Save and Edit Buttons in FileMaker!

I’VE WANTED Save and Edit Buttons in FileMaker since I first used it in 1989.  I was using Omnis Pro 5 at the time, and it had that built in back then.  Load a record, click edit, make changes, click save.  Pretty simple, it seemed to me.

Well, James Wesolowski and Colibri Solutions have made use of new FileMaker 13 features to make this a reality:

In FileMaker 13, a set of tools have been added that have allowed us to approach this problem from a new angle. What we have done at Colibri Solutions is try to connect the dots to create a new (and hopefully better) transactional method.  The impetus for this exploration came from a new vertical market solution that Colibri Solutions has been building recently. During the initial stages of development, it occurred to me that its relatively constrained functionality provided an opportunity to see if we could make a very tight, transactional solution. A transactional approach is especially appealing as the product deals with legally binding documents where a casual error could have serious consequences.

I thought it was worth seeing what we could develop. Ideally, we were looking for a transactional method that allows us to use one layout, has an explicit edit mode, and forces a user to commit or revert changes (Save/Don’t Save/Cancel) when the user either navigates away from the record or instantiates a user action not related to the current record. In addition, we wanted the transactional method to be integrated explicitly into the security model to prevent edits if the table itself was not in edit mode.

As it turns out, we were able to create and implement such a transactional method successfully, and the story has some interesting twists.

Image of a layout in FileMaker with Save and Edit Buttons
Image of a layout in FileMaker with Save and Edit Buttons

Read the whole thing, and play with the unlocked, free download.  It seems to work pretty well.  The only downside is the overhead needed to implement it may make it too expensive for some solutions.

Well done, guys!

A Transactional Approach in FileMaker Pro 13 | Colibri Solutions.

 

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