Using the Card Window feature in FileMaker 16, Martha Zink demonstrates how to create a new window that is context-independent from the parent window/layout in the background.
Video Transcript:
Hey, my name is Martha Zink and I’m with Soliant Consulting.
In this video, I’m going to talk about the Card Window in FileMaker and how it is Context-Independent.
Here, I’m looking at a company detail screen. As a user, I could realize I need to add something to my to-do list, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with this company.
I can click on this button hanging at the top, and we’ve built the ability to look at a to-do list from pretty much anywhere in the database. I was looking at a company detail, but I wanted to do something that was completely separate or completely independent from that. With a card window, I can do that.
We’re just looking at a layout within a layout or a window within a window. I can go in the card window and add a new task. I’ll give it a due date of the 19th., then I can add another task and give it a due date of the 22nd.
What’s really cool about this is that my parent window, the company detail screen, was a form view, but the card window is actually going to be a list view. I can actually just scroll through it like I would on any other layout.
Now, I’ve added some bells and whistles here. You have the ability to just delete something. You have the ability to mark something as high-priority, so we can just star it or flag it and then you can just check something off when you’re done with it.
Here in this example, I scripted it so that the record doesn’t go away right away. I can uncheck it in case I didn’t mean to mark it as complete.
Let’s look at what the script looks like for running that. First, I run a script that’s going to clear a couple of globals, but really here at the new window is where the magic starts. I’ve got a new window, it’s the card style, and it’s going to open up the to-do list card layout.
Normally, I leave the size and position fields empty, because that will usually size it just right and it will put it right in the middle of the layout. But here I wanted to be a little bit more specific. I wanted to height to be set at 500 pixels. I did this because the default, when FileMaker does a list view, is just a little bit too short.
Then, I wanted the card window to be flushed to the top of the parent window, so I set the position to 0 from the top. From there, I’m doing a normal find on a layout. I’m going into find mode and setting the account name to the current account that I’m logged in as, so I’m looking at my to-do list.
Then, I’m making sure that I’m only showing things that aren’t flagged as done, perform the find, and then I sort my records. That’s pretty much it.
If we look at the layout, you’ll see it’s going to look like exactly what we were seeing in the card window. Here’s the layout. If we jump into layout mode, we’ve got a header section that gives us the title as well as the number of tasks that are there. We’ve got the leading grand summary that’s going to give me the ability to add a new task with a couple of global fields. Then we’ve got the body section that is going to repeat with every record that shows up in browse mode.
We could drop this button on any layout in the database and could actually script this in a menu if we wanted to. When I click on it, I get my to-do list. I can now check things off. I can add new stuff, and basically, I’m doing this all independently from wherever I was.
I’m hoping this leads to a little bit more functionality for my users as well as quite a bit more efficiency. Again, just one other way to use the card window. I’m really excited to see what people are going to do with this new window style.
Please leave a comment or contact our team if you’ve got any thoughts about it. Make sure you keep watching Soliant TV. We’ll be adding more videos talking about the new features of FileMaker 16. Thanks for watching.
