Thanks for a great solution! At this stage Iím experimenting with the free version, but plan to incorporate the full version into an invoicing system for a service business.

My client would like the appointments to display spaced throughout the day - as in Microsoft Outlook. Iím reluctant to automatically generate 15 blank records (one for each half hour appointment) each day. Is there a better way, or is this feature available on the Full/Pro versions?

Dave

Hi.

Unfortunately, this feature is not available in the Full or Pro versions.

Rather than create 15 blank records, you'd probably want 15 portals on the daily view. Each one would show just those appointments for that day that were within a certain time range.

The biggest problem here is that FileMaker will not "slide" a portal's height in browse mode. So, if you may have 10 appts between 8am and 9am, you need to "leave room" for as many as you'd like to see without scrolling the portal. Without this kind of sliding, we just can't make this look like Outlook without a ton of hard coding (read: slow database).

That said, this trick only works well if your apointments don't extend from one time range (one portal) to another.

Another approach is to create 15 calc fields and simply color each one if there are appointments (no matter how many) matching that time block. This doesn't substitute for your list of appointments, but gives you an indication of when you have time open... it also accomodates appointments that extened across appointment times well.

In either case you'll need a way to base relationships on time ranges. You can do this by either a) rounding your appointment times into even 1/2 hour times so that the match the portal criteria exactly or b) create portal keys which understand "ranges" of time. Solution b is obviously the coolest. You can create these range calcs on your own or use a plugin.

For doing these on your own, check out: the Edoshin Range Trick. Be warned; this is heady stuff and likely the most brilliant use of FileMaker calcs you will *ever* run across.

If you want to use the plugin, check out: Waves in Motion's DateTime plugin.

John

I hadn't thought about a graphic display separated from the data... that could fly.

I looked at Mikhail Edoshin's article some time ago... you're right, it's brilliant, and tough on the gray cells.

Thanks for your input.

Regards
Dave