The new FileMaker 16 card windows give you some great options for integrating DayBack Calendar with your other layouts. Here’s a short video with a few examples of what you can do:
Why Card Windows?
Card windows let you see the calendar in the context of decisions you’re making on other layouts. They make it just a little easier to check your schedule. And you’re much less likely to over promise or over extend yourself if you can make your plans with a clear view of your existing commitments. This is why we built DayBack in the first place: to help folks rein in their schedules and defend time for what’s most important.
Another great feature of these card windows is that the layout targeted by a card doesn’t need to be in the file you’re using. So just as you can show a “regular” window from another file, you can show a card window using a layout in another file. This means you can do the (simpler/faster) linked file integration of DayBack, and still have the calendar feel like it’s really part of your main file.
Using FileMaker 16 Card Windows in Your Calendar
The card behaviors shown in the movie above are really easy to add to your file. Here’s how to get started:
1. Download the card window example file here: DayBack_CardWindowExample.fmp12
2. Copy the new folder of scripts: “Card Window Example” and paste it into your copy of DayBack. If you linked DayBack instead of embedding it, you may want to past some of these into your file as well, notably “Launch Calendar As Card” and “New Event for Contact – card window v1 or v2”. These scripts call other scripts in DayBack so you’ll need to repoint them when you paste them into your own (not the calendar) file.
3. In DayBack, edit script “Load Calendar Layout” to add a 0 second pause at line 12: you’ll see an example in the same script in DayBack_CardWindowExample.fmp12
4. Edit the DayBack script “Show Event Details From WebViewer”. Change line 27 to call the new card window version of our “Draw new event window” script. This will use card windows instead of floating windows for events you access using your own layouts. (See the DayBack_CardWindowExample.fmp12 file for an example of this script.)
5. Edit the DayBack script “Create Edit Delete Event…” and add the new lines 36 through 39 used in our example file.
6. Add a new On Layout Exit script trigger to the Calendar layout. Use this trigger to call the script “On Calendar Layout Exit” from the new script folder you pasted in step 2.
That’s it!
11 Comments
…ok, but how do you make sure the new card window appears EXACTLY in the middle of whatever calendar is shown on my computer (regardless of the calendar’s size/location)?
Thanks!
Hi Robert, If you leave the two card window position fields blank that will center the card window on your screen. Is that not working?
It also “jumps around” depending on what event I click on (ie it does NOT appear in the same place).
“Jumping around” Hmmm. I don’t see that happening on our example file. Does it happen for you in our stock example file? If not, and if you don’t want to hunt down the differences, it sounds like you may be calling the card window when one of DayBack’s hidden windows is active, instead of when the main calendar is active. Maybe try bringing the main window into focus before calling the card window?
Jumping isn’t accurate, but the location of where the card appears depends on what event you click on (only on my Mac, not IOS).
Yea: it’s always on the same place when I do it in our example file. Let’s continue this by email if you want to dig in. Hit me at support at seedcode.com Thanks!
My bad – I forgot I had a Trigger set up to automatically move windows based on it’s last known location!
That script’s been adjusted to NOT act on any window with the word “Calendar” in it and things are behaving much better now.
Thanks for the very prompt response/assistance (as always).
Nope.
Works fine on IOS devices but on my MacBook Pro with two external monitors it is definitely not centered.
I DID also change the size of the card from the example code mentioned in this article but I don’t know if that should affect anything.
At times the card window isn’t even OVER the calendar!
This is very cool. And was very easy to implement. It works like a charm on the desktop. I tried to do the event from the contact context, and it shows that the feature isn’t supported in FM Go yet. Do you have plans to support that? If not, this is still great to pop in to a Calendar Card, but that extra token would be sweet.
Glad you’re working on this, Steve! Can you give me some more detail on precisely what’s not working in Go?
Wow, you guys are really working some MAGIC in FM! Fun to watch.