup_Plan table; this approach has the advantage that the field could be placed in a list as well as a portal.

Hi Eos,

Thanks for replying.

Maybe I have bitten off more than I can chew with this one.
I thought I could struggle through with the structure, but the dynamic columns (backup dates) were going to do my head in. I'm determined though - the rest of my solution works and looks great, but this was the only function that stumped me.

I might sit down and try to create what you have suggested here and see what happens. I will post back what I do as I'm sure that somebody else could also benefit from this.

Cheers,
Greg