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In this video, I wanted to take a couple minutes and talk about customizing FM Starting Point.
Now first off, I have a copy of FM Starting Point right here, and I want to go ahead and
customize a section of the contacts module right here. now we got a call the other day
from a user of FM Starting Point who wanted to put a survey into FM Starting Point. They
were emailing or making phone calls to people in their contacts database. They wanted to
have a way of tracking the survey information that they collected for each of the contacts.
So this is a perfect area where you want to customize the contacts module for your particular
needs. So first off, you got a couple options here. The first thing you need to do is decide
where you want to put the fields. How important are the fields. So are these new fields of
information super important. If they are, you might want to rearrange things up here.
Do you need to image of the contact. If not, you could delete this right here and make
room right here. Another option is to look down here in the secondary navigation area.
This is this tabbed area down here. Most business solutions that people set up don't use all
these area down below. So for example, communications and notes are typically pretty important.
Contacts in the same account or in the same business are sometimes important so lets for
the moment assume that we want to keep those, but in this situation, let's assume that we
don't use estimates or quotes. So this is an area here that we can use to build our
survey. So I can jump into layout mode right here, browse mode here, layout mode here;
I can also make the change right here under view. Layout mode here with command or control
L, and I can jump back into browse mode right here. So in the future, I'll use keyboard
shortcuts but I wanted to show you how you could do this manually right here. So, I've
jumped into layout mode right here. I'm going to click on the estimates and quotes tab;
in fact, I'm going to double click this right here. Now, double clicking this tab brings
up all the tabs that we have, and I see that right here we have estimates and quotes. I'm
going to change this to survey, and I'm going to say rename. I'm going to say OK, and it
renames it like that. Now, what I also want to do is i'm going to double click it again,
and I want to say that the survey is also the top priority important item. And I want
it to show up first in the list. So I can put it up here at the top. I can also say
that the default front tab is going to be survey. So every time we pop onto this screen,
the survey tab will always be visible first. So now the survey tab is over here. I can
also say "View.... Inspector" and thats also something that you can select with command
or control I. The inspector allows us to customize objects on our layout. Now notice that I have
a little bit of weird rounding in here or square edges on our tab, and by going over
here to appearance, I can go over here and select these different tabbed areas here and
customize how these tabs are going to look. I'm not going to get into the finer artistic
details of this layout. I just want to get this survey going. So the next thing I need
to do is clean up this layout, and I first have to clean up and take out the trash. So
I can click on objects and then delete them by clicking the delete key or I could grab
a whole group of items by holding down the command or control key and then selecting
a whole group of items like this and then press the delete key and it gets rid of all
the items. So now I have a blank area for me to create my survey. The next thing I need
to do is actually create the fields for my survey questions. I'm going to go to "file...down
to manage... over to database." Here we can see the manage database dialogue for FM Starting
Point. I'm going to go ahead and type in here, "Survey Question 1." I'm going to say that's
a text field. "Survey Question 2," create. "Survey Question 3," create. "Survey Question
4," I can define these generically in here for now. Let's just say I'm going to have
four survey questions. Then select OK. Now frequently with FileMaker, FileMaker will
save new field definitions at the bottom of the layout, and it's probably done that here
as well. In fact, it has, but it's made in black and largely invisible so I'm going to
go ahead and use my mouse to select an area here to find these and their labels and drag
them up here, and here we go. We have survey question 1, survey question 2, 3, and 4. Now,
I'm going to drag it over here so I have a little bit more room. I'm also going to drag
this area back up here. So we're not wasting any unnecessary space. The other thing I want
to do is specify that the survey question 1 is "How many pets in the household?" Say
we're taking a survey for a pet food company. I know some people who actually use FM Starting
Point manage pet stores. Now, these are all simple questions that we can use. First thing
i'm going to do is lock that item right there. So it's easy to move around in here. So i've
locked this white background here. Then i'm going to select these fields right here. I'm
going to actually make them a little bit bigger so they're easier to work with. So i'm going
to say they're size 14. Now they're getting kind of ugly. I hold the commander option
key down and only objects that are explicitly, completely inside my box will be selected.
So i've selected these fields here. I can move them back to the right. Now i've got
my field labels over here. I'm going to hold down the commander option key again and once
again only objects that are completely inside my selected box will be selected. I'm going
to tell these items that I want them to be aligned. I want them to be aligned on their
right edges, and now they're realigned again, which is pretty slick. okay... so I got them
realigned. So now that I have the fields in the layout here. I can go back into browse
mode. I'm going to command or control B, and I'm in browse mode. Notice my inspector disappears
over here, and of course, my fields are here but I can't see them. So we could put some
formatting on the fields so we could see them, but what's more interesting is there this
plain boring fields. So if I was going to go in here, I could use them. They're not
as handy as they could be made. So "How many pets in this Household?" 4... I have to type
that in. "Do they like to buy canned cat food?" yes or no... I have to type yes or no or that
kind of thing. It could be made easier. "Tell us about your cat." Well this might be a paragraph
of text right, so what're you going to tell us about your cat. "I love em. He's the cutest
cat I ever had. I like to buy premium cat food." Or may be, "The cat is an outdoor cat.
I hate my cat. I never feed my cat. The cat eats mice outside. I never buy nice food for
the cat. Cat eats wild critters all the time." So, may be that's a paragraph of text right,
but then we only see the first line so the formatting there isn't ideal either, so we
need to come up a way of properly formatting the survey to really make use of FileMaker.
So, i'm going to go back into layout mode, and the first thing i'm going to do, i'm going
to spread these questions out just a little bit. Gives a little maneuvering room. So the
first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to take a look at how many pets in the household.
Now, I have predetermined that that is going to be a number answer. So it's going to be
1-10. So, i'm going to go ahead, click on this field, i'm going to go up over here to
the control style. Now, by default, an edit box is where you just click in the field and
you type an answer, but i'd like to see a pop up menu here. The slickest way of entering
the information here. So a pop up menu is where i'm going to go ahead and select the
type of menu I want to use, which is basically menu where it's going to say 1,2,3,4,5,6,
7,8,9,10, right? But there is a lot of prebuilt menus in FileMaker. They're all over the place.
So why don't we just define my own? So i'm going to say define a new menu. I'm going
to say new. We're going to say "Survey Question 1 Pets." Custom values... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9, 10. Pretty cool. So that's it. We have custom values here. We have "Survey Question
1 Pets." Say OK. It saves it right here under our manage value list. We say OK. So now up
here we see "Pop up menu" selection before we had a edit box. Now we have pop up menu.
We have "Survey Question 1." So now we go back to browse mode and look what we have.
We have a selection here. So I can select one of these items right here. Now, what's
interesting about this is I can also make this a check box set. So I can go back to
browse mode, and you can see now that I have check boxes. Now this is a little bit small
to see. So let's make this a little larger. I'm going to make this size say 16. That's
a little nicer, and it's not quite big enough to see all the answers. If you make this smaller,
it'll automatically move these items down for you, but let's just stretch it out for
now keep it simple. So we have 10. like that. Now if you use check boxes, you can select
more than one, and in this situation, it doesn't make sense to have this. So we could have
three pets, or we could have four pets. So we don't really want check boxes. So i'm going
to go back to layout mode... Select the field. I really don't like check box set. Radio buttons
are a possibility. Pop up menu, check box set, radio button--that's our other option
we have. Radio buttons only allow us to select one item. So as I select items, I cannot select
more than one item. It only allows me to select one item. So in reality, the two best answers
for selecting one item are a radio button or a pop up menu. So i'm going to make this
a little smaller, a lot more compact this way. I'm going to tell the center of the answer,
and so there we go. I'm going to make these other fields size 16 too because think that
makes it really nice. Now the next question, do they like to buy canned cat food, yes or
no? Now this is another one where we can define our own value list. This time I think a radio
button set would be the way to go. i'm going to look down here at our prebuilt value list
that we have in FM Starting Point. See if theres anything that's predefined as a yes
or no already in here. I already see that we have a gender, male or female, that's kind
of handy... Active or inactive. I see all sorts of stuff.. modern, basic, hidden variables.
Here's the one we just defined, Survey Question. Oh there it is... There's a yes and no right
there already waiting for us. Pretty slick. So i'm just going to hit OK. Now we have yes
or no. I'm going to make this a little bit like that... and now we have our second question
set up. Now "Tell us about your cats," and that could be a paragraph because some people
could become kind of wordy about their cats. Now we probably don't want to capture all
the information, but some of the information might be useful. So i'm going to make this
more of a paragraph, and i'm going to come over here and i'm going to make it bigger.
So remember we said this is a text box right? So there we go we have a text box of information,
pretty slick. Now what we can also do to make sure that we can scroll up and down here is
I can come over here to this section right here, and I can say "include vertical scroll
bar" so if they really start to write a paragraph in here, we can scroll up and down and get
the rest of that information. So there you go. We get our automatic scroll bar there,
right there. pretty slick. And when i'm moving up and down here with precision, say you're
moving just a couple pixels at a time, i'm using the cursor keys on my keyboard. So if
I grab my mouse and move it back and forth, it jumps because FileMaker is trying to automatically
align things, but if I want to use precision alignment just a couple pixels at a time,
I'm going to use my cursor keys on my keyboard. A little tip for you right there. And the
last one... "How often do you visit a pet store?" Now this is another one where we can
pick something off a menu. So i'm going to select "Pop up menu." Now this one I know
won't be in FM Starting Point. So i'm going to say "New value list." I'm going to say
"Survey Question 4." Custom values... Every Day. That's a dedicated pet owner. Every Other
Day... That's still someone who loves their pets, probably too much. Twice a week... Once
a Week... Once a month... Once a year... Once a year is someone who forgot they even had
a pet in the first place. So I say OK. We say OK. And we have our question like that.
And I go back to browse mode. There you go. So, "How many pets are in the household?"
5..."Do you like to buy premium cat food?" Yes... "Tell us about your cats." I have a
very fluffy happy kitty. "How often do you visit the pet store?" Twice a week... So there
you go it's a basic survey that we've set up with FileMaker and FM Starting Point. All
these things that we've set up right here in FM Starting Point can be taken and used
on the iPad. So we can take the same layout right here on the desktop and take it over
to the matching layout on the iPad. If I go and I pop open a new window right here, and
then I jump to the layout for the iPad, I go to iPad.. Contacts... Data Entry... And
I go to estimates and quotes. This is the same tab that we recycled to build our survey.
So we could delete this section out of here. We could rename this a survey, move it over
here, and actually all we have to do is copy a section over here and paste it over here.
It's pretty simple to do. And then it would be all set up to work on our iPad. So we could
take the survey on our iPad out in the field. So hopefully that gives you an idea of how
to set up and use FM Starting Point and customize your own fields within this database.