Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Applications > FileMaker or do it myself?

FileMaker or do it myself?
Thread Tools
Chuckit
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jun 24, 2005, 02:55 PM
 
I'm looking for opinions on the best way to go about this. My work needs a more powerful contact- and time-management system. Basically, it needs to be able to associate contacts and events together with e-mails and files, and needs to be able to remind salespeople of upcoming meetings and do mail merges with contacts based on what events are happening.

I'm decent with database programming (from doing Web sites backed with MySQL), but I've already got several other coding projects going on and don't really need more stuff dumped on my plate. So my first thought was FileMaker. But after downloading the demo and playing around a little bit, it doesn't look like FileMaker would be that much easier than rolling my own Cocoa interface to a database, and getting FileMaker to interact with other parts of the system (e.g., e-mail) seems like it will actually be a lot more work.

So, any ideas on the best approach? Or even just anybody with more FileMaker experience than I have who'd like to share their perspective?
Chuck
___
"Instead of either 'multi-talented' or 'multitalented' use 'bisexual'."
     
Ludovic Hirlimann
Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Leiden, Netherlands
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jun 25, 2005, 03:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by Chuckit
I'm looking for opinions on the best way to go about this. My work needs a more powerful contact- and time-management system. Basically, it needs to be able to associate contacts and events together with e-mails and files, and needs to be able to remind salespeople of upcoming meetings and do mail merges with contacts based on what events are happening.
You might want to take a look at something like phpgroupware (I think it's hosted on sf.net), or any other free groupware application that can be found on sourceforge.
     
Sharky K.
Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jun 25, 2005, 07:35 AM
 
     
altimac
Forum Regular
Join Date: May 2001
Location: France
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Aug 24, 2005, 12:45 PM
 
You can try OD4Contact from Objective-Decision. It may not be able to manage hundreds of thousands of contact though... but link Mail messages (and phone calls, fax, chats etc...) to Contacts and Tasks is very easy and well integrated with OS X
CarraFix, the traffic shaper for OS X !

Enjoy The [CFx] Community !
http://www.carrafix.com
     
   
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 03:47 PM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,