SeedCode: Next

What's next for SeedCode, FileMaker, Calendars, and the Web

Customize the Pins on Your FileMaker Map

Posted on July 22, 2018 by seedcode · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Maps

You can customize ProMaps to use different pins or icons depending on the status of your FileMaker records. But you can also use Google’s API to label the pin based on a field in FileMaker. In the screenshot below, Paula Powell from Wisconsin Fuel customized the pins to match her dispatching and routing statuses, taking the icon, the color, and the number from fields she had in FileMaker.

Pins for FileMaker Maps

Here’s how Paula explains her setup, “The colors represent field service technicians. The labels represent the order we want them to execute their field work orders. The truck is where they are currently working. Red pins are unassigned work orders. The dispatcher can assign field technicians and do work order sequencing right from the map using the popover. Pretty helpful for our dispatch process.” Nice work, Paula!

If you’d like to add this kind of labeling to your copy of ProMaps, KC explains the changes in this short video. (If you already own ProMaps and would like a copy of the file used in KC’s video, just let us know.)

You can extend this further by playing with additional properties in Google’s API: marker labels in Google Maps. Or get in touch and we can customize this for you as part of an implementation package.

Learn more about ProMaps

Unscheduled Events – Drag to Schedule

Posted on July 2, 2018 by seedcode · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Calendar

Here’s a simple mod to show unscheduled (dateless) events in DayBack Calendar.

This is great for events that haven’t yet been pinned down. They’ll get “UNSCHEDULED” appended to their name and show up on the current day until they’re dragged to an actual date/time. Here’s a movie of this in action:

Instructions

If you’d like to make this change in your copy of DayBack, here are the field definition changes mentioned in the movie above:

DBk_TimestampStartCalcNum:

Let ( [

//============= Assign your date and time fields here ==========================

    ds = DateStart ; // Your event's start date field
    ts = TimeStart ; // Your event's start time field

// Mod for showing dateless events on the current date; Add a semicolon to the end of the preceding line

    ds = If( not IsEmpty (ds) ; ds ; GetAsDate ( Get ( CurrentTimestamp ) ) ) 

// End modification

//============= You shouldn't have to edit below this line ==========================

]; 


    GetAsNumber (
         Timestamp ( ds ; Max ( ts ; 0 ) )
    )
)

Let ( [

//============= Assign your date and time fields here ==========================

ds = DateStart ; // Your event's start date field

ts = TimeStart ; // Your event's start time field

// Mod for showing dateless events on the current date; Add a semicolon to the end of the preceding line

ds = If( not IsEmpty (ds) ; ds ; GetAsDate ( Get ( CurrentTimestamp ) ) )

// End modification

//============= You shouldn't have to edit below this line ==========================

];

GetAsNumber (

Timestamp ( ds ; Max ( ts ; 0 ) )

)

DBk_TimestampEndCalcNum:

Let ( [

//============= Assign your date and time fields here ==========================

    ds = DateStart ; // Your event's date start field
    de = DateEnd ; // Your event's date end field
    ts = TimeStart ; // Your event's time start field
    te = TimeEnd ; // Your event's time end field 

// Mod for showing dateless events on the current date

    ds = If( not IsEmpty (ds) ; ds ; GetAsDate ( Get ( CurrentTimestamp ) ) ) ;

// End modification

//============= You shouldn't have to edit below this line ==========================

    spanmidnight = not IsEmpty ( te ) and te < ts 

] ;
 
    GetAsNumber (
    Timestamp ( 

        If ( spanmidnight and IsEmpty ( de ) ; ds + 1 ; Max ( ds ; de ) )

    ;

       If ( IsEmpty ( te ) ; Max ( ts ; 0 ) ; te )

    )
    )
)

Let ( [

//============= Assign your date and time fields here ==========================

ds = DateStart ; // Your event's date start field

de = DateEnd ; // Your event's date end field

ts = TimeStart ; // Your event's time start field

te = TimeEnd ; // Your event's time end field

// Mod for showing dateless events on the current date

ds = If( not IsEmpty (ds) ; ds ; GetAsDate ( Get ( CurrentTimestamp ) ) ) ;

// End modification

//============= You shouldn't have to edit below this line ==========================

spanmidnight = not IsEmpty ( te ) and te < ts

] ;

GetAsNumber (

Timestamp (

If ( spanmidnight and IsEmpty ( de ) ; ds + 1 ; Max ( ds ; de ) )

;

If ( IsEmpty ( te ) ; Max ( ts ; 0 ) ; te )

)

And the beginning of the DBk_WebViewerSource field:

Let ( [

//============= Assign your event fields here ==========================

    sc_sourceNumber = 1 ; // The source number as defined in the "Source No" layout
    sc_id = id ; // the unique ID or primary key of your event record. Often, it's serial number.
    sc_startDate = If ( IsEmpty ( DateStart ); GetAsDate( Get ( CurrentTimestamp ) ); DateStart ) ;
    sc_startTime = TimeStart ;
    sc_endDate = DateEnd ;
    sc_endTime = TimeEnd ;
    sc_summary = Summary ; 
    sc_summaryCalc = If ( IsEmpty ( DateStart ); "UNSCHEDULED - ") & DBk_EventSummaryCalc ; //Read only
    sc_description = Description ; 
    sc_resource = Resource ; 
    sc_status = Status ; 
    sc_contactID = id_contact ;
    sc_contactName = SampleContacts::NameFull ; 
    sc_projectID = id_Project ;
    sc_projectName = SampleProjects::Name ; 
    sc_location = Location ; 
    sc_tags = DBk_Tags ; 


//============= Do not edit below this line ==========================

Let ( [

//============= Assign your event fields here ==========================

sc_sourceNumber = 1 ; // The source number as defined in the "Source No" layout

sc_id = id ; // the unique ID or primary key of your event record. Often, it's serial number.

sc_startDate = If ( IsEmpty ( DateStart ); GetAsDate( Get ( CurrentTimestamp ) ); DateStart ) ;

sc_startTime = TimeStart ;

sc_endDate = DateEnd ;

sc_endTime = TimeEnd ;

sc_summary = Summary ;

sc_summaryCalc = If ( IsEmpty ( DateStart ); "UNSCHEDULED - ") & DBk_EventSummaryCalc ; //Read only

sc_description = Description ;

sc_resource = Resource ;

sc_status = Status ;

sc_contactID = id_contact ;

sc_contactName = SampleContacts::NameFull ;

sc_projectID = id_Project ;

sc_projectName = SampleProjects::Name ;

sc_location = Location ;

sc_tags = DBk_Tags ;

//============= Do not edit below this line ==========================

Enjoy!

Calculating Hourly Costs in DayBack Calendar

Posted on June 28, 2018 by KC Embrey · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Calendar, Interface Design

When you’re tracking project deadlines in DayBack, you can have the calendar forecast project costs as well.

DayBack user Gerhard Huber did that and customized his solution to estimate the cost of a project based on the time required for the task and the resource he’d assigned (each resource has their own per-hour billing charge.) Check out this video he made showing it in action:

Not only is Gerhard updating the project’s estimated cost, he’s automatically updating the event in the calendar and his summary portal in the custom sidebar he built.

That black sidebar in Gerhard’s video is a FileMaker layout object he added to DayBack. Custom sidebars like this are a great way to customize the calendar. You can see more examples of custom sidebars and filters here: custom sidebars for DayBack Calendar.

Very nice work, Gerhard! And thanks for providing the video. (Gerhard is scheduling the design and production of custom interiors and you can see his beautiful work here: Gerhard Huber : werkstätte für einrichtungen.)

If you’d like help implementing modifications similar to this in your DayBack solution, or any other mods, please get in touch and we’ll get you on the schedule.

Switching Time Zones in FileMaker Using DayBack Calendar

Posted on May 27, 2018 by KC Embrey · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Calendar, javascript

If you have a distributed team, you’re painfully aware that there is no built-in support for switching time zones in FileMaker. There’s easy way to have your time fields translate themselves into a different time zone.

DayBack changes that.

By default, DayBack shows events on the calendar at whichever time is entered into your time field. But you can mod the calendar so users can select the time zone in which they want to view their schedule. Edits made in this mode are saved adjusting for the time zone they’ve selected. The mod takes advantage of a Moment.js enabled selector in a web viewer, along with some field and script changes. Detailed instructions and an example file follow below.

Here’s a video of the mod switching time zones in FileMaker:

How It Works

The most important thing to understand when implementing something like this is that the records will need to be saved in a specific “reference time zone”.

In an ummodified calendar, no matter where you are located, when you schedule an event in DayBack for 12:00 PM, that field will be saved as 12:00 PM in the record. A “reference time zone” is your team’s agreement as to what that “12pm” means. For SeedCode, we have users in multiple time zones, but our reference time zone for events is Pacific. The users living outside of the Pacific time zone have just had to manually adjust their events accordingly… until now! Most teams already have such a reference, even if it’s only in your head. In this mod, you’ll make it explicit.

After implementing this mod, if you are in Pacific time and your “reference time” is in Eastern, the field on your event record will actually be saved as 3:00 PM. =)

There’s a bit of work to implement this into your calendar, but you should be able to get there by following these instructions closely. If you run into any issues, please reach out to us.

Downloading the Example File

First, download the example file, try it out, and see if this time zone behavior is right for yout team: DayBackTimeZones

You’ll copy a few things out of this example and paste them into your file following the instructions below. You’ll add a new web viewer selector, a layout, scripts, and some DBk_WebViewerSource calculation additions to your file.

Read Full Article →

Geolocation in FileMaker Go

Posted on May 12, 2018 by KC Embrey · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Maps

FileMaker makes getting an accurate latitude and longitude from an iPhone or iPad super easy. Say you want to update a properties’ exact location in ProMaps when you’re on site: why not get it automatically from your device?

Here’s a video of this in action:

Implementing Geolocation in FileMaker Go

This is easily implemented by adding a small script to your solution. Here’s a screenshot of the script we’d add to ProMaps (the only thing specific to ProMaps here is the location field which could be any text field in your solution):

The most complex part of this script is formatting the returned value into the comma separated “latitude,longitude” value required for the gm_GeoLocation field value, so I’ve pasted the value for the Set Variable step on line 20 here:

Let ([

    latPrefix = Case ( Left ( $sc_Location; 1 ) = "-"; "-" ; "" );
    longPrefix = Case ( Middle ( $sc_Location ; Position ( $sc_Location; ","; 1; 1 ) + 2 ; 1 ) = "-" ; "-"; "" )
];
 
 latPrefix & LeftWords ( $sc_Location; 1 ) & "," & longPrefix & MiddleWords ( $sc_Location; 2; 1 )

)

Let ([

latPrefix = Case ( Left ( $sc_Location; 1 ) = "-"; "-" ; "" );

longPrefix = Case ( Middle ( $sc_Location ; Position ( $sc_Location; ","; 1; 1 ) + 2 ; 1 ) = "-" ; "-"; "" )

];

latPrefix & LeftWords ( $sc_Location; 1 ) & "," & longPrefix & MiddleWords ( $sc_Location; 2; 1 )

)

Now, you can call this script from a new button placed on your property detail layout. Alternately, you could call it automatically when uploading a new picture to your property. To do this, add the highlighted lines in the screenshot below to the “Process Image…” script in ProMaps.

Hopefully, this example helps make your workflow with ProMaps even smoother.

Demo and Help

If you’d like to try out ProMaps, which allows you to display your properties on a Google powered map, including filtering and routing features, please download a demo at our ProMaps product page.

If you’d like help customizing this mod, or creating other mods like this, feel free to contact us and we’ll get you on the schedule.

Add Custom Actions to Public Calendars

Posted on March 19, 2018 by seedcode · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Calendar

You can add buttons and scripts to your calendar events with DayBack’s custom actions. These let you modify how the calendar works so folks can take action right from within the calendar. Now you can add these actions to shared calendars as well. This means you can do things like:

Link to a discussion about the event
Complete a form when someone clicks on a shared event

The short video below demonstrates both of these actions.

The first example adds a button to the PauseOnError calendar, so users can get more detail about the event. The second example hijacks the “click” behavior to bring up a confirmation form when a user clicks on the event.

Custom actions are either simple URLs or JavaScript. You can download the code for these two example actions here:

Link to a discussion about the event (conditionallyOpenURLjs)
Complete a form when someone clicks on a shared event (confirmAppointmentWuFooForm.js)

Documentation and more examples can be found here (docs / examples), or get in touch: we’re happy to write actions for you.

Beautiful Custom Sidebar for DayBack Calendar

Posted on March 1, 2018 by seedcode · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Calendar, Interface Design

Check out this FileMaker calendar of the public events at the Hammer Museum in LA:

Julia Dzwonkoski of AngelCityData designed and built this, adding a custom sidebar to the left of DayBack calendar. This sidebar, which contains a list of current exhibitions, is made solely with FileMaker layout objects and calls FileMaker scripts in DayBack to manipulate the calendar’s filters. The result is a very elegant calendar that’s really easy to filter.

Very cool, Julia! And thanks for the screenshot.

See more examples of custom filters here: custom sidebars for DayBack Calendar.

Selecting Multiple Contacts

Posted on February 21, 2018 by KC Embrey · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Calendar

Customizing the Go To buttons in DayBack for FileMaker

In the DayBack for FileMaker popover, the blue arrow buttons next to Contact and Project run a script that opens the related contact or project in its own layout. This script can be customized to perform other actions, rather than just opening the related contact or project.

In this example, we’ve customized DayBack for a customer to allow multiple contacts selection. Since each event could now have multiple contacts, rather than going to the first related contact, we customized the “Go To Related Record From WebViewer” script to change the action of the blue arrow button next to contacts. In this video, we show how this is done and what it looks like.

If you have an idea of how you’d like to customize the action of these buttons, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll be happy to help out!

Printing Web Viewers in FileMaker 16

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Dan Wheelon · (1 Comment) · Tagged With: Calendar, FileMaker 16

Here’s an example file you can use to print web viewers in FileMaker 16. We use DayBack Calendar as an example, but you can use these scripts in your own file too. The scripts manage the window sizing which can make printing web viewers tricky. They also use the free ScriptMaster plugin to make PDFs for printing since FileMaker 16 no longer supports printing web viewer content on Mac.

In FileMaker 16, we lost the ability to print the web viewer, whether using Preview mode or Save/Send As PDF. This isn’t always an issue: in many cases, it may make more sense to create a dedicated print layout or sub-summary report to print calendar data. Often this is the only way to print all the text of an event. But sometimes it is best to print web viewer itself. For example, DayBack’s Month, Horizon, and other views would be too tough to replicate without the web viewer for printing.

Thanks to different plugins, we actually can print the web viewer in 16 — by taking screenshots. Once a screenshot is taken, you can insert it into a container field and Preview Mode and Save As PDF will have no trouble printing that image in a container. (Thanks to the FileMaker community at this thread for providing the idea to use screenshot functions as a workaround to printing the web viewer in FM16!)

Here’s a video of this in action:

If you’d like to grab that file and get to work, here it is: DayBack_PrintWebviewerExample

Printing FileMaker Web Viewers: Looking Closer

And here’s a closer look at the first script shown in that video: Read Full Article →

Customizing DayBack Calendar for FileMaker: Success Story

Posted on December 26, 2017 by seedcode · (Add Comment) · Tagged With: Calendar

FileMaker partner aACE Software customized DayBack Calendar for their vertical market ERP solution: their customers love it!

“The results of implementing the calendar have been overwhelmingly positive. Everybody benefits from “real-time” scheduling allowing us to see down to the nth degree what resources are available for any project at any time. The calendar solved the lack of visibility issues we were having.” – Jimmie Wolfe, Director of Field Operations, Gable

Check out the details in the success story that aACE Software posted on their site: aACE + DayBack Calendar

Customized to fit seamlessly within their app

We really like what aACE was able to do here and that they could customize DayBack to fit seamlessly within their own app. It looks great! And it’s clear they listened closely to their client: the customer loves what they’ve done.

Here are some links to help you start customizing the calendar:

The aACE+ DayBack calendar integration saved the day. Click To Tweet

Big thanks to Caitlin, Michael, and Brian at aACE for sharing their customization and publishing their client’s feedback! Congrats on such a great success story.

DayBack is designed for you to customize. Learn more

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We wanted a place where we could talk about some of the new things we're working on, post screen shots and code, and get some feedback from customers who want to be part of the development process.

This is where we get to talk about what's coming next from SeedCode.
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SeedCode: Next

Customize the Pins on Your FileMaker Map

Unscheduled Events – Drag to Schedule

Instructions

Calculating Hourly Costs in DayBack Calendar

Switching Time Zones in FileMaker Using DayBack Calendar

Here’s a video of the mod switching time zones in FileMaker:

How It Works

Downloading the Example File

Geolocation in FileMaker Go

Implementing Geolocation in FileMaker Go

Demo and Help

Add Custom Actions to Public Calendars

Beautiful Custom Sidebar for DayBack Calendar

Selecting Multiple Contacts

Customizing the Go To buttons in DayBack for FileMaker

Printing Web Viewers in FileMaker 16

Printing FileMaker Web Viewers: Looking Closer

Customizing DayBack Calendar for FileMaker: Success Story

Customized to fit seamlessly within their app

DayBack is designed for you to customize. Learn more

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