fm 10 new features quick start/fmug...

FileMaker 10 – An Introduction to New Features

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FM 10 New Features Quick Start/FMUG Presentation Friday May 1, 2009

Bronwen Heuer

[email protected]

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this class is to give you and opportunity to explore the new user interface in FileMaker 10. The FileMaker interface has been fairly standard since its inception with a status bar running down the left-hand side of the screen and four clearly demarcated modes in which we perform the tasks of our database solution: Browse, Find, Layout and Preview. This status bar has been overhauled and run across the top of the FileMaker window. Switching between modes is done with the click of a button that appears in different locales on this status bar.

We will cover:

The new configuration of status bars and toolbars

Saved finds

The enhanced sub-summary report

Value lists with External SQL data sources

RESOURCES: On first launch of FileMaker 10, take the opportunity to visit the training materials and the renovated templates.

Clicking on the Learn More button takes you to a new set of training videos.

FM boasts that they have revamped the 30 templates/starter solutions. To us, many may appear unchanged,

Visit the Contact Management template as it is indeed changed. Other significantly changed ones include Email campaign, and Event Management.

Other fine materials exist for learning and as references to this new versionA:

FileMaker has a tutorial, complete with example files, that can be found in the folders that are installed when you install the program. Go to the Program Files or the Applications folder FileMaker Pro 10 English Extras fmp10_tutorial.pdf. There is a user guide in this same folder. The tutorial pdf is the text of the tutorials found under the “Learn More” button.


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Prosser and Coffey have released their FileMaker Pro 10: The Missing Manual, O’Reilly Press. This can be viewed via VERA on the Libraries website.

Geoff Coffey publishes a blog of tips and tricks for using the new FileMaker. Google “Six Fried Rice.”

TOOLBARS On the following page I have given a overview of all four toolbars together. The toolbars are divided into two parts (and yes some have a third with the addition of the formatting toolbar).

The upper portion is referred to as the status toolbar. This alerts you as to what mode you are in.It changes with each mode, offering the tools of each mode, and methods to switch modes.

Below it is the Layout toolbar. Notice that the display of the layout name and its pulldown menu now accommodates much longer names! In Browse and Find, you now have buttons to switch you from one type of view to another. In Layout view, you have a designation of the table that the layout is based on. Notice the Exit buttons. This will take you back to Browse mode.

The four mode buttons are gone. Switching between modes can still be done via the keystrokes (Ctrl-B, Ctrl-F, Ctrl-L and Ctrl-U) and via the pull-down menu. The pop-up menu at the bottom of the FileMaker window persisted. Buttons now appear prominently on the toolbars to make switching between modes a more fluid process.


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The New Toolbars of FileMaker 10

Browse Mode

Find Mode

Layout Mode

Preview Mode


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A couple of toolbar notes:

Toolbars display and hide buttons and icons depending upon how wide you make the toolbar. It may be a little surprising as to what disappears first.

Resize your screen in each of the modes to discover what disappears when space is not ample.

Every toolbar is customizable. Visit View Customize Status Toolbar... The Mac and Window have different styles of customizing dialog boxes. On the Mac, it is much like the usual customization palette with a stand-in picture of the default. Once open, simply drag and drop the desired icon to your status bar.

Below is an example showing the palette for the Browse mode status bar:


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On Windows, items to be added are accessed when Customizable is selected; the default configuration, when Standard is selected.

Browse Mode There is new information about records on the Browse status bar. The found set is more prominently displayed with a pie-chart-like iconrepresenting the percentage of the whole the found set is.

Click on the pie to display the omitted records, the reverse of the found set. (However, the corresponding icons on each of the other status bars arenot buttons like this one, just decorations!)

Click on the Show All button. This is a much easier way to quickly return to the complete data set.

Discover the Find button. This makes switching to Find mode very simple. Notice the downward triangle on the button. This leads to a pull-down menu of recent and saved finds. A fact discovered in a quick start session is that this list is contextual to the current layout.


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The ability to switch between FORM, LIST and TABLE views no longer requires going to the menu. In Browse, Find, and Preview the layout toolbar now has a new button for switching views.

Click on Table view and observe the Layout toolbar. On the right hand side there is a button that says Modify…

Click on it.

RESULT: A dialog box opens where you can pick and choose the fields you wish to display in this view. You can also determine the order you wish to display them in. This modification is remembered.

Discover the Edit Layout button on the Browse status bar! You are switched to layout mode. This is a quick way to navigate between browsing records in a layout and modifying that layout.


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Find Mode Enter Find mode and you will see little magnifying glasses in all fields that are searchable, except the current field where the cursor resides. This was added as a usability feature to alert you that you are in Find mode. Too many users have begun to type in data in this mode only to find that it is tossed aside when it doesn’t find a match.

The status bar in Find mode now has buttons from the Requests menu: New Request and Delete Request. Buttons allowing you to either Perform or Cancel the find also exist. Cancelling returns you to Browse mode. Far out to the right hand side is Saved Finds.

Notice that the layout bar now offers the opportunity to include or omit matching records. This is applied to requests. To omit records from the found set is still performed in Browse. Returning to Browse, under Customize Toolbar, there is a button for Omit record.

Try it!

The operators pull-down menu is no longer so terse:

The list of operators is a little clearer: for those of us that forget the difference between exact match and field content match, it is spelled out for us. And with the addition of the match phrase (from anywhere), FileMaker can easily perform more than just the “begins with” type searches.


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Saved Finds Saved Finds is a new feature in Version 10.

As you work, FileMaker will save your ten most recent finds. The list is compiled displaying the search string as a reference. Should you wish to repeat one, you can by selecting it from the list.

Try the following tasks:

Perform some finds. Change the last performed find to and AND by adding a second criteria.

Return to find mode, pull down the finds menu. The first selection is Modify Last Find. Select it.

RESULT: It redisplays the find allowing you to add additional criteria.

Examine the list of recent finds. Go to another layout and observe that the finds are specific to a layout. (I have tried this in a second file and this is not true.)

Save one of these finds

Select it in the list. In Find mode, it will populate the fields with the strings and awaits you to determine Perform or Cancel.

Choose Save Current Find from the menu.

RESULT: This opens up a dialog box where you can reassign a name to the Find.

The Advanced… button takes you to a dialog box where you can alter the criteria of the find:


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In this way you can edit a periodically-usedfind and just change the variable information.

Edit Saved Finds on the drop-down menu takes you to a dialog box where all your saved finds are listed. Here you can delete finds, edit finds, and duplicate others as the starting point for creating new finds.

To edit a find, select it in the list and click Edit…

RESULT: You arrive at a dialog box where you can edit the request: the action (find or omit), the field, it match criteria and its operator. You can add multiple requests.


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When done, click OK several times to dismiss the dialog boxes and to return to Find mode. Click Perform find or press Enter/Return to execute the find.


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Layout In the last couple of versions, tools were added that made layouts more easily information-rich. In this version, there are no new changes here. Instead, a lot of design energy went into script triggers. Although they won’t be treated here, you can discover the new tab panel for Script Triggers by y going to Layout Setup..

Layout buttons have now been spread across the status bar at the top of the window. The format painter, a now-popular formatting tool has joined the ranks. If you have never used it, it allows you to copy the formatting (multiple characteristics all at once) from one layout object (field, text label, etc) and “paint it “ onto another object.

Be aware that thefirst entry on layout pull-down menu is Manage Layouts. Here you can turn on and off the appearance of layouts in the pull-down menu.

In Layout mode go to Layout pull down menuManage Layouts. A dialog box opens where using the check boxes, turn on or off the display of a layout.

The new pencil tool icon (forget it used to mean “Browse Mode”)brings up the Layout Setupdialog box. Notice that alongside it is the designation of the table upon which the layout is based. In databases of multiple table occurrences, it displays the table occurrence name.

Click on the pencil tool. Notice here you can change the name of the layout, the context, printing characteristics, etc., and note the appearance of the new tab for Script triggers.

The Object Information palette can be turned on and off using the little button with theon it:

The other companion buttons open their own palettes as well: the first opens the Arrangepalette, the second the Align palette, and the last open the formatting toolbar. Each has a tool tip telling you this.

Revert and Save Layoutare new additions. It is my experience that exiting layout mode performs an automatic save. These button allow you to strategically tinker and undo changes or save changes when the timeis right.

For adding background color, the old familiar bucket is gone. Instead a button can be found on the formatting tool bar labeled Fill. Observe the turned down corner. Clicking here drops down a palette of available colors. The rectangle alongside it has fill patterns.

Try it. Time permitting, take a look at Script Triggers and observe the different

events or moments at which a script can be triggered.


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Preview The Preview toolbar very prominently displays the Save as Excel andSave as PDFbuttons. If we were to return to older versions, we would see that they had always been available but they were such dinky little buttons that their utility was missed.For Excel this is a “no questions asked” button, that is, is creates a spreadsheet with the fields and found set of that layout. Return to the File menu to create a spreadsheet with the ability to select the desired set of fields.

Notice Page Setup is a anothervery prominent button, saving you a trip to the File menu.

Click on it. It takes you to the dialog box where you can change the orientation of your layout. Notice that as before, a change in orientation affects the entire file, not just the current document. No, this wasn’t changed in 10.

Do we still need Preview mode now that Browse can show all the parts of a summary report? Yes. Things like multiple columns and the placement of the virtual page on the physical page (margins, etc.), and label layouts, must still be viewed in Preview mode.


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Behavioral Changes This version of FileMaker has what might get called “persistent sorts.” That is, once you sort a data set or found set and then either add records or edit records, commit the record and the file resorts itself.

Try it. For example, sort the employee list by salary. Increase or decrease the salary of an employee and watch the record take its new place in the sort.

Sort a list by a field and then add a new record. It will automatically enter the sort order when the record is committed.

One of the hot new features of this is that subsummary reports behave differently.

Sub summary reports: Prior to 10, we could not view sub-summary parts in Browse mode. Now, once the sort is in effect, we can see these parts of the report in Browse mode.

Upon editing informationwithin the report, once the record is committed, the sort is durable and reorganizes the information.

Try it. Edit a record and notice the resorting. Try it. Edit a sub summary group heading and watch it take its new place in

the sort order.

This lends the Subsummary report the facility for being a good tool for cleaning up data. Choose a sort field and make it a subsummary group. Sort by that field and observe the members of that group for accuracy and validity.


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ESS The ability to access External SQL data sources was a boon to Version 9. In version 9 we were able to create new fields in the ESS tables but they were always calculations. One of the prohibitions of 9 was that value lists could not be created using fields from the shadow table. That has now changed with 10 and is simple to do.

Go through the steps to connect to the Data Warehouse 1. Install driver, configure and set up ODBC connection

https://web.mit.edu/ist/warehouse/mitonly/filemaker_warehouse.html)

2. In your FileMaker database, set up you External Data Sources (Manage Exernal Data Sources…) In the process you will be asked to login to the Data Warehouse.

3. Bring Warehouse table to Relationship Diagram. Join to FM table. A standard layout is created referencing the fields in the DW just like when you create a new table.

You can either create a value list in the process of assigning a drop-down list or menu to a field, or go to Manage Value Lists… Specify New… Give it a name and choose the radio button for “Use values from field:” Assign the appropriate field or fields in the resulting dialog box.

Go to your layout and in Find mode test out the menu. Perform a find using a selection from the list.

It is my experience that should you do something in error that implies making a change to the ESS source, you can get an ORACLE error that only is resolved by getting out of FileMaker and the relaunching.

https://web.mit.edu/ist/warehouse/mitonly/filemaker_warehouse.html

https://web.mit.edu/ist/warehouse/mitonly/filemaker_warehouse.html

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