Title
Keeping track of correspondence in Filemaker--Searchable
Post
How do I set up a field in Filemaker that will allow me to archive by date the times I communicate with a person I have in my database?
For example, I want to send a letter to a found set in my database and I want to be able to search in the future to whom I sent the letter. Or if I send an email to 50 people in my database out of the 1,000 people in the database, how do I keep track of that so I can search and find the people I sent the email to and the people I didn't send it to?
Thanks!
You need at least three tables for this as this is a classic many to many relationship issue.
People:
PeopleID
EmailAddress
other contact Info fields
Correspondance:
CorrID
Date Sent
Any other fields you want to document the specific message--including the actual message if desired
People_Correspondance:
PeopleID
CorrID
Your relationships would look like this:
People----<People_Correspondance>-----Correspondance
People:: PeopleID = People_Correspondance:: PeopleID (Enable allow create and delete options for People_Correspondance)
Correspondance::CorrID = People_Correspondance::CorrID (Enable allow create and delete options for People_Correspondance)
To log who recieves a given correspondance, create the correspondance record and use a portal to People_Correspondance to assign recipients to your distribution list. (Fields from People can be placed in this portal to help make it easier to work with.)
A portal to People_Correspondance placed on a People layout will show which messages were sent to that individual.
To pull up a list of all people who were not sent a particular message, use this layout in a find:
Enter find mode
Enter either the corrID for that message or (If you've put such a field from Correspondance in the portal) the name of the message in a Correspondance title field.
Select the Omit option from the status area.
Perform the find.