To the wizards at Seed Code, this Filemaker Pro novice sends greetings.

I recently downloaded the Seed Code Calendar Pro and have begun my demo period. I believe that I can integrate our appointment systems into the Pro version easily; however, to sell the professor (and the school’s accountants) on the idea to purchase Calendar Pro, I need to address a few issues.

One of the items on my “to doâ€

jmanning wrote:I don’t see anything in Pro version that addresses the idea of mailing. Can a script be added that would search for new additions and send a note to the student?

You can certainly write a script for this, using FileMaker's built in SendMail command.

You'll also find a Mailings component built into SeedCode Complete, where you can send a mailing to any found set of contacts (or to the contacts represented by a found set of appointments, for example).

jmanning wrote:Second, how does Pro and Complete handle mailings? Can we direct the calendar to work with Microsoft Entourage to send the mailings?

So there is no mailing component to Pro, aside from what you may add with your own scripts. In Pro Complete the mailings component can send mail two ways: regular mail is sent using FileMaker's built-in SendMail script step so it goes out through your mail client. If you wish to send html emails (or just wish to bypass your mail client) you can send mail using the SMTPit plugin. We've included code to take advantage of the plugin, but you'd need to download the plugin (either a demo or purchase a licensed version) from cns-plugins.com. You can also read more about the mailings component in Complete here.

Also, you might look at adding fmSpark to Pro in order to bring right, template based mail, to that calendar. This would essentially add Complete's mailing capability (and more!) to Pro.

jmanning wrote:Finally, the professor would like a method to allow students highly limited access to the database; specifically, the ability to query the database and examine only their individual appointments. I believe that I can create a screen that would prompt them for their student identification then display their appointment information. Can I implement this without using Web Publishing?

Sure. Provided the students have access to a copy of FileMaker Pro, they could use the database (or a subset of it) just like you do. Though I believe most people use IWP for this kind of thing since the students can't be counted on to be running FileMaker Pro. You're right that you can give the students a special set of layouts that only show them their information, but you'll want to be sure to enforce these limitations in FileMaker's access privileges: don't rely on the layouts alone to limit what the students can see.

Hope that helps,

John