InBizness Quiz 1.4 Update

InBizness Quiz is a unique learning experience for the FileMaker developer. What you get is access to a quiz library of over 1,600 questions in both a random or targeted quiz session formats. You even get some great choices in how you access your quiz sessions from FileMaker, a web browser (via FileMaker IWP) or via the iPhone (via the Safari browser). So you can take a new quiz just about any time and anywhere.

ABOUT THE RANDOM QUIZ ENVIRONMENT
Random quizzes are a great way to evaluate where you are in your FileMaker knowledge. With each new release we have upped the ante on our random quiz environment. We have eight different options on random quizzes with include five different experience level options.

Here you can see the main access screen for your random quizzes. (click picture to expand)

ABOUT THE TARGETED QUIZ ENVIRONMENT
If you thought that eight different options for random quizzes, you are really going to like having fifteen different options for targeted quizzes. These targeted quizzes are great for any areas in which you feel that you could do better. But it isn’t about the score, it is the process that pays the dividends.

Here you can see our current targeted quiz options. (click picture to expand)

ABOUT YOUR QUIZ QUESTIONS
The questions appear in a classic multiple choice setting and are pretty straight forward. We didn’t spend a lot of effort coming up with trick questions or obtuse situation scenarios.

Here you can see one of the quiz questions. (click picture to expand)

ABOUT YOUR QUIZ RESULTS
After taking the quiz, you will see a scrollable list of the questions you missed. You will see the question ID number, the question, your incorrect answer choice and the final correct answer choice. You can also view your quiz history at any time.

Here you can see the quiz result screen. (click picture to expand)

Here you can see your quiz history so you can measure your results.

Coming Soon InBizness Basic CRM - Yet Another FileMaker CRM Database

Lately, I’ve been creating new databases by harvesting a lot of code from my previous projects. Literally, I’m choosing the “New Database” command from under the File menu, tossing out the default table and pasting in pieces from my other projects. I tend to design with “recycle” in mind but I’m surprising myself these days. This is an InBizness CRM database but has a few different twists to it.

MORE EMPHASIS ON THE ACTIVITY AND ACTIVITY GROUPS
I introduced the Activity Group with InBizness Real Estate but this version is a bit different. First off, an activity group can be assigned to many different modules including Companies, Products, Invoices, Purchases and Staff.

PREFERRED PRODUCTS / PRICES FOR COMPANY RECORDS
Added in an option where you can setup default products (with default pricing) for a company and then quickly invoice from there.

INVOICE BACKORDER LOGIC
The invoice module has a backorder logic where you can create a new invoice based upon what was not shipped from a previous one.

CONSOLIDATED LINE ITEMS TABLE
Not a biggie but I always have a separate table for invoices and purchase orders. In this database, they are combined.

FILEMAKER 10 FEATURES
Lots of small script trigger features including a quicksearch, quick date range and pull down menu field navigation.

Entering In Work Order For An Apartment Unit

A work order is a repair event that may consist of multiple activities and each activity may be assigned to a different staff member. For work orders that reoccur, you may consider creating an activity group for future use. In this set of instructions, we are looking at a one time repair work order for an apartment unit.

The first thing you want to do is to locate the apartment unit the work needs to be done for. The next thing you want to do is click the "Add Work Order" button on the top part of the Unit modules form view.

From here, you can enter in the work order fields until you get to the addition of activities. Each activity can have different start dates, categories and assignments.

WANT TO SEE THE MOVIE?
We did create a quick movie on the topic and you can view it by clicking here!

Getting Started With FileMaker Based InBizness Property Management

The checklist for setting up your copy of InBizness Property Manager for the first time.

STEP 1: Duplicate the copy of the database we provided to you. You will want to keep this copy on hand in case you want to rollback to a pristine version.

STEP 2: Delete the example data. Go to each main module and delete all the records in each one. This will help keep you from getting confused from demo data and your real world data.

STEP 3: Add in your buildings data in the building module. This is important before adding any other data.

STEP 4: From the buildings module, add all the apartment rentals units that belong to that building. You can add rental units that are not linked to a building but that is only recommended for rentals that are the only rental for a building.

STEP 5: Enter in your tenant related information.

STEP 6: Assign each tenant to the appropriate apartment unit. Remember that you can only assign apartment units are not available. So make sure that you have updated your apartment status records to help the unit pick list stay up to date.

STEP 7: Add in your staff members into the staff module. This will be necessary so you can assign activities to them. If they are going to be accessing the database, make sure they have their own database accounts, passwords and access levels set properly.

WANT TO SEE THE MOVIE?
We did create a quick movie on the topic and you can view it by clicking here!

InBizness Property Manager

Seattle Washington - dwaynewright.com is excited to announce the immediate availability of InBizness Property Manager! As with our other InBizness products, when purchased, you can customize InBizness to meet your individual business needs by using FileMaker Pro 10. That means you can add small tweaks to large redesigns for all layouts, relationships, scripts, tables, value lists and security schema.

THE MODULES
InBizness Property Manager is designed to have just the right modules needed to do your property management tasks and these include the tracking of buildings, apartment units, tenants, work orders, activities, rent payments, work orders and more!

For more information regarding InBizness Property Manager, please visit http://www.dwaynewright.com/inbiz/propmgr/index.html

Dwayne Wright
dwaynewright.com
Snohomish, Washington 98296
info@dwaynewright.com

InBizness Quiz (filemaker edition) 1.2 Release

Last month (September 2009) we released our InBizness Quiz product with an edition focused upon the popular database product FileMaker Pro. During the last month we have been working on capturing feedback from users for features to include in future versions of the product. We also added almost 200 new questions to the quiz library and now is the largest repository of FileMaker quiz questions on the planet.

Almost all the revisions were made for the $7.50 a month paid subscribers. The only exception is a tweak to the process of selecting random quizzes to increase performance. This really wasn’t an issue when the quiz only had 200 questions but became more noticeable as the quiz content library grew and grew.

We decided that the main screen of the paid subscribers needed an update. We wanted to make it easier to take targeted quizzes and we wanted to make the interface more web friendly. We added a top bar of buttons to view your quiz history, view high scores or to make changes to your user profile.

Quiz history got a minor updates as well and I’m looking to add new features here in forthcoming updates. This can include filters by topic or perhaps a tab panel that breaks down results by difficulty level. I’m also considering adding an interface that shows how many questions you have viewed from the overall number of questions in a particular topic.

High scores got a small tweak as well. You can now see high score quiz results for various topics.

Finally, we added FileMaker Instant Web Publishing support for paid subscribers. All you need to do is click the following link (click here), type in your account name / password, choose the database and you are off to the races!

New InBizness Demo Launcher

Since January of 2008, we stopped sending out demo files of our FileMaker framework products. What we do is host them on a shared FileMaker Server and send prospects a launcher file to open the networked demos. This is really helpful because we don’t want older demo versions of our software out there. Up to this point, I would send out a different launcher file for each product.

CLICK IMAGE PICTURE ABOVE TO ENLARGE

So now that we have four different applications in the InBizness family, I decided to build a unified demo experience for those interested in our products. I ended up adding more features to this launcher than I planned to do. This is the first version of the file and I’m sure that I’ll be tweaking it over time.

I recorded a very quick tutorial movie for the launcher file if you want to check it out. Here is the link,
http://www.dwaynewright.com/videos09/InBizLauncher.mov . If you are interested in a demo trial period for an InBizness product, please send us an email at info@dwaynewright.com.

Many thanks,
Dwayne Wright

InBizness Classic Coming Soon

I received an email recently about InBizness 2.0. Evidently, I had the link for the product still LIVE and they were not interested in the complexity or additional expense of InBizness 2.8. I decided to take this older FileMaker 8 version as a shell for a new low end product InBizness Classic. I’ll have a link with more information soon, look for InBizness Classic to be available by September 1st, 2009.



Here is another small banner ad we are looking at using. At the very least, this is how it will probably look at the solutions link on www.dwaynewright.com.

InBizness Real Estate 2.0 Goes Live!

July 6, 2009; Seattle Washington - dwaynewright.com is excited to announce the immediate availability of InBizness Real Estate 2.0! This latest release of an open FileMaker framework solution has two new modules and a number of enhancements to the existing contact, property listing and activity modules.


ACTIVITY GROUP MODULE (NEW)
Added a new module called activity groups, this allows the user to create groups of activities and quickly add these activities to a property record. Navigation to this module can be accessed from under the navigation menu.

DRAG AND DROP CREATOR (NEW)
Currently compatible with Macintosh computers only and uses the Troi File plug-in, allows you to leverage drag and drop desktop features for adding files and photos to property files. Optionally, you can also store these files / photos on the remote hosting service JungleDisk.

OVERALL MODULE CHANGES
Added a pop down field to give quick navigation from one module to the next

ACTIVITY MODULE CHANGES
Added “Cancel” as a value list choice option for Activity status.

CONTACT MODULE CHANGES
Added logic and custom function to create batch correspondence from a found set of records using a template.
Added the ability to link files to contact records for the contact form screen.
Added the ability to print an envelope from the contacts module from under the contact menu.
Added the ability to print a set of Avery 5160 labels from the contacts module from under the contact menu.
Added the ability to export found set of records as an Excel file from the contacts module from under the contact menu.

CORRESPONDENCE MODULE CHANGES
Added logic to create a related activity (tied to the contact) when a correspondence record is printed.
Added the ability to print an envelope from the correspondence module from under the correspond menu.
Added the ability to print a set of Avery 5160 labels from the correspondence module from under the correspond menu.
Removed the “print found set button” users found them confusing. This option is still available under the Correspondence custom menu.
Added a delete button in the correspond template dialog box for deleting template letters

PROPERTY MODULE CHANGES
Combined the File and Photo tabs together to save space and to better unify their common purposes.
Added a tab to show only the activities in open status and another tab to show all the activities related to a property.
Added validation to the SIR# and MLS # to insure they can only contain unique values.
Added a custom menu option under property listings to cancel any open activities for a viewed property.
Added contract date to the listing info section
Moved the agent info data fields to under the Other Info tab, made room for contract date field in its place.
Added the subdivision field to the main listing info area

More information is available by visiting http://www.dwaynewright.com/inbiz/realestate/index.html

InBizness Real Estate Coming Soon

Occasionally, I get a client that is interested in my InBizness product but they don’t need an office database that is so large in scope. Just over a month ago, I had a real estate professional contact me about a FileMaker CRM need focused to his business needs. He liked the setup of InBizness but had no need for 60 % of the modules. Right out of the gate, he only needed the contacts, staff, events and correspondence modules. He also needed a new module to track property listings and have it linked operationally to the other modules.

Now it is possible to invest in a copy of InBizness and the remove the navigation to modules that you do not need. The code for those modules is still there, ready to be used if necessary but users are not distracted with buttons that take them to modules unneeded to accomplish defined company objectives.


Instead of selling this customer a copy InBizness 2.8, I offered them a quote of a new database designed from scratch but using selected parts of the latest unreleased version of InBizness. Yes, there is always an unreleased copy of InBizness and I have no idea when this latest version will come to market. Instead, you will probably see mini modules of the overall product released this year. InBizness Money was the first mini module that was pulled from the code of its larger InBizness brother and now InBizness Real Estate is the second smaller scope release.

ABOUT FILEMAKER 10
InBizness Real Estate will require each FileMaker user to use FileMaker 10, the latest release of the product by FileMaker Inc. At this time, we have not built in a web or mobile feature set for InBizness Real Estate but will embrace the opportunity to do so (if or when a client requests these features). For more information about FileMaker 10 and upgrade options to this cutting edge product release, please visit http://www.filemaker.com/ or contact us at info@dwaynewright.com.

Simply put, the recent addition of script triggers within FileMaker 10 has the potential to propel our products to heights that cannot be gained otherwise. Although there are other great features in FileMaker 10 as well, script triggers are too important of a feature to invest time and effort in designing backwards compatibility. For this reason, InBizness 2.8 and InBizness Money 1.2 will stay on the market for quite some time for FileMaker 9 users. All new product releases will require an investment in FileMaker 10.

MOVIE TIME
I’m a big fan of creating computer tutorial movies for presentation and for illumination. Here is a collection of the movies I produced to cover the initial release of this product.

The Main Menu
The New User Interface
The Contacts Module Explored
The Property Listing Module Explored
The Staff Module Explored
The Activities Module Explored
The Correspondence Module Explored

Adding A Deposit To A Finance Account

I just uploaded a new movie about adding a deposit to one of the finance accounts within InBizness. I also take a small detour in explaining what the Bank Deposit module does. This module is used to make creating bank deposit statements a little easier to handle but doesn’t link directly to the Finance module itself.

Here is the link ...
http://www.dwaynewright.com/inbiz/movies/04172009/CheckDeposit.mov

Two New How To Movies Uploaded

I just produced a couple new tutorial movies for the different ways to create new purchase order and vendor bill records. Here are the links ...

Create New Purchase Order
http://www.dwaynewright.com/inbiz/movies/04162009/NewPO.mov

Create New Vendor Bill
http://www.dwaynewright.com/inbiz/movies/04162009/NewVB.mov

FILEMAKER: FileMaker Blog Wrap Up For March 2009

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

Here is a quick listing of FileMaker related blog posts that I did for the month of March 2009.

BUSINESS
Sales Rep Twitters In A Web Viewer
Walled Garden Web Enabling For Clients View

FOUND SET
QUICK TIP: Year Searches
Saved And Recent Finds Explored
FileMaker 10 Saved Finds And Custom Menus
FileMaker 10 Saved Finds (Constrains And Extend Routines)
Follow Up - FileMaker 10 Saved Finds And Custom Menus
Table Creation On FileMaker Data Import Explored
Matching Record Imports Explored
LINK: Series Of Posts For FileMaker Google Like Searches

FUNCTIONS
The Calculation Literal Explored
EXAMPLE: Aggregate Across
LINK: Great Description Of Function Recursion In Action

LAYOUTS
Reorder FileMaker Layouts Explored

RANDOM THOUGHTS
2009 FileMaker Developers Conference Breakdown (intro)
DEVCON 2009: Friday Session 9:00 AM Breakdown
DEVCON 2009: Friday Session 10:30 AM Breakdown
DEVCON 2009: Friday Session 1:30 PM Breakdown
DEVCON 2009: Friday Session 3:15 PM Breakdown
Back Into The 360WORKS Email Saddle Again
Ode To The Define Menu
Some More FileMaker Tweets From The Twitterverse
Subset Of Data Ideas For Code Organization
A READER ASKS: FileMaker Based Real Estate Information
A READER ASKS: Add To In A Replace
Free VTC FileMaker 10 Training For 30 Days
FileMaker Pro 10 And The METROLOGIC MS9500 Bar Code Scanner
WHAT I’D LIKE TO SEE: Tooltip Button In Specify Button Dialog
WHAT I’D LIKE TO SEE: Easier Way To Comment Scripts
WHAT I’D LIKE TO SEE: Tabs With Layout Memories

RELATIONSHIPS
A READER ASKS: FileMaker Relationship Graph Documentation
EXAMPLE: Multiple Table Occurrences

REPORTS
WAREHOUSE TWEAK: Clients By Group ID (part 1)
WAREHOUSE TWEAK: Clients By Group ID (part 2)
Warehousing Data Lightly Explored

SCRIPTING
FileMaker Script Debugger Introduction
Debugger Pause On Error
EXAMPLE: FileMaker 10 Script Triggers And People Pickers
LINK: Faster, Maintainable FileMaker Scripts with Variables

SECURITY
Substantive Privileges Explored

TERMS
Constant Relationship
Extend Found Sets
Highlighting
Handle
Insert From Index
Implementation
Individual Stage Plan
Matching Record Imports
Menu Item
Modifier Key
Mathematical Operators
Operational Databases
Substantive Privileges
Subset Of Data
Script Debugger
Script Result
Table Creation On Import
Technical Reviews
Mailing Lists Explored
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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

ADVERTISEMENT ==================
Help support this blog by considering a donating to its ongoing growth. For more details, please visit http://www.dwaynewright.com/donate.html

FAQ: Role Based Value List Filtering

QUESTION: The Sales Rep ID in the sales order module needs to be changed to a pull down like the Staff ID field.

ANSWER: OK, this does work like that but it has a bit of a twist. It is a good twist, so let me run this by you. The pull down list for the Sales Rep ID is filtered to show only the staff members assigned to Sales. You haven’t assigned anyone to sales in the staff file yet, so the current state of this value list, for you, is empty. As soon as you assign a staff member to sales, it will then show up in the value list.

This list option is great unless you have staff members that wear multiple hats. The security within InBizness (as well as many of the value lists) are role based. So I can reassign the Sales Staff value list to be a general staff member list (not role specific).

If you have staff members that wear multiple hats, we might want to create a role for them specifically.

New “Under The Hood” Movie For InBizness Relationship Graph

There is a related movie on this topic! CLICK HERE!

FAQ: Can You Sell Me Modules Of The Overall Solution

QUESTION: Is it possible to purchase InBizness per module?

ANSWER: I don't sell the InBizness product by module but that is an interesting notion for the future. If you want a lighter version of the InBizness product, just let me know. I'm sure we can work things out. I have done this for customers in the past. In fact, the InBizness Money product was born out of someone just wanting the Finance modules from InBizness 2.5.


It would be quite possible to extract the campaign or proposal modules and make them a free standing solution. You could extract the leads, events and staff module to make a light lead tracking solution for example.

So if you are interested in something like that, please do not hesitate to contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

Back Into The 360WORKS Email Saddle Again

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

Sometime during the third week of January (2009), my business simply exploded. I sold numerous copies of my InBizness FileMaker CRM product and most of those customers purchased customization services as well. My time for daily blogging simply vanished and I'm still under the gun. Before the deluge happened, I was working on a series of posts about the 360Works email plug-in and it has bothered me that I haven't made incremental progress on those. Today I reached an action item in which one of my clients wants to have InBizness automatically import email receipts from their online shopping cart and build sales orders from them.

It has been a couple months since I worked with the 360Works email plug-in and that is one great acid test for a plug-in. How difficult is it to pick up the ball again and start running with it? For me, I spent more time finding the example file I was working on, than it took to wire it up to my clients email address. You can see a series of links about my example file at the end of this post.

In order to test the plug-in with my clients email account ... I simply plugged in the email server address, the email address and the password. Hit the button that I had built back when the current year ended with an eight ... and ... it worked! I tweaked a few other things about the example file but then realized I had real work to do! I need to take this and integrate it into InBizness for my client. This is also a feature that I'll want to include in the next update of InBizness.

SO WHAT ABOUT FILEMAKER 10?
All my active development for the next release of InBizness is being done in FileMaker 10 and all my client work is being done in FileMaker 9. That will change soon because I have a client that really needs the script trigger and active report features of FileMaker 10. Right now, I'm using a Macintosh that is running FileMaker 10 and FileMaker 9 at the same time. My development version of InBizness is the same one that I use to run my business. So all my client timecard tracking is done there. Besides my timecard tracking, there is another benefit to this step. I can copy and paste code between the two versions of FMP9 and FMP10. So I tend to prototype new features in my FileMaker 10 development version of InBizness and test it there. Then I copy the code over to my clients version of InBizness, test it and then release that version to my clients. Works pretty well but I wondered about the 360Works compatibility with FileMaker 10.

CRUISING OVER TO THE 360WORKS WEB SITE
So my version of the email plug-in is 1.81 and I need to see what the current version is. I navigate over to the page dedicated to the email plug-in (found here) and in the right hand side I see that the current version is 1.86. So I've missed out on five updates and I'm thinking I might need to follow this a little closer. If I release this plug-in with my product, that may be a very good idea. I wonder what 360Works has in regards to notifying their customers of plug-in updates. I went ahead and clicked the link for the users that own a license and about to give it a go.

Here you can see what was downloaded.

Being the curious sort, I opened up the ChangeLog.txt file and found the following about the updates I missed.

Version 1.86
* Improved unicode support for attachment names when attachments are stored as container references.

Version 1.85
* Improved unicode support for plain-text messages with accent characters, foreign characters.

Version 1.84 (1/28/2009)
* Fixed compatibility issues with running on Server 10 and IWP

Version 1.83 (1/13/2009)
* Explicitly sends a sent-date header, to address complaints from SMTP servers about missing DATE header
* Added "count" option for EmailReadMessageValue, this returns the total number of messages fetched from the server. Useful for progress bars.

Version 1.82 (12/28/2008)
* Fixed IMAP message retrieval by uid for gmail servers, bug which caused incorrect uids to be used. Update to this version is you are using UID-based IMAP fetches!

The last two updates don't have a date attached to them but it still looks like an update has been rolling out every couple weeks or so. Only two of them seems to address a fix and only one of them is remotely FileMaker 10 related. I'm not going to use the plug-in with IWP yet, but good to know they are on the ball with updates for that feature! Everything else seems to be a set of self actualization improvements, that is good to know as well!

POPPING THE PLUG-IN INTO FILEMAKER 10
I quit out of FMP10 and cruise over to my FileMaker 10 folder to install the plug-in. Here I get a little freaked out about what I find. I have multiple copies of extension folders where my plug-in is supposed to go. What the heck is up with that? The five copies of the extensions folder are all empty, so I make a command decision to delete them.

Here you can see my extension folder seems to have replicated itself on January 9th, what weird mojo went on that day?

My example file has my license information within it for startup, so I close it from my FileMaker 9 application and open it up in FileMaker 10. I wander over to the development tab in the example file and see if my registration was successful on startup. This is logic I copied directly over from the 360Works example file. Houston, we DO NOT appear to have a problem. The plug-in reports that my registration was successful and verifies that I have the latest version! That is about as smooth of a process as you can expect for a plug-in experience.

Here is something that continues to be funny to me. I open up my example file in FileMaker 10 and get annoyed almost immediately. My thoughts are "Why did this open with the status area missing?" and I click the show status area button. Then realize this is FileMaker 10, I don’t have the benefit of a status area, click the button again and proceed to my FileMaker 10 arch enemy (the status bar). Yes, I'm firmly entrenched in the "hate it" camp for all things status bar related but what is a poor developer to do? In my case, my only option is to mutter a “dab nab it” and travel all the way up to the top of the monitor for everything I need to do.

Back to the discussion about the plug-in compatibility ... sorry about the mini rant ... I click the button to download the emails and it works like a charm! It worked exactly the same as the FileMaker 9 experience and mentally I stand up and do a quick snoopy dance. Next up, integrating the 360Works plug-in into InBizness. I'm going to start on that right after taking a Wii Fit yoga break.

Here are some links to other posts that might be of interest in regards to this topic...
External Functions Registering Your Plug-in
Custom Function - Name On Email
A Friday Afternoon With The 360Works Email Plug-In
Constant Relationship Portals And Tab Panels
Looping Script To Clean Email Addresses
Extraction, Transformation And Loading Process Explored


=
More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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Help support this blog by considering a donating to its ongoing growth. For more details, please visit http://www.dwaynewright.com/donate.html

FAQ: Protecting Credit Card Data Information

QUESTION: What is the most straight forward to remove access within InBizness for a majority of the users to clients credit card data?

ANSWER: The most straight forward way is to remove the field access permissions to the credit card related fields in the Clients module. This is done for each privilege set that corresponds to the business role of a staff member.

First up, open up the privilege set dialog box for one of the privilege set.

Under the records data access settings, choose the Custom Privileges option.

Next we want to choose the "limited" option for field access for the CLIENT table. This will allow us to target options for fields in the Client module.

From here, we want to remove the access for the privilege set for the credit card field. In the case of InBizness, these fields are have a prefix of cc_ .

So when you are done, it should look something like this.

Google And MapQuest Directions For InBizness

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

A while back (January 27th 2009, to be exact) a custom function popped up on briandunning.com to allow you to do MapQuest directions for a FileMaker record. At that time, I did what many of us do, mentally filed it away as something to check out during the mythical free time moments. About a week later, someone emailed me and they wondering about how to integrate google maps into a FileMaker record. I passed them the custom function link for the MapQuest function, recommended they search there for google map features as well and again filed the topic away for later review.

As fate would have it, on Saturday morning, I received 27 new feature requests from a client that purchased my FileMaker based CRM product called InBizness. The first item on the list was integration of service calls module to google maps so that technicians could print out map directions to call locations.

Well, I could no longer keep this topic in the “check out someday” file, so I cruised over to the briandunning.com site and did some poking around. I came up with the following ...

GOOGLEDIRECTIONS
Added GoogleDirections from briandunning.com (http://www.briandunning.com/cf/724 ) and submitted by Chris Pye, Mactec, http://www.mactec.com.au. Takes two addresses and returns text formatted as a URL to display a Google Map with directions. This can be used to open a URL or Web Viewer window.

MAPQUEST_DIRECTIONS
from briandunning.com (http://www.briandunning.com/cf/959 ) and submitted by Robert Schaub, Starr Data, http://starrdata.com. Use your start and end address fields from you database or enter your custom find.

I tested both of these out and they seemed to work OK. The google map function seemed to have a problem when there is a comma in the street address. So I thought I’d warn my client about that and see if they want me to program around the possible issue.

ADDING AS A WEB VIEW IN A LOWER TAB PANEL
The first thing I tried was adding the feature as a web viewer within a lower tab in the tab panel. This worked OK but I still had the classic web viewer problem. The web viewer is like an oversized dresser that never really fits in the bedroom. You can move it around and around but it still never fits snugly.

You will need to click on this image to see it in detail. This is the tab panel setup I went with. You can see that I have an opening tab that explains the process, directions for both Google & MapQuest and then tab for maps of the location (sans the directions). These are setup to auto resize with FileMaker 9 but the Web Viewer still takes up a lot of screen real estate.

Pondering how to use the power of the Web Viewer, you may consider ripping out a wall to resolve the issue (and in FileMaker, that is what you do sometimes). However you realize that is a real pain and a huge productivity whole. You consider bringing up a new layout window with the web viewer viewer only but that also is a productivity hole and doesn’t net you much more than what you can do with the Open URL script step.

FYI ... The Open URL Script Step opens a specified Internet URL address or performs other specified URL protocol commands. This means that you can have a combination of web and FileMaker actions within a script that you use in your database solution. Here are some links to other posts that might be of interest in regards to this topic... The Open URL Script Step and EXAMPLE: Open URL Via Portal Records.

COMBINATION PLATE APPROACH FOR THE MAP TAB IN SERVICE
Since custom menus are so flexible and functional, I decided to use this method for utilizing similar mapping features across multiple modules. Of course, this would be much faster for me to implement if FileMaker would support copy and paste features for entire custom menus but that feature hasn’t been added as yet. (hint - hint - hint)

As I mentioned, I started off by implementing this feature in the Service/Support module of my InBizness product. I then added the Google/MapQuest directions Go To URL (via a custom menu) feature into the Clients module using my current set of recycling techniques from my tool bag. I found a couple tweaks that I needed to go and quickly implemented those changes. Now I have the map direction features in two InBizness modules (Support & Clients). Next up, I wanted to do a test to see how long it would take me to add this feature to another module. So I started the timer for the implementation into the Leads module.

I started at 7:58 AM and finished up the implementation at 8:06 AM. So within 8 minutes I was able to duplicate / edit existing script steps for leads, build the two custom menus for leads, test, troubleshoot, tweak and test again. I did run across a problem with the MapQuest function in that it did not like the entry of “United States” for the country data. A quick change of the county value list to “USA” fixed the problem and seemed to play well with Google Maps as well.

SUMMING THIS UP
InBizness (as with most robust CRM packages) has many independent modules that work together in concert. Using a modular design method, you can implement a feature in one module and invest the normal amount of development time. Written properly, the underlying code can quickly be implemented into multiple modules and this has multiple benefits (the least of which is a consistent feature set across modules that users can leverage during the business day).

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Thank You For Your InBizness Money Purchase

I’m still evolving what I send to customers that purchase my framework products but don’t hire me to do the customizations. Here is a quick peek at my last quick message to a recent purchase of InBizness Money. If you have any suggestions about things I should add, I would love to hear from you!

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Thank you for your order. Here is a copy of our FileMaker framework application InBizness Money. As with most framework applications, this one ships without any data (so that you can add your own data, of course). There are some value lists that look for data, so you may need to create a few records to build this up or change the value lists to be in a typical list format. There may be a few other things that might seem unfamiliar, please feel free to email me with any questions you might have.

After You Have Purchased InBizness

When you purchase a copy of InBizness and you want customizations, we recommend that you allow us to host your new "under construction" customized version of InBizness on our web site. We offer this as a no charge service for the first 60 days. If you want to continue to use a hosting service, we recommend you investigate any number of the current hosting providers such as thedroolingdog.com.

ITEMIZE THE CUSTOMIZATIONS YOU WANT TO INBIZNESS
Before we get started, be sure to have a list of the customizations you would like to have for your new InBizness solution. It is best if this list can be hosted on an internet service, that way we can work on this together. Some customers like something as basic as Google Docs and some like something more robust like BaseCamp.

LISTING OF USERS YOU WANT
In order to hit the ground running, please be sure to send me a list of the users you want to test the solution. It would be best if we have the full name of the user and their email address. Then we can automate the process of sending them the access settings for the file and the testing goals.

THE LAUNCHER FILE
When we upload the database, we will send you a FileMaker file called a launcher. This file will open the hosted InBizness solution using embedded settings and then close itself. This way you do not have to memorize a series of steps to open the hosting InBizness file.

CHANGING PASSWORD ON FIRST LOGIN
When you open your new InBizness solution, the first thing it will want you to do is to change your password. If you forget the password you changed, let us know. We cannot tell you the password but we can reset it to a different value. You can then change the password on your next login. If you don't want users to be able to change passwords, let us know and we can remove that ability.

YOUR NEW INBIZNESS SOLUTION MAY BE EMPTY
Unless you are wanting us to migrate your existing database data, InBizness will be an empty shell. So do not be alarmed when you cannot perform some actions because there are no records in the file to perform them.

FAQ: InBizness CRM Hosted Performance

QUESTION:
We’ve been testing remote hosting with one of our own solutions with appalling results – over 3 minutes to open the main file – it’s a separation model database. Your solution, on the other hand opened smartly and seemed quite quick to use.

My first question is ..... is this the speed we could expect from inBiziness in a production environment or have you kept the file(s) particularly small? Lots of relationships seem to be one factor in our slow responding solution. Even when loaded our solution is very slow when moving between layouts while yours seems to be quite quick, and yes, we have kept graphics to an absolute minimum. I’m quite happy to admit here that your programming skills may well outshine ours!

ANSWER:
These are all great performance related questions and my answers might seem a little bit rambling. This is similar to my experiences with FileMaker performance issues, the causes sometimes seem to ramble. In fact, I’ll probably break up my answers into multiple blog posts because I really want to share my thoughts to you in these areas.

ABOUT INBIZNESS DEMO SPEEDS
There isn’t anything different about the demo from the production database system. I simply take the production version, use FileMaker Advanced to protect its code and upload it to the server to host it. It doesn’t have an extensive amount of data in it but it does have data in almost every table. As a company adds thousands of records, there may be areas that may need to be tweaked for performance issues. Since InBizness is simply a single FileMaker file that has optimized for customization, performance hurdles should be somewhat easy to fix (if and when they may arise).

InBizness does have a lot of relationships and that can be a red flag for future performance (but not really). InBizness uses Anchor / Buoy religiously and this walled garden approach pays huge dividends for performance and customization. In my experience, a lot of relationships isn’t so much of a problem as the other factors that might ride shotgun in the same vehicle. Things that come to mind are ...

- lots of relationships that interact among multiple table occurrences
- lots of relationships that have complex operators or calculated match fields
- lots of data in those table occurrences (this is basically a multiplier)

I utilize “walled garden” techniques everywhere inside of InBizness and always look for more opportunities to do so. If I have a customer that will not use some of the InBizness modules, I quickly delete them from their copy. It may take me a hour or so to clean up the table occurrences, layouts, value lists or scripts. After I’m done, I run it by BaseElements to see what schema dust bunnies I might have left behind. After I clean out those dust bunnies, I run BaseElements again and repeat the process until BaseElements reports “looks pretty trouble free to me”!

SO ABOUT THE SPEED
I haven’t ever had a complaint about InBizness speed in a core implementation. However, I’m quite prepared for it. Speed issues should be approached with a surgical approach and my walled garden approach supports that very well. The place I would expect a problem to come up is when going from one client record to another. This is because I’ve added too much functionality there and I’m OK with that. Again, after doing a needs analysis with a client, I can quick customize the client module for the best of both worlds (speed and power).

ABOUT THE SEPARATION MODEL
The separation model has advantages and disadvantages. I did a full separation model for InBizness a couple years ago and never brought that product to market. It just didn’t have the payoff that made the extra coding overhead worthwhile. Since then, I’ve done smaller versions of the separation model, using just the tables that made sense. For example, the leads module is something I’ve separated for some customers. This is because of the sheer number of records it may contain, the rather limited amount of schema needed to support it and because the customer wanted to have the leads module available on the outside web.

Go To Layout By Using A Custom Function

From Dwayne Wright - Certified FileMaker 9 Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright

I'm beginning to add more logic to my InBizness package to handle found set a bit better. This type of granular control would likely be "a touch" too much for consulting projects (that bill out at standard rates of $100 + per hour). However for open framework applications such as InBizness or in house projects, these tweaks have a better return on the time invested to build them.

In this particular point, I want scripts that go to found sets to have the logic to ...

- show an error message if there are no records in the found set to go to and exit gracefully
- go to the form view layout if there is only one record in the found set
- go to the list view layout if there are more than one record in the found set

Now InBizness has over 50 tables and many of them have both form and list views (there are a few join tables that I can ignore for these purposes). Manually coding each decision branch would be a bit overwhelming. On the surface, using the feature to go to a layout by a calculated value seems the way to go. I could choose to go to the layout by its name or by its position in the layout order. Now going by the layout order is not an option in a database that is under constant construction and InBizness is definitely one of those. Manually typing in the layout name again and again and again for each script step that will use this found set option is also not an option because of the time involved to create and maintain.

Here you can see the top of the specify options for the Go To Layout script step.

Here are some posts about the Go To Layout script step that you mind find interesting, if you are unfamiliar with the various aspects of it.

The Go To Layout Script Step
EXAMPLE: Go to Layout Example
Go To Layout - Via Account Name

Any Go To Layout script step that uses the layout name in the calculation has an element of danger involved. If you ever change the name of the layout, the script step will be broken. This is one reason why I have stayed away from this method in my open framework products. In an open framework, I sell the package open to modification by the owner. So it is quite possible they might get themselves into a problem by doing something as seemingly innocent as changing a layout or table name. I wanted to have one place were we can synch things up if these names are changed.

So I decided to create a custom function that will look at the found count of records, then look at the base table and then return the layout needed. Here is a small sample of the custom function I wrote ...

Case(
Get ( FoundCount ) = 1 and Get ( LayoutTableName ) = "Campaign"; "FORM_Campaign";
Get ( FoundCount ) > 1 and Get ( LayoutTableName ) = "Campaign"; "LIST_Campaign";
Get ( FoundCount ) = 1 and Get ( LayoutTableName ) = "Client"; "FORM_clients";
Get ( FoundCount ) > 1 and Get ( LayoutTableName ) = "Client"; "LIST_clients";
etc...
"")

The actual calculation had over 50 lines and will likely grow when I integrate a planned manufacturing module to InBizness. I should also note that this function has even one more element of danger because it looks at the name of the table occurrence (not the table name itself) that is assigned to the layout. I wouldn't have even tried to do this if I wasn't working with a solution that totally embraces the Anchor / Buoy relationship design method.

Now it is challenging to maintain a rock solid naming convention for a robust database that has been evolving for well over a decade. That being said, I would feel comfortable that my InBizness product would compete quite well against any similar robust CRM product. In my case, I had only one thing that would drive the anal television detective Adrian Monk crazy. Sometimes I named my tables singular and sometime I named them plural. Does this matter to any degree from a database performance aspect, certainly not. However, it did require an extra 30 minutes while I checked and tweaked my custom function.

Now you might wonder how I'm going to handle the advance notice of no records in the found set. Well, this is going to be something I address in the header (a name often given to script steps at the top of a script) of the overall script itself. I try to add that as a posting later on.

That being said, my calculated go to layout script step will be at the bottom of the script. This is because I will have to go to the appropriate layout first and then analyze what my base table occurrence is and what my found set count is.

So I'm going to wrap up this blog post for now but I'll try to update you on the overall progress of this implementation plays out.


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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2009 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

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FAQ: Can Barcodes Be Implemented Within InBizness?

QUESTION: Can Barcodes Be Implemented Within InBizness?

ANSWER: I’ve implemented barcode scanning many times within FileMaker solutions in the past. Since InBizness is simply a robust and well written FileMaker database, barcode integration should be a snap.

FAQ: What are the differences in events and support calls modules?

QUESTION: What are the differences in events and support calls modules?

ANSWER: That is a great question? A support call is a business event, so it can be a little confusing. I guess you would think of events as smaller action items that might be included within an event. For example, say a laser printer has stopped working and the support call record is created to fix it. It is possible that support call could have many smaller events that need to be handled by different staff members such as ...

- verify the printer is under warranty
- if not under warranty, make sure client know they are responsible for the repair bill
- if possible, get a warranty extension from the laser printer vendor
- pick up the machine from the clients onsite address
- fix the machine in the office
- deliver the machine back to the office

So it is possible that there is a one to many relationship between a support call and events.

FAQ: Can recurring event items be added or linked to staff?

QUESTION: Can recurring event items be added or linked to staff?

ANSWER: By all means, yes it can be added as a feature within InBizness. These would be daily recurring events and initialize when the database loads for the first time in a day. I would need to know more about the specifics of your recurring event needs but I don’t see any problem adding that feature at all.

Can We Import Orders From Emails Sent From Our Web Site?

We receive emails from our oscommerce website site, Amazon and google. Can an import be setup to import from several different emails directly into the orders module?

By all means yes, we would need to analyze the format of the incoming emails. Then we can use a plug-in such as the 360Works email plug-in to automatically download the emails into the database, parse the information within the email and then create the order records. One thing we will need to be sure to keep an eye on. Occasionally, both Google and Amazon may change the way the emails are formatted. If this happens, we will need to tweak the script to bring the messages in and parse them correctly.

Why Do You Need A Time Card Button On The Client Screen?

The timecard button on the clients screen serves a similar purpose as the invoice button. It allows you to create a new timecard record and automatically link it to that client. By default, it will also attach that timecard record to the staff member that clicked the button. In your workflow, it might make more sense to create the timecard record first and then assign it to the appropriate client.

How Does A User Go Back To The Main Screen / Dashboard / Clients

In the past, many FileMaker solutions had a button for everything. This has a large overhead in the time it takes to produce and update FileMaker layouts. For quite some time, FileMaker has offered one alternative to this in the form of custom menus. Custom menus can be created very quickly, easily customizable and can be laid out in a precise grid across the solution.

So much of InBizness still has buttons to navigate to other areas and perform actions. It also has a robust set of custom menus and that is the primary method of navigating from one record to another.

Here is a peek at the current navigation menu.

So we can add buttons to all the layouts to perform basic navigation but if you can train your users to embrace custom menus, it will save on the overall cost of migrating into InBizness.

Now there are some interesting possibilities with the recent release of FileMaker 10. The new Script Trigger feature can allow for all kinds of keyboard trigger options. I'm still researching (like most professional FileMaker developers) all the opportunities script triggers provide.