Other than copying every field of interest and 'flagging' them in some 
manner as having changed, is there any more efficient way to track 
those fields I may have updated? I would need this fiunction to be able 
to pass very specific information to selected users. An automatic 
modification date for fields, just like for the record itself, would be 
useful. I am using FMP Developer 6.0v4 and do have FMP 7, but don't 
quite want to go there yet. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Graham Fawcett,
Greely, ON
CANADA

This is much, much simpler to do in 7, but for 6:

If you go to http://www.filemakerpros.com and search the tips section 
for phone formatting, you'll see that it uses a technique using lookups 
to trigger the data to update.

It basically will involve the following, assuming we are logging changes 
for the MyField field:
1) Create a time field with an auto-entered modification date
2) Create a calc field: if(MyField="gibberish", RecordID, RecordID). 
This forces the calc to refresh itself any time MyField changes.
3) Create a relationship from the calc field to the RecordID field.
4) Create a MyFieldUpdated (Date) field, formatted to be auto-entered 
using a lookup via your new relationship and copying the value from the 
time field in step 1 above.

Graham Fawcett wrote:

> Other than copying every field of interest and 'flagging' them in some 
> manner as having changed, is there any more efficient way to track those 
> fields I may have updated? I would need this fiunction to be able to 
> pass very specific information to selected users. An automatic 
> modification date for fields, just like for the record itself, would be 
> useful. I am using FMP Developer 6.0v4 and do have FMP 7, but don't 
> quite want to go there yet. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
> 
> Graham Fawcett,
> Greely, ON
> CANADA
> 

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Howard Schlossberg              (818) 883-2846
FM Pro Solutions       Los Angeles, California
Associate Member, FileMaker Solutions Alliance

in article 10e35cqp88ibh73@corp.supernews.com, Howard Schlossberg at
howard@antispahm.fmprosolutions.com wrote on 6/29/04 9:15 AM:

Hi Graham,

Here are some example files that show how to do this.

Comprehensive Audit Tracking System  By:  Ray J. Cologon  URL:
http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/
Audit History of Fields  By:  Rick Knight  URL:
http://www.fmforums.com
Modification Log  By:  John Mark Osborne  URL:
http://www.databasepros.com
Modify  By:  Hedrich Michaelsen  URL:
http://www.databasepros.com
Field Modification  By:  John Mark Osborne  URL:
http://www.fmfiles.com/tnt4.html
Field Modification Tracker  By:  Bob Cusick  URL:
http://www.fmfiles.com/tnt2.html
Modification Times  By:  Alberto Diaz-Hermidas  URL:
http://www.fmfiles.com/tnt2.html
Tracking Modifications  By:  Steve Wilmes  URL:
http://www.fmfiles.com/tnt2.html

> This is much, much simpler to do in 7, but for 6:
> 
> If you go to http://www.filemakerpros.com and search the tips section
> for phone formatting, you'll see that it uses a technique using lookups
> to trigger the data to update.
> 
> It basically will involve the following, assuming we are logging changes
> for the MyField field:
> 1) Create a time field with an auto-entered modification date
> 2) Create a calc field: if(MyField="gibberish", RecordID, RecordID).
> This forces the calc to refresh itself any time MyField changes.
> 3) Create a relationship from the calc field to the RecordID field.
> 4) Create a MyFieldUpdated (Date) field, formatted to be auto-entered
> using a lookup via your new relationship and copying the value from the
> time field in step 1 above.
> 
> Graham Fawcett wrote:
> 
>> Other than copying every field of interest and 'flagging' them in some
>> manner as having changed, is there any more efficient way to track those
>> fields I may have updated? I would need this fiunction to be able to
>> pass very specific information to selected users. An automatic
>> modification date for fields, just like for the record itself, would be
>> useful. I am using FMP Developer 6.0v4 and do have FMP 7, but don't
>> quite want to go there yet. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>> 
>> Graham Fawcett,
>> Greely, ON
>> CANADA
>>