VISUAL QUICKPRO GUIDE FileMaker Pro 7 Advanced FOR WINDOWS AND MACINTOSH [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Planning a Simple Script

You never just launch into FileMaker and create databases and make fields "on the fly." If you did, you'd certainly waste lots of time later correcting your mistakes, adding fields (and then the data for them), and adapting layouts. Creating a script is very much like creating a new database. If the end result is successful, it's because you carefully considered your goals and strategies first.

Begin by thinking about how you work. Ask yourself, "What things do I do in FileMaker that waste time, typing, and mouse clicks because I always have to repeat them?" Make a list of these tasks. (If nothing occurs to you at the moment, open your database and start working!) For example, you might have, "Print out a list of accounts over 30 days past due."

You should temporarily skip any tasks that require you to choose between options at some point in the process (we'll get to those later). Of the tasks that remain, look for one that mostly involves several menu commands in sequence. Make a list of the main menu bar commands you choose when you do the task, in the order in which you do them.

When we look at the steps we take to get our overdue accounts statement, our list contains:

Find records

Sort records

Go to the overdue accounts layout

Print the layout

That's a good beginning, but always go back and look at the steps carefully to see if there are any you've missed. In this first list, we've forgotten that we need to set up the page for printing so the proper page size and orientation are used. Our revised list now reads:

Find records

Sort records

Go to the overdue accounts layout

Set the printing options

Print the layout

There's one last step that you might not think about when you look at your process. Once you've finished printing, you don't usually need the printing layout on the screen. In fact, you probably want to return to whatever you were doing before you printed the overdue accounts statement. So the last step in the list should be:

Go back to where you started

Once you've listed all your steps, look closely at the list for tasks you can group together. The nice thing about scripts is that you don't necessarily have to tackle them all at once, from start to finish. You can start with very small, short tasks and build up to more complex functions by adding new steps to the beginning, end, or even the middle of a script.