ISO FileMaker Magazine

When first starting to use FileMaker, the templates you’re exposed to may impose certain conceptual limits on how you use the various areas of FileMaker Pro.

Take layouts for example, you use a form view to enter data and list view to view a list of options you can choose from.

There are, however, aspects of each of these areas within the application that lend themselves to abstracted uses. While List View may be used most of the time for viewing a list of data, this isn’t forced upon you.

FileMaker’s layout parts are simply parts of your display area which can be used in creative ways. In this video, I showcase how I’ve used the body area of a List View in order to maintain statically positioned Header and Footer areas while treating the body as a single form view.

There are also creative ways to use Sub-summary parts by conditionally showing or hiding them as desired. This is commonly called “Sorting on a garbage field” - or, at least I’m calling it that.

If you’re looking to expand your creative thinking with how data can be displayed within FileMaker Pro, then this video will certainly have what you’re looking for.

When was the last time you used FileMaker's Extended Privileges? Never? Well, how about taking advantage of them in such a way that you gain a double level of control over individual user-based privileges.

Using one single privilege set, it's possible to control which specific users can view, edit or delete records from your database. You can also turn off, or on, a specific privilege such as editing an invoice for a whole group of users or one specific user.

It's already hard enough to figure out how to make access privileges specific to users. Implementing this easily within FileMaker's own convoluted security is our ultimate goal.

If setting up security is the last step you take, then watching this video will hopefully reveal how easy it is to set things up at the beginning, or at any time in your solution's evolution.

Since FileMaker Pro provides the Extended Privileges section, there's no reason not to take advantage of it. Let me show you how!

When first learning structure and schema within any development environment, including FileMaker, the question of “Am I doing this the right way?” always seems rear its ugly head. The answer to that question, however, is not “Yes” or “No” but the more frustrating “It depends”. The reason for this ambiguous response is that the needs of the solution often dictate how it should be structured.

True, there are common pitfalls which should be avoided when planning out the structure of your database. Also, understanding fundamentals, like using a join tables, and how to get at the data you wish to display always depend on where the data resides. In this video, I showcase one of many approaches to managing groups of people. Information about how breaking down a common sentence of requested features can reveal a lot, and how to formulate your angle of attack.

If structuring data is something you’ve always had an issue with then this video may have the insight to help move you along.

Learning how to create an efficient FileMaker database requires multiple disciplines. How to efficiently store data, how to present data, how to optimize for performance and other similar objectives such as readable code and ongoing maintenance. Much of what you know now will evolve with what you learn as your solution grows. I’m often saying it’s important to know that how you store data may be much different than how you present and interact with that same data.

It really all depends on the solution objectives. A database which groups people based on their area code needs an area code field - obviously. However, in many cases, the data itself simply needs to be stored. The degree to which data is broken out, from the outset, really depends on the requirements. If all you need to store is a phone number which can be looked up in part or in whole, then a single field, used to store more than just a phone number, may be what’s needed.

This video is about how simple it can be to structure and interact with data in a very efficient method. It focuses on how data can be categorized and simply identified within the table where it’s stored. Determining how to classify the data is simply a matter of recognizing its obvious pattern in relation to all other data being collected.

Because humans create so many patterns, these patterns can be used to make things easier when collecting data.