FileMaker Louisville

It has just come to my attention that a website (http://www.testinside.com) offers test preparation products for IT types desiring to gain a variety of certifications. Based on the demonstration material, their FileMaker product seems to be up to date. In fact, they guarantee that a user will pass the exam or get your money back (I’m sure there’s a big loophole in the fine print somewhere).

The basic practice exam study guides isn’t cheap, however. It’s $220. Since their About Us area of the web site has many typos I do trust that the site is maintained by “professionals” who probably live somewhere other than the US and have no access to proofreaders that understand the English language as spoken in the US or England.

Two products are available. One is the exam study guide. The other is what they call the Exam iEngine. They claim the study guide has all the Q&A found in the FM0-304 real test. If true, this would be a bank of about 150 questions.

Here’s the direct link to the site -- http://www.testinside.com/FM0-304.htm

Here are two sample questions.

1. A script saves a group of records as a PDF. The resulting file needs to be saved on a user's desktop and the filename must contain that person's name along with the current date (without additional user input). How should the output file be specified in the script step?

A. Use a file path that references a variable containing the desired filename and path.
B. Use a file path that references a globally stored field containing the desired filename and path.
C. Use a file path defined by a calculation formula that uses both Get (DesktopPath) and the Get (UserName) functions.
D. Use a file path that references a calculation field that uses both Get (DesktopPath) and the Get (UserName) functions.

Following an all-points-bulletin to registered FileMaker users all over Kentuckiana, more than THIRTY-FIVE people have said they will attend the first meeting of what we are intending to turn into a vibrant community of FileMaker users!

This first meeting will include greetings delivered by Bill Kaiser, FileMaker's regional Business Account Manager and a 2-hour demo of FileMaker's methodologies and new features by FileMaker Senior Systems Engineer, Bill Heizer.

The meat of the presentation will be followed up by yours truly leading a discussion on how to take this fabulous start and turn it into a valuable on-going resource for FileMaker users throughout the area.

If you haven't registered yet you can do so at:
http://www.udreg.com/kyfmp/

Or you can contact me at jonathan@thebbandj.net

See you there!

When working on a sub-summary report in FileMaker recently I had the occasion to use a feature I'd not used before.

The report is for a client that does after-school programs. The client wanted to get an idea of the average number of students in a class per week of the month. And they wanted those totals and averages by school, and then by type, and then by area. That means there can be as many as three sub-summary parts in this report. In each sub-summary part for each week there are three numbers: total classes, total students and what in essence is an average of the averages.

That's where the fun starts. If you merely take the average of the averages you get a skewed number. You see from this screen shot that the average number does not equal the total number of students divided by the total number of classes, which is the value we need. The varying number of classes makes the averages that represent more classes less significant than they should be in the "average of the averages."

Notice that the average for week 2 is shown as 8.8, but if we had taken the total number of students and divided by the total number of classes we should have gotten 9.4. Unfortunately, you cannot just put a regular calculated field into a sub-summary part. That doesn't work either. Clearly we need some way to take into account the varying number of classes that are included in each of the averages that we are averaging.

The solution? There is a button in the field options dialog when you are setting up a summary average field that allows you to "weight" the averages. In this case the correct approach is to weight the averages by the number of classes. That way the averages that represent more classes get more "weight." As you can see the answer comes out correct now:

Credit goes to my buddy Byron Songer for pointing this seldom-used (by me anyway) feature out to me.

I just submitted my wishlist to the FIleMaker Wishlist web site here http://filemakerwishlist.com

Wishlist Description: I know, I know. "FIleMaker won't make any money" you think. It could be a limited number of clients, say five. Let's start there and see what happens. Maybe FileMaker could let us "pay" to unlock a runtime for this on a per seat bases? Think of it as "in app purchase" like [ where ] the Apple App Store is headed. 

I am pumped! As you can see from the info below we will be having actual FileMaker employees come and share with us some of the very cool new things you can do with FileMaker. And the best part? FMI is picking up the tab for lunch! Mmm Mmm, free lunch! Gotta love that! Oh, yeah, and a free copy of FileMaker Advanced for one lucky attendee. That alone is worth driving half a day for!

Okay, I said the food was the best part, but that's not quite the truth. What I am most excited about is being able to facilitate a discussion of turning our little gathering into a regular monthly affair, just like a real FileMaker user group!

Come join the conversation and see what we can do to support our fellow FileMaker sojourners and give our favorite data management tool a lift in Kentucky and beyond.

Use the enclosed link to register if you can make it or even if you just want to be put on the notification list. The information below went out to Kentuckiana FileMaker users early Tuesday, and the response since then has been overwhelming: more than two dozen people, neophytes, casual users, journeymen and even a genuine FileMaker Ninja, have already registered! In less than a day and a half!

Hope y'all can come. If you have any questions you can contact Bill Heiser (info in the letter) or me at jonathan@thebbandj.net.

Did I mention that lunch was free?

Here's the scoop:

Kentucky FileMaker User Group Meeting

Greetings FileMaker enthusiast,

Please join us for a Kentucky-based FileMaker user group meeting. This will be a great opportunity to meet other Kentucky FileMaker users, obtain training from a Senior Consulting Systems Engineer from FileMaker and discuss the strategy to kick off this new local user group. Lunch will be provided and we will be raffling off a FREE copy of FileMaker Pro 10 Advanced.

Date & Time:
Thursday, November 19, 2009
10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
(Lunch will be served)

Location:
Universal Design
1234 S. 3rd Street
Louisville, KY 40203
Google Map: map

Registration:
http://www.udreg.com/kyfmp/ 

Agenda
1. Welcome and review of FileMaker resources/tools available to the community
- Bill Kaiser, Business Account Manager, Midwest US, FileMaker, Inc.

2. FileMaker Product training and review - Bill Heizer, Senior Systems Engineer, FileMaker, Inc.
Two hour session including building a simple solution from excel data and reviewing the new features in FileMaker 10.

3. User Group discussion and Q & A - Jonathan Fletcher, Louisville based FileMaker 10 Certified Developer

Questions? Contact:
Bill Kaiser
bill_kaiser@filemaker.com (630) 978-7460

____________________________________________________________

© 2009 FileMaker, Inc. All rights reserved. FileMaker and the file folder logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of FileMaker, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries.

There's a great new utility out, called ClickToFlash, that blocks all the "Flash" from a site until you click on them. I have been using it for about a week and find it quite handy. I don't have to look at a lot of ads anymore and I can decide how and when I want to view videos. I can even download the videos in many cases.

This morning I hit a site and found, well, this:

I found it quite humorous that someone thinks they can do EVERYTHING with flash. If I decided that I wanted to view it anyway, I can click on each window, or I can click one of the little gears in the upper left corners and choose "Open All on Page" from the popup.

Or not.

j.

As pointed out in a recent at fmpro.org a developer from “down under” is making some interesting video blogs open to anyone interested in FileMaker, developer or user. The web site is: http://www.filemakerdesign.com. Or, for the tweet-brained you can follow on http://www.twitter.com/filemakerdesign. The mates doing the videos hav a distinct accent which, for those of us north of the Equator, will find interesting to listen to. They are Theo Denovan and Alex Babkov. Together they make up Realevolution and in Australia and New Zealand.

I’ve watched the series of five videos that they’ve posted. Though a bit succinct, they are less than ten minutes in length so as not to clutter up the day. It would appear they’re starting from scratch and working the way up the path of difficulty as they see fit. That they are open for use without a subscription is a good thing.

Byron

  

(download)

Click here to download:

20090929 112332.m4a (1558 KB)

Screen photo of the actual solution taken with Apple iPhone 3GS photo app.

Reference:  http://getdropbox.com