New to Filemaker Some Questions

[KBS]

Hi, 

     I am testing out a trial version of filemaker to see if it will be suitable for my needs and I was hoping someone could give me advice around some hurdles I am coming up with when trying to play around with coming up with a custom database solution for my business.

First off I am trying to set up a pricing solution that I can use to price my products accurately by changing the values of the components that go into the products as their market value changes.

Is there a sample file included with filemaker which would suggest an Ideal way in which to approach this?

For example I want a layout of a pricing file which will let me drag down from possible components, so say a mold table which has the size of other components that will be needed and the metal weight for the item the mold produces. Then I have a products table which caters to finished products that have already been defined. If I want my layout to first fill out data from my moldID selection and then to fill out the remaining data from my productID selection if it exists otherwise let the user manually select values from a drop down menu. What would be the best way to approach this?

I may be too ambitious here but I am hoping to develop an end to end solution which keeps track of products that we manufacture, pricing, inventory on hand, and both retail and wholesale orders all at the same time.

I hope someone can direct me in the ideal direction to approaching this system. Thanks!

 

 

 

[Steve Martino]

Everything you want to do, and much more can be done with FileMaker.  The bigger question is whether you can do it, or learn to eventually do it.

Take a look at the Starter Solutions, open up a few...Invoices for one, and see how it works. 

Also if you decide you want to do this in FileMaker, purchase FileMaker Pro Advanced, the price difference is well worth the features you get.

Then, go thru the FileMaker Training Series, both beginner and Advanced.

I also liked the book-FileMaker: The Missing Manual (for your version).

There are tons of training materials, free or pay, books and videos.

There are plenty of forums and blogs, google is your friend.

And of course asking specific questions to solve specific problems get a lot of help on the forums.  This is much better then, "I want to make a database, how do I start".  Most people here on the forums like to help, but all are either professional developers (who in many cases have limited time), enthusiasts like myself, or user, who volunteer to help for free.

So getting as much education as you can, then diving it will get you there faster.  Just starting the database and your knowledge from scratch will get you a lot of aggravation, a poor/bad/unworkable solution, and/or loss of data (and hair!), and you may just end up having to scrap the whole thing and start over. 

[KBS]

Thanks for the reply I appreciate the advice I have been looking around for tutorials and other knowledge bases to get my head around my solution.

I do have a specific question though, which I hope someone will be able to answer. I have a set of preexisting design #'s and they range from 1001 to 9999 with odd gaps and spaces between where designs had been previously and are not assigned. I see there is an auto-value section for the fields but I do not believe it offers me the functionality I want in this case. Would I have to rely on scripts and script triggers to assign a new unoccupied design# between 1001 and 9999 every time I added a record to this table? 

And the other specific question I had was, is there a specific preferred (optimized) method for representing tags in a filemaker database ?

Thanks again for your help

https://www.udemy.com/learning-filemaker-pro-15-volume-1/ 

Also is the above regarded as a good tutorial series?

Edited May 25, 2016 by KBS

[webko]

What is the business case for filling in these gaps? Does the number actually matter? It just needs to be unique, surely....

And what do you mean by 'tag' ?

Cheers

Webko

[KBS]

38 minutes ago, webko said:

What is the business case for filling in these gaps? Does the number actually matter? It just needs to be unique, surely....

And what do you mean by 'tag' ?

Cheers

Webko

The main reason for filling in these gaps is that we have a catalog of designs and overtime we add and remove them based on how they perform. Currently this is managed through various excel files and obviously has resulted in some consistency issues across them. I am trying to build the solution so that if I remove a design and say create a new gap the replacement design will fill in that gap whenever I choose to add a new record for that. 

We deal with jewelry so a tag would be anything that defines the design such as Antique, Engraved, Millgrain, ThreeStone ... etc (adjectives that describe the design that may not be defined by the category it is assigned to. I think at most there would be something like 8-10 tags for a piece) Ideally if I am asked for say 7 Stone Euroshank Wedding bands I would like to be able to find the items that work with this and pass my available designs on to a customer .

Thanks again!

[webko]

Given this business case, I would be inclined to *never* re-use a previously assigned design number - this ensures that there can never be any confusion about which design is being looked at.

And how many attribute tags could there be in total (not just for the one design, but all of them ever...)?

[KBS]

1 minute ago, webko said:

Given this business case, I would be inclined to *never* re-use a previously assigned design number - this ensures that there can never be any confusion about which design is being looked at.

And how many attribute tags could there be in total (not just for the one design, but all of them ever...)?

Thanks I will take that into consideration then... Is there a way to choose to start the Assignment of #'s from a certain # say 10000 so that I always have a 5 digit ID # if required

I haven't counted them but probably in the ballpark of 120-140

[Fitch]

Under File > Manage > Database, click the Options button for a field and the first tab, Auto-Enter, has a Serial number option where you can specify the starting value.