Hi John:

Two questions:

1) I would like to provide the user of my application (for example, a physician) a way to "sign" a record, thereby protecting that record from any future edits. Ideally, this would take the form of a script attached to a "SIGNATURE" button. Can you suggest a way to set this up?

2) In addition, I'd like to place, on the same layout, another button labeled "ADDEND." Clicking that button would run a script that allowed the user to create a text addendum to the relevant record, without changing anything in the original record. I think the best way to do this would be to create a new table named "Addendums," then create a "many-to-one" relationship between Addendums and Appointments. Is that correct?

Yours,
Jim Recht

I was thinking we should probably move some of our discussions to a paid support contract, but what you've asked here is pretty simple...

- To sign a record you'd use FileMaker's access privileges to "limit" access to a record when the field "signed" is equal to one. Just be sure you have at least one account that has the rights to un-sign a record. In FileMaker's built in help, check out Contents > Protecting databases with accounts and privilege sets > Creating and managing privilege sets > Editing record access privileges.

On the "Editing record access privileges" page you're interested in the "Limited" option under number 4.

- I think you "Addendums" idea is right on the money. Much more flexible than trying to bang that all into a text field in the appointment's record.

You might also make an MD5 hash calc in an autoenter field for the record, to be sure that it was not altered. The MD5 hash calc could be set to evaluate only certain specified fields. I have a similar application requirement and an engineer at Sophos Antivirus told me they use fast calculating unique hashes to make sure that files they are scanning have not changed since the last time it was scanned.