The Support Group Blog

Al asks:

Any hints on how to get appointments into iCal or Google calendars easily - without plug-ins? Mac would be fine, as I want this available on iPhone in the end.

Easy?  Maybe…  it depends on what you want to be able to do with it once it’s in iCal.

Robert asks:

I almost always tackle it with the basic script steps:

Hi, I’m Julien Lafleur, the director of development here at The Support Group.  I’ve been working with FileMaker for well over a decade (in fact I just passed my 10 year anniversary with TSG!), and I’m continually surprised by the many little challenges posed by our customers, and the many creative ways they can be solved.

Have you ever wanted to display event records in a calendar format?  Of course you have!  And FileMaker Pro 11 makes this so much easier with filtered portals.

FileMaker Pro 11’s new OnObjectValidate script trigger provides us with the ability to control and massage data in ways we couldn’t before.  While this trigger is often thought of as a way of adding additional limitations and restrictions on data entry beyond the built-in validation options, you can also use it to ease and allow more flexible data entry.

One of the things I find I need to do frequently is create a variable using a calculated name.  For example, I can use the FieldNames function to get the list of fields on a layout. I might want to then declare a number of variables that have the same names as the fields, and then populate them with those fields’ values.  Later, I can loop through the fields again, perhaps updating them with a Set Field By Name step, and reference the variable with the similar name.

Often we are asked to produce reports that show total sales (or student attendance, or whatnot) by week. In order to produce these reports, we need some value that allows us to group our records by week. What we can use is the Sunday—the start of our week—that occurs before our activity date.

From our Get ( Answers ) newsletter archives, updated for FileMaker 11:

Michael in Illinois asks: “When some users go to print a record the drop down print box will says ‘Current record’, while for others it says ‘Records being browsed’. Any idea how to make the latter the default? Is it a FileMaker setting?”

One of my favorite new features of FileMaker Pro 11 is Quick Find, which allows you to perform a find the way we’ve been trained by search engines: you can search for your criteria anywhere in the record, regardless of which fields the data is in.  Here are a few things to keep in mind about Quick Find:

• Quick Find only searches the current table, the same way you search when using Find mode.  If you’re on the Company Detail layout, and search for Peter Parker, you might find a company record for The Daily Bugle, but you won’t find Peter’s contact record.

This is one of my favorite tips, which we first published in August 2007 when conditional formatting was introduced in FileMaker Pro 9.  A not-uncommon request we’ve received over the years is to highlight the current field with something more than slightly darker field borders.  Conditional formatting seems the perfect answer: there must be a way to change a field’s background fill from its default to another color on entering the field, right? Turns out… no.  You cannot use conditional formatting to change a field’s fill color on entering it.  It’s just not possible.  Never.  Conditional formatting does not work in any way whatsoever while focus is in the field in question.