Two scripting questions

[mnelson]

I'm working on a schedule-maker for teachers:

1. I have three fields: LastName (text), Team Partner (text), and Team (calc that puts the other two together). What happens now is I get a list that displays Smith, Jones, Smith/Jones AND Jones, Smith, Jones/Smith. Naturally. Is there a way I can have a script pick up that Smith is duplicated in another record (as Jones' partner) and eliminate one of them since they go to Art, Music, etc. together?

2. One one layout, I have a field (text) to type in times that each period begins. This varies from school to school. When the schedule is generated, I want to ba able to grab that text and use it in a script. Right now, I just have generic times in a step in my script that is Insert Text (Specify, 9:00) for example. When I try to grab the variable time from the other layout, it totally doesn't work and pastes the wrong time in the wrong field. I've tried Insert Text (Specify Field), tried Set Field, and tried Go To Layout, Go To Field, Copy, Come back to layout, Paste. All to no avail.

Hope my questions are clear enough. Thanks in advance.

Mark Nelson

[email protected]

[LiveOak]

My guess is that eliminating duplicates isn't the real problem, it's the basic organization of the files in your solution. Why not tell us why you think you need one file with Smith, Jones, and Smith/Jones records. Kind of sounds like what you really need is a relationship and a second join file. The most important question is: "What does each record in your file represent?".

In trying to set the field, you are using the script steps incorrectly or are on the wrong record, or both. We'll need to see the actual script to tell what the problem is.

-bd

[Keith M. Davie]

Regarding question 1.

"1. I have three fields: LastName (text), Team Partner (text), and Team (calc that puts the other two together). What happens now is I get a list that displays Smith, Jones, Smith/Jones AND Jones, Smith, Jones/Smith. Naturally. Is there a way I can have a script pick up that Smith is duplicated in another record (as Jones' partner) and eliminate one of them since they go to Art, Music, etc. together?"

While you are talking about Smith and Jones, what occurs if next year another Smith is hired? How will you tell Smith from Smith?

Many developers use unique identifiers (uid) such as a randomly calculated value, a serial number or a conatenation of a name with a time or date.. These uid's are what the scripts, relationships, etc can use as a reference for tracking and discerning. They do not need to be displayed to the users.

It is largely a matter of design preferences of the developer.

[mnelson]

The reason both Smith and Jones are listed originally is that in another area (not the scheduler) Smith needs a record with their own personal info, and so does Jones. So does the entire staff, janitor, office help, etc. On the Generate Schedule layout, however, all staff except teachers get omitted, since only teachers have classes to bring to Art, Music, Library. The Generate Schedule script is made up of a bunch of other scripts and pastes times and classes into fields so that in List view you can see the entire Master Schedule for teachers. It's quite elegant, really (for a newbie), except that I have to manually find the team teachers and omit one of them, otherwise their joint class is scheduled to be in two places at once. Maybe I'm trying to do too much with one file, and should list teams as an individual, but the purpose was to have one database that would allow administrators to keep track of everything, home address, phone numbers, schedules, etc.

Thanks.

[LiveOak]

I think you have answered your own question. Individuals should be in one file, schedules in another, classes in another, etc. If you had a class file with one record per class, it would be no problem to use a multi-key to relate the class to two teachers.

-bd

[mnelson]

Could you elaborate? Multi-key, you say?

[LiveOak]

In FM you can create many to one or many to many relationships using a trick. If you make a key a text field, you can put multiple entries in it separated by carriage returns and the relationship will work. In your case, to add multiple teachers to one class (say, teacher #'s 47 and 63), define a text field "Key" for use in the relationship to Persons. Create relationships between Persons and Classes based upon this "Key" field. Finally, enter into it a 47 followed by a carriage return, then a 63. This will relate the record in Class to both teachers.

-bd

[Kundinger]

Hello Mark,

I have been working with technology in K-12 schools for 15 years and FileMaker for over 13 years. What you are trying to do with FMP is basically "impossible" without utilizing 'relationships'. I've tried it many times.

First... any database system to handle 'just scheduling' will require many 'related' files:

- Student Demographics

- Student Course History

- Student Class Requests

- Family Demographics

- Teacher Demographics

- Teacher Availability

- Course Details

- Room Availability

- All kinds of Preferences

These are but a few of the many required files... now add many more files for things like attendence, grading, discipline, ETC., ETC...

Second... why reinvent the wheel? There are many of these types of systems available 'off-the-shelf'. WIN/MAC-School is very popular with many of my K-12 clients. Overall, AND WITH PROPER TRAINING, it is a very good product. I know what it is like to 'take-on the challenge' of creating something from scratch... especially in something as easy to use as FileMaker.

I have created many of the above files, trying to create a 'scheduling system'. Unfortunately, there are far too many variables that are encountered when you 'click' the 'schedule button'. I would love to find a school that would 'front' the moneys to take this system to fruitition.

Anyway... Good Luck!

Bob Kundinger