December Holiday Meet-up

Happy Holidays to all, but especially our FileMaker-ing friends.

We’ve had a fun year talking and promoting our favorite workplace productivity tool. This month’s meet-up will be another informal get-together to share FileMaker wisdom and cool stuff we’ve all run across. November’s meeting was a real treat as attendees shared their experiences and asked some really great questions. For December, however, we will add more of a holiday flair. We will provide seasonal beverages (some perhaps even alcoholic) and sandwiches and everyone is asked to bring a favorite dessert. We’ll still talk about FileMaker, you can bet, but we’ll also get to eat, drink, and be merry at the same time!

Come share a little cheer with your cheerful FileMaker co-celebrators.

Time and place as usual:
Thursday, December 16, 2010
12:00 - 3:00ish (bring a dessert to share)
Universal Design, 1234 S. 3rd Street, Louisville, 40202

Looking forward to seeing you on the 16th!
Info and registration: http://www.fmpug.com/

November Change Up

Sticking with the Third Thursday Theme, this month we will be starting a little early and incorporating a a bring-your-own-lunch element to our interaction-packed get-togethers. This month’s program is informal so bring your FileMaker issues, brain-teasers, and cool new-things-found. Share with fellow FileMaker devotees and learn from them. And have a great time with a stellar bunch of people.

TIME/LOCATION:
November 18, 12:00 pm to 3:00-ish
1234 S. Third Street, Louisville
Info & RSVP: http://fmpug.com/scheduleMeetings.php

Remember the new time!

See you there!

August Meeting Date Changed

We had a good time at our Little Things that Reap Big Rewards meeting on the 15th. More than one person left saying that a particular tip was worth all the time to come to all the meetings put together. What were they? You missed them.

No. Just kidding. They’re posted on the blog entry below.

NEW AUGUST MEETING DATE
Because we simply can’t wait to get talking about FileMaker’s newest products (well that and a scheduling conflict) we are changing the August meeting from the THIRD Thursday to the SECOND Thursday. We’re sorry if you had your heart set on the 19th, but this month (only, we hope) the Kentuckiana FileMaker Users Group will have their monthly rendezvous on the 12th! Same time, same location though.

DESIGNING FOR IWP
After Alan Bird’s presentation on Instant Web Publishing in June, Byron Songer is stepping up to show you how to prepare your solutions to work efficiently with your new-found power. From visual design issues to some of the under-the-hood things you’ll need to know, now you can take full advantage of the the absolutely easiest way to take your data to the web.

GO-GO FILEMAKER MOBILE APPS!
“What are these new FileMaker products you are talking about,” you ask? Well, last week FileMaker released their long-lusted-for apps that run on the iPhone, Touch and the iPad (called FileMaker Go)! We are having fun playing with our new toys, and you will too! Various members of the committee will share their experiences with these game-changing new tools and we’ll pass around examples to play with your very own self.

Get a look a the future of FileMaker!

TIME/LOCATION:
August 12, 1:00 pm to 3:30-ish
1234 S. Third Street, Louisville

Info & RSVP: http://fmpug.com/scheduleMeetings.php

DON’T FORGET, NEW MEETING DATE!

See you on the 12th!

July 15th Tips-and-Tricks Event

Discussion notes from June 15th meeting.

Filemaker Tips and Tricks (Brian)
Use SugarSync and DropBox for off-site backups with restore of last 3 if needed!

Check out various ideas from the videos of the February Pause On Error: https://pauseonerror.pbworks.com/Tips-and-Tricks which came from http://twitter.com/campsoftware/filemaker ( This is Hal in Orlando FL )

Freeze Window
This script step freezes the redraw of the window while scripts process in the background. It saves time like crazy! Processing 12000 records took 32 seconds in “real time,” then with the “freeze window” it took 4 seconds! NOTE: It does not work in IWP.

Copy Records
You can copy a record in form view or list view. Choosing Copy from the Edit menu copies the current record in tab delimited format to the clipboard. Add the option (shift on a PC) and it copies the same data from the entire found set! It only copies the fields on the layout. Also we found that Excel has a character limit and would not accept all the data from a larger set so keep an eye our for that.

Find Techniques
We discussed some find techniques and talked about one that would look for “James” in both the first name field and the last name field. You’d enter find mode, then type “James” in first name then create a new find request and type “James” in the last name field. When you hit enter it will find all the records that had “James” as either the first name or the last.

Dates search >[Date] is the same as [Date]…

Put quotes around more-than-one-word searches to find exact matches like =”of the”

Bill demonstrated using auto-enter calcs to format entries–such as phone numbers and social security numbers–no matter what format the user entered it in. Phone number formatting is a simple start of the talk that leads into using Custom Functions to handle them.

On a side topic, Bill showed a custom function that generated HTML5 primitives (boxes, circles, triangles) in a FileMaker web viewer object!

Lotsa cool stuff!

Little Things that Reap Big Rewards

Anyone who has been developing in FileMaker for any length of time will have discovered some serious time- and effort-saving techniques in their everyday work. Your User Group Committee already has a few doozies up their collective sleeves that you’ll be hearing more about, but this may be your big chance at that 15 minutes of fame you’ve been waiting for. If you have a trick you employ that you feel makes your life even a little easier or cuts down the amount of time you spend on a task, let us know and we’ll include it in this presentation at next month’s program. If you wish, you can even present it yourself. Drag ‘em out and pass ‘em on. Email them to jonathan”at”fletcherdata.com and we’ll sculpt them all into the general shape of a presentation!

Info & RSVP: http://fmpug.com/scheduleMeetings.php

TIME/LOCATION:
July 15, 1:00 pm to 3:30-ish
1234 S. Third Street, Louisville

June Meeting Alphabet Soup: IWP & ESS

Thanks to Bill Kaiser and Bill Heizer for sharing all that FileMaker 11 goodness with us last month. Only Mr. Goupil knows all that FileMaker has up its sleeve this year, but whatever it is, we can count on Bill and Bill to come back and fill us in on it all!

We’re going back to our regular format for June. We’ll have two presentations, one a little easier to wrap your brain around and one that cranks FileMaker’s power up a notch.

Alan Bird, “FILEMAKER TO THE WEB”
Instant Web Publishing is an under-appreciated and really game-changing technology that is available to even those with a client copy of FileMaker. Not very many people realize how easy it is to employ. Alan, who has extensive experience using FileMaker to put all manner of data on the web, will show you just how easy it is. From your kid’s baseball team stats to an e-commerce site, IWP is the easiest way to “database the web” that you will ever find!

Beverly Voth, “CONNECTING TO THE ENTERPRISE”
Another magic trick up FileMaker’s sleeve is the ability to connect to SQL databases. The most popular database type in the world (sorry, it’s not FileMaker!)–databases managed with what is known as Structured Query Language–are used everywhere from dynamic websites to major corporations’ enterprise management systems. What FileMaker calls “External SQL Sources” is the tool that companies use to turn FileMaker into a really flexible and powerful “front-end” to a wide variety of systems. Noted FileMaker author (and KYFMUG member!) has agreed to show us how to use ESS, which is built into every copy of FileMaker, as the switch that turns FileMaker from a mere desktop data manager into a peerless enterprise tool.

LOCATION: Universal Design, 1234 S. 3rd Street, Louisville, in the heart of “Old Town.” Convenient and plentiful street and lot parking ranges from free to cheap.

TIME: 1:00 pm, June 17.

Register at http://fmpug.com/scheduleMeetings.php

Join our listerv at http://fmpug.com/mailman/listinfo/louisville_fmpug.com

See you there! And please bring a friend!

FileMaker 11 Product Briefing comes to Louisville

FileMaker, Inc.’s own Bill Kaiser and Bill Heiser (remember them from November?) will be passing through Louisville on the 20th and hosting a gala event at the Marriott Courtyard Downtown (100 South Second Street). Filemaker fun, food and prizes!

Bill Heizer, FileMaker Senior Systems Engineer, will be showing off all the awesome new features in FileMaker 11. You’ll learn about charts, scripting, calculations, the enhanced Layout/Report Assistant, Quick Find, Inspector, Portal Filtering, Snapshot Link, and more. Whether you are a hot-shot developer or just a dabbler, there’s something new and useful just for you in FileMaker 11.

Register at https://ncsfms1.filemaker.com/fmpb/

See you there!

Script Triggers - “Sticky Tabs”

Today we talked about script triggers and offered an introduction. This is a redo of last years “sticky tabs” as published but updated a little for FMP 11. This demo file will work with FileMaker Pro 10 or 11. Here is the demo file: demo

All the best,
Brian Ginn

April Kentuckiana Meeting

Greetings, File Makers!

Well, after a change of program AND a change of venue, we finally have the details for this month’s meeting settled.

LOCATION
Next month (May) we will be back at the 1234 S. Third location, but this month we will be meeting in the board room of the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, 301 York Street, downtown Louisville. (Parking is on the street, so come a little early and bring quarters or your PARC SmartCards.)

TIME/DATE
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm (or so)
April 15

PROGRAM
Bob Patin–our presenter on FileMaker and the web that was scheduled for this month–had a last-minute client issue and requested that we reschedule him for a future date. We’ll let you know when that is. In his stead, though, we have arranged a power-house lineup of local talent for you:

First up is Byron Songer who will continue his Intro to FileMaker series with a session on the calculation engine and how you can really simplify your work by letting FileMaker calculate a whole host of things for you.

Following that, Brian Ginn will give you his take on what’s cool about script triggers. This caps off Jonathan’s two-part introduction to the subject by taking it up a notch and showing you some really effective ways to automate your solutions.

NETWORKING
Following the main presentations will be a time of discussion and networking where you can ask questions and commune with other FileMaker users as long as you want.

FUTURE
We are still looking forward to Bill Kaiser and Bill Heizer (of FileMaker, Inc.) bringing their FileMaker 11 show to Louisville in May. We’ll keep you posted on that.

Info & RSVP: http://fmpug.com/scheduleMeetings.php

See you Thursday!

Technique: Dynamic-Dynamic Value Lists

I’ve been showing around a technique that I’ve come up with that, while not overly mind-blowing, I have not seen demonstrated anywhere else. It allows the developer to create a value list that changes to entirely different content for each record that it is used on.

Now you may be thinking of what is known as a “dynamic value list” and indeed this uses that technique as well, but other tricks are employed to give an even greater variety of content to popups and menus.

It all depends on the fact that a list to FileMaker is any set of values that are separated by carriage returns. You can create any text values, stick carriage returns between them and they become a list. If you put them in a field and point a value list definition at that field you can receive back all the values listed there. This can be done on a field by field basis.

In addition you can also stuff that field with the contents of a predefined value list (static or dynamic) using the ValueListItems function.

The other bit of geekery is a calculation field that takes as its input the content of another field, makes some decisions about it and turns it into a list. Add a new related table occurrence and use that (and your new calculation) in your value list definition.

Whew, now I have me confused. Maybe I should go watch the video I just created so I know what I’m talking about!

If you’d like, you can too, right here.

jonathan