ISO FileMaker Magazine

Who doesn't like the simplicity of using a single field to search across many. That's essentially what Quick Find is. In fact, by default FileMaker makes the silly assumption that every field you add to a layout is something you want the user to be able to search.

Essentially, you want to take control of the user experience in terms of search and make sure the user is not only searching what you want them to search, but also able to search in a fashion which is both familiar and comfortable.

This technique file and video will walk you through the details needed to take full control of the Quick Find experience. You can enforce desirable effects such as sorted record sets and keep the user within the search field ready for multiple repeated search attempts.

By taking advantage of a variety of FileMaker features, we can create both an easy-to-implement and universally powerful Quick Find feature. Watch the video and use the associated technique file in order to have a better understanding of how Quick Find truly works within FileMaker Pro.

As with all software projects, one of the biggest prices you'll ever pay is the accumulated technical debt. It's a cost which starts as soon as you make the choice to simply write a new script with every new feature you add into your FileMaker solution.

Thus, the trick with creating something which is easier to manage is to simply decide to limit the number of things you create. So, what does one do when you've made that decision? Well, you focus on using the available toolset, using great organization and creating a small amount of utility scripts in order to limit the number of things you would otherwise have to create.

In this video, I showcase an enhanced version of a system I designed a while back. It's a method for making simple, or even somewhat complex searches within the UI of your solution. You simply specify what you're searching for within the script parameter you're passing into the script. With the availability of JSON now, we have a very descriptive method of knowing what is being searched for.

Making it easy for users to search for content is what your job is all about. If you're relying on FileMaker's default Query By Form method of searching, then many users may not know how to use the full functionality of FileMaker's search.

This is where you, as the developer, get to control how users interact with the data. By taking advantage of both FileMaker's QuickFind and the normal Query By Form, you can implement really nice features like an easy-to-use search bar.

In this video, we walk through the process of adding just such a search bar into the Custom Function database. If you're interested in learn about how you can take full control over the searching process then this video will provide you with a lot of insight!

As a developer, it’s often hard to get out of a mindset where your response of “It’s simple silly, you just search for a portion of the word, not the whole word.” to the question of a particular search not providing a user’s expected results.

This type of response may come from a user when they mention they know the user “Petrowsky” is in the database but it doesn’t come across verbally that they’re really searching for “Petrowski” - which obviously doesn’t match the version ending in a “y” instead of an “i”.

This level of understanding, that you can simply enter “petrow” in order to search for both variations, isn’t inherently obvious to all users. So the next best solution is to provide some type of filtering process. Something where the user can narrow down their list of choices to find out where the disconnect is happening.

In this video, we look at a sublimely simple script which makes this type of task an utter piece-of-cake. If you’ve got users who need to make routine selections on filtered subsets of data then the knowledge contained within this video will pay dividends beyond just knowing how to filter based on an alphabet letter!