Math in a FileMaker field, for Inputter’s sake

Editor’s Note: An often-ignored reality of data management is that entering data, correctly and cleanly, into all of these database apps we build can be a royal pain in the…
Assumptions can be dangerous, like assuming that your office manager-doubling-as-bookkeeper wants to manually calculate tax on every Invoice row. Or even has the time to.

Not many job titles (anymore) are simply “Data Entry Manager,” and yet entering data is a task that continually must be managed, by one or by many, in the role of “Inputter”. Just entering data can be tedious enough — so, let’s not make it harder. In fact, let’s strive to make it easier. With that in mind, Beezwax Senior Developer Christos Savva provides an example of performing math in a FileMaker field, using a custom function. This is designed to improve data entry user experience, for the sake of Inputters everywhere.

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Mask Data with Concealed Edit Boxes in FileMaker 15

Solving an Old Problem

When you consider how to keep information safe, you might first imagine a team of hackers in a dank basement typing and clicking their way into your bank account.

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Just a Slice, Please…

Here’s an interesting FileMaker challenge:

How can you dynamically slice off a set of values from a repeating field in a related table, the way you’d grab a column of values in a spreadsheet?

It’s easy enough to do this for a single repeating field in the current record, but how do you do this with a repeating field in a different table, operating not just on a single record, but an entire record set?

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Getting a FileMaker label’s text in a conditional formula

I wanted to do some conditional formatting, such that when a global field had a certain value the label would change its appearance. For example, if my sort column was “address”, then I wanted the column header containing the text “Address” to highlight.

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Working with Repeating Fields

Demo file:  RepeatingFieldFunctions.fp7

I began using FileMaker at the spry old age of FileMaker Pro 8, so I’ve never been through the trenches of using repeating fields to accomplish what can now be done with portals. However, repeating fields still have a variety of uses, and I’m happy to have them in my toolkit.

When I’m working with a repeating field, there are several questions I might ask of it, depending on the task at hand.

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Good Sir William’s Heirs

Demo file:  Sir_Williams_Heirs_fp7

That old Bard, good Sir William, is nearing the end of his life. Having already provided well for his five children, he now seeks to divide his literary empire among his eleven grandchildren:

FamilyTree 1

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