FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner Tutorials
Creating a Database / Housekeeping Fields pt. 2
Subtitles of the Movie (FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner / Creating a Database / Housekeeping Fields pt. 2)
Let's continue our discussion about Housekeeping Fields and how to get them into your database efficiently and error free. So what we're going to do here is not type them in, we're going to copy and paste them from another table, a template essentially. Now if you don't have FileMaker Advanced, you'll have to look at what we've done and create them from scratch yourself. Because we're going to have to four Housekeeping Fields total when we're done but I'll show you every option, you'll be able to very easily create them if you don't have FileMaker Advanced. So I'm going to go ahead and delete these fields, now you don't want to do this if you don't have FileMaker Advanced because you're going to have to type them in. You're going to want to keep them there but that's what we're going to do if you have FileMaker Advanced. If you have this Copy and Paste Button here. That's how you'll know, one way you'll be able to tell that you have FileMaker Advanced. So I'll click OK here, go up to the Window Menu, choose Template and you'll see we have a template here that has the Timestamp Create, Timestamp Mod, Account Create and Account Mod. So the Timestamp is the same as the Date but it has a space and then the time so it's a little bit more detailed than the Date Create Field we created before. And if you're doing this by hand, you're going to want to change to a Timestamp Create, it just has the date, a space and then the time. Other than that it's just the same as the Date Create we did before. The Timestamp Mod is the same as the Date Mod before but it has the date and the time as well. Now we also have two new fields, Account Create and Account Mod, they work very similar to how the Timestamp Create and Timestamp Mod work but they input the person's who's logged on, on there. So when we get into the Security Section later. We're not going to get into it right now, all you have to know is these few things I'm going to tell you. So once you get into Security you'll find out what this is all about but you, you'll be able to understand what I'm talking about right now. Which is there is Security inside of FileMaker that you're going to apply to a solution so that you can track everybody in your system. So in other words, everybody's going to get an account and a password and when you Auto-Enter the account name, it's going to put their name in there or whatever account name you've assigned to them. When they create a record or when they modify it. Now right now, we're getting Admin in there and that's because there is always security in every FileMaker file, there's always a full access account. You may not know it now because it never asked you but FileMaker automatically created it for you and you'll find out more when you get into the Security Section about this. All you need to know is that this will contain the person's name who is logged on at that time. So we're going to go into Manage Database and here's a good time to mention that you should learn the Keyboard Commands for Manage Database as well as some other highly used Menu Items. I don't ever go into Manage Database by doing it through the Menus because it's not very efficient. I use the Keyboard Command which was Shift Command D on the Macintosh or that Flower Key, it's sometimes called the Apple Key or on Windows you do Control Shift D. Much faster because you're going in and out of Manage Databases, you'll see as you go through these tutorials. So I don't recommend you know all of the Keyboard Commands for every feature just the ones that you use a lot and this is a good one to know. So we'll come here, I'm going to click on the First Field, come down to the last field, hold down the Shift Key, Highlight all of them by clicking and then use the Copy Button. Again, if you don't have FileMaker Advanced you won't have these buttons here, I'll click OK, go back to my Solution, go back into Manage Database and then what we're going to do is Paste. And now you have these fields right inside here, you've done it very efficiently without having to create them again and you're sure that there will be no errors here. So let's take a look at them, we'll go into Options on the Timestamp Create and you'll see that we have a Timestamp Field and it's chosen this Timestamp Date and Time, that's what we've selected here. Simply the same as Date but it's just going to add date and time, it's no different than what we did before and no different on this option here as well, we prohibit Modification. Same with Timestamp Mod, we just choose a second choice and choose Timestamp Date and Time rather than Date and it enters the Modification Date and Time all together in one field and prohibit Modification as well. And here's the things we haven't done yet, notice these are Text Fields and not Timestamp, Account Create Auto-Enters the account name. Now we could have chosen name, what's the difference between these two? People are often confused by them so let me clarify what this is, always choose Account Name. Name refers to your system software, you know the File Sharing Settings, the name of your computer. So somebody is going to another person's computer for the day, you're going to get entered into this record, not the account name but the name of the computer. If you want to follow the person who's doing the data entry you want to have their security credentials in there and that's what Account Name is so I'd highly recommend using this. I have never used the User Name as I like to call this ever in my life. It's, it's really, I can't see a use for it, you might but I'm not going to recommend to use it at all. So we'll come down here and look that we have Prohibit Modification, we have that again. Then we have Account Mod, it's very similar to your Timestamp Mod or your Date Mod where you have Account Name here again and then we have Prohibit Modification. So I can't stress these fields enough, you need the Housekeeping Fields in every table you have because they will really help you track down issues even if you're not displaying them on the layout. I'm going to show you one other way to get the Housekeeping Fields into your file. You may like this method better. If you go over to the Tables Section, you'll see there's an Import Button here. I can simply click Import, locate the file and before we choose Open, see this Import Log? As you copy and paste and use specific FileMaker Advanced Features, it will make a log of everything you did and this maybe handy. It may help you to, to retrace your, your route and see what you've done. You, now if you throw it in the trash, it's because it's going to make it again. So I, I just recommend leaving it there and it will just keep adding to it and you can, you, you may find a use for it. I don't really use it myself but some people do find it handy and there's really no way to turn it off so just work with it. So Template.fmp12, we'll click Open, what you'll see is all the tables in there, we only have one so we're going to check that one but we could import multiple tables. We'll click OK, it'll give you a little summary here, you should check it out but usually there's no problems and there it is. The idea behind this is you type in your New Table Name and hit Change and then when you go over to Fields, as long as you have My Table selected, you're ready to add additional fields here. Or you can switch over to Contact and add additional fields there but the idea here is that you just imported this from another file so you didn't have to open that file, it maybe a little bit quicker. Now there is another way to do this, you can click on a Table from your Template, open up that Template File and we'll do that right now. Come over here to Template, go into Manage Database, click on that, Copy it. Come back here, go to Manage Database again, see how it's not quite as efficient if you're already there and then I'll choose Paste. It did the same thing, it called a Template but it's got the same fields in it. So there many ways to do it depending on which, how you want to do it but we really don't want these tables in here. We have a flat file but if we had you know started with our Housekeeping Fields and then added all of our Contact Fields like First Name, Last Name, we might have done this way. But I'm just going to get rid of these; I wanted to make sure you knew they were there. Now this little message says, Do you want to Remove the Table Occurrences? That refers to Relationships and you almost always want to check this but don't worry about it right now. For right now, if you have to click this, check this option, hit Delete and we'll talk more about Relationships later. For right now, all you want to do is make sure you have all of these Housekeeping Fields in here, Timestamp Create, Mod, Account Create and Account Mod.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner |
| Author: | John Mark Osborne |
| SKU: | 34323 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-61866-046-6 |
| Release Date: | 2012-06-08 |
| Duration: | 16 hrs / 169 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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