I am making a "KISS" non-relational file for a local charity to keep
track of volunteers. I made a nice AND find for volunteers based on
skills, location, availability, etc. Now the dilemma.

The location of volunteers is stored in a field called "HomeCity which
is populated from a value list of a half dozen towns - let's say
Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and Victoria.

I need an OR find. I want to be able to have all the cities listed as
checkboxes and have the user select say Vancouver and Edmonton that
will return all volunteers in just those two cities.

Solutions??

CRC123 <swanson (AT) windsongappraisals (DOT) com> wrote:

I'd create a layout with the fields needed for the find. The homecity
field would have options rather than checkboxes, so that users may
choose one only.

A script buttom "more cities" should duplicate the search and maybe show
yet another layout and tell the user to choose the second city. There
would always be a buttom "more cities" and a buttom "find now".

You may want to capture errors, for FMP will tell you that you might
mistake find mode for browse mode if you put in more than 10 searches. I
saw that in version 5 or 5.5.

Good luck.
--
http://clk.ch

In article <1hu166t.gbw6ez1nugkw0N%clk (AT) freesurf (DOT) ch>, clk (AT) freesurf (DOT) ch
(Christoph Kaufmann) wrote:

As Christoph suggests, checkboxes are not the best way to perform "Or"
Finds. Many people get confused and simply turn on multiple checkboxes
in a single Find request and wonder why no records or the wrong records
are found (they have of course performed an "And" Find).

In fact checkboxes are probably not the best idea for the HomeCity
field in the data entry either. I would think that a person can only
have one HomeCity, so you are probably better using either a pop-up
menu / list or if you really want to see all the options on-screen all
the time you can use Radio Buttons.

One way around the confusion is to use a "Find" layout - a layout
specifically created just for performing Finds which has the field
formatted as a pop-up menu rather than checkboxes to force users to
only select one option. You will then need a "Find" button that users
click when wanting to perform a Find, and they will need to be trained
to NOT use the Find command in FileMaker's menus (or blocked from
having that permission). This layout is often best set to View As List
with a Body part that is short in height. You can then put an "Or"
button on the Body part that simply performs the New Record / Request
function.

Then users can perform a Find by:

- user clicks on the "Find" button on the "Data Entry" layout

- the database swaps to the Find layout displaying one blank
Find request

- user chooses "Calgary" from the pop-up menu

- user clicks on the "Or" button and the database adds a
second blank Find request (which because the Layout is in
View As List is displayed below the existing Find request)

- user chooses "Victoria" in the pop-up menu of the second
request

- user clicks on a "Process Find" button

- the database performs the Find and displays records
containing either "Calgary" or "Victoria" (the "Process
Find" script should also swap back to the main "Data
Entry" layout to allow the user to browse / changes the
records in the normal way)



Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

On Feb 24, 5:22 pm, Helpful Harry <helpful_ha... (AT) nom (DOT) de.plume.com>
wrote:
FileMaker is so versatile, there must be some way, with global fields
or Pattern count, or something that would let checkboxes work for AND
searches but I'm not knowledgeable enough to figure out how.
Yes - that's what I have for data entry. And the user is taken into a
separate Find Layout and then taken out again when the find is
executed.
detail. :-D

In article <1172442844.868454.235670 (AT) a75g2000cwd (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
"CRC123" <swanson (AT) windsongappraisals (DOT) com> wrote:

It's not that checkboxes don't work for "and " or "or" Finds. It just
the way FileMaker "or" finds work that can cause confusion, and
checkboxes make it easier to perform the wrong type of find.

Checkboxes work fine for "And" finds, where each record wanted must
have "option A" AND "option B" - simply turn on each checkbox you want
on the same Find Request.
ie.
AND Find
Enter Find Mode
Turn on "option A" checkbox
Turn on "option B" checkbox
Perform Find


You can also use checkboxes for "Or" finds, where each record wanted
must have "option A" OR "option B" (or both) - but each option MUST be
checked on a separate Find Request, otherwise you're performing the
"and" Find obove.
ie.
OR Find
Enter Find Mode
Turn on "option A" checkbox
Create new Find Request (Ctrl/Apple N or via the menu command)
Turn on "option B" checkbox
Perform Find

It's that "Create new Find Request" step that is crucial for an "or"
Find.

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

guys, I've recently built a google style search tool in filemaker -
I'll share it when it is better developed but it works like this...


the user searches for BIG RED BUS

I search for each word independantly - each time incrementing a score
value.

eg
reset scores
big car=0
small car=0
red bus=0
big red bus=0

search for BIG and increment
big car=1
small car=0
red bus=0
big red bus=1

search for RED and increment
big car=1
small car=0
red bus=1
big red bus=2

search for BUS and increment
big car=1
small car=0
red bus=1
big red bus=3


The show anything with a value sorted by the score descending

big red bus=3
big car=1
red bus=1


no AND, no OR, just a great list of ranked results - and dead easy for
the user.


cheers

Tim

How about this: Create a global field, named something like
gCitySelection, and set it to display as a checkbox set drawing from a
value list of your potential cities. Then create a relationship
between gSelectionCity and the City field in your Volunteers record.
Finally, create a portal set to show records from that relationship.
Now as the user selects the various checkboxes, the portal will change
to reflect the selection.
I have just implemented a solution using these selection portals
instead of find requests, and I'm very pleased with it so far.

Nate

On Feb 26, 10:15 am, "Tim" <tswal... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

In article <1172505747.384974.239750 (AT) t69g2000cwt (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
"NScheffey" <NScheffey (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

That's fine as long as all you want to perform the Find on is the City
field. The problem will come when someone wants to do something like
find everyone in "Calgary" with a surname of "Jones".

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

On Feb 26, 2:47 pm, Helpful Harry <helpful_ha... (AT) nom (DOT) de.plume.com>
wrote:
That functionality wouldn't be difficult to add, and with an exploded
key you could perform searches on text fragments from as many fields
(First Name,Last name, City, Company, etc.) as you wanted.
Nate