Search Results for 'bento'

[Amy Debreceni]

I’m new to TapForms and keep getting screwed by it. It imported my Bento info into a sample form that I can’t figure out how to rename and save. When I restarted my computer, my “sample” form was gone and replaced with a Finnish one. I thought this would operate similarly to Bento, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Any help anyone can give would be very much appreciated.

 

[Zippidty Doodah]

Hey Brandon,

Just clarification for my brain.

1. First, disable iCloud sync on ALL devices? (Mac, iPad 1, iPad 2)
2. Second, click on the Delete from iCloud button on ALL devices? (Mac, iPad 1, iPad 2)
3. Then switch to Nearby Sync? On ALL devices? (Mac, iPad 1, iPad 2)
4. Now, add the iPads to the Mac (from the iPad sync setting window)
5. Conversely, add the Mac to both iPads (via the Mac’s sync settings)

4 and 5 ensure 2-way sync.

At that point I should see the changes I mentioned above that are only on iPad 1 sync back to the Mac (?)

Side note: When looking for an alternative to Bento, I purchased FileMaker Pro. In all it’s glory, FMP was just too much. Finding TapForms saved me many hours of database creation. Because it just works. And as you have refined TapForms, I have been able to refine my databases. I’m still learning that TapForms contains many more refinements than I am currently using (scripts, etc) I so appreciate your continued support of a much needed app for the Mac and the ability to use iPads on location.

TIA for the additional clarification.

[ct4]

Does anyone have a template that would make a list of bill to pay and be able to attach them etc. Had a good one in Bento but lost it a long time ago
Thanks

[Brendan]

In the online user manual that shows you how to migrate from Bento to Tap Forms, there’s a small glossary of terms to help you with the transition:

https://www.tapforms.com/help-mac/5.3/en/topic/bento-template-importer

Tap Forms isn’t any more difficult to use than Bento IMHO.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Sam. Hopefully that’ll help Stephan understand Tap Forms better. And of course I’m always available here and via email at support@tapforms.com if you have other questions too.

[Sam Moffatt]

You can continue to do one window with all of your libraries, they’re just known as forms in Tap Forms. Tap Forms lets you create multiple documents if you want but nothing stops you from just having one document with everything in it. With the Form Category feature you can even have multiple related forms (or libraries in Bento parlance) under their own heading and collapse it to hide what you’re not currently working on. I think here there is at least parity.

The collection functionality, as it behaves in Bento, obviously doesn’t exist. However the saved searches can come reasonably close and resemble “smart collections”. Fundamentally a collection is a grouping of records within a library. Bento hides the linking metadata that links a particular record to a collection and also obviously automatically links it when you create a new one. That means to replicate that in Tap Forms would require some work but let’s focus on your problems and see if we can get something close.

The two examples you provide is certain project and certain length. For certain project I would create a Project field with either autocomplete enabled or I’d use a pick list set to either single value popover or combobox possibly leveraging the “use values from field” setting pointing back to the same field (if you use the single value pop over it’ll give you an interface to add new entries to the list directly as well). This ensures that your metadata is consistent and then I’d create a new saved search which points to this Project field and is set to the name of the project. You do need to create a new saved search per value of project you want to jump to quickly, not entirely dissimilar to creating a new collection though with some extra typing. There is an example of a saved search I’ve created for stuff I buy on eBay attached as a screenshot and another one showing the number of saved searches I have (also you can create folders for your searches as well).

For the certain length criteria I’d do much the same process though I’m not sure what sort of “length” you’re measuring. If you’re looking for a simple number value then that is easy to search upon. You can use a time field to do stuff like track duration though it does tend towards being clock time focused but you can use it for track duration by changing the formatting in the field options.

One last aspect would be that if you want to emulate records in multiple collections, what you can do is a similar approach with the search but instead pair with a multi-value popover. This creates a comma separated field and also populates the saved search field making it easy to create the new saved searches as well. As with the single value popover it is easy to add new entries to it which means you can create a new record, set up extra values and then create a new saved search for it. When you do this make sure you are using “contains” rather than “is”.

The only couple of features that aren’t possible today is automatically setting a value upon creation in a saved search and the other feature I think collections had was it let you do different layouts tied to the collection which Tap Forms can sort of do with multiple custom layouts but the default layout I don’t think will let you hide fields per saved search (though you can do different sorting options).

Hopefully this helps on your Tap Forms journey :)

Screenshots: there is a screenshot of one of my marketplace searches for “eBay”, you can see it’s pretty simple. There are two screenshots of my forms and some saved searches. You can see my “Purchases” form has a grouping for marketplace as well as some searches for data hygiene (records missing images for example) and the other screenshot is my orders category which has a couple of forms in it but also has a similar marketplaces sort of example, search for items purchased this year, orders without a marketplace set, orders without any shipments, recently delivered orders and recently updated orders (that’s just a sort option for using date modified rather than my order date field). The orders stuff is also in it’s own form category which is the “Orders” heading at the very top above the “Orders” form (a little confusing but makes sense tome).

tl;dr: saved searches are powerful!

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[Stephan Heribert]

Thanks Sam for encouraging me to complain about my feeling of discomfort with TF. I still haven’t made the change from Bento to TF. In Bento I had ONE window with all of my databases (called libraries), each contained dozens of lists I could handle separately by creating “sub-libraries”. As it appears complicated to handle in TF, I use it less or not at all.

Example: As a musician I work in many projects handling titles. By managing about 200 titles, I want to recall lists with titles that belong to a certain project, certain length etc. – that was so easily done in bento. The time I spend to find out, I prefer managing it by fumbling by hand.

[Stephan Heribert]

Thanks, there were 30 records only, I could repair it after I found a backup in CCC from 2 months ago.

But there was no “undo” working and changing the type gave zero result. Now I enabled “backup when quit” in preverences.

I’m not really in tap forms, it’s not handy like bento was.

[Brendan]

We’re figuring this out via email, so lets just continue on there. In this case, there were bad characters in your Bento generated .json file causing the errors. I’ve replied to you already.

[Bruno Pauvarel]

Hi Brendan,
I was able to partially solve this problem thanks to the direct contact by mail. It seems that the problems come from some duplicate field names in the Bento template package. I was able to correctly import a template but another bento template still resists because I have difficulties to edit the .xml file. I get errors like “NSXMLparsererrordomain error 512”, Line 1226 column:22 ?
Thanks and regards.
Bruno

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[Bruno Pauvarel]

I tried to import a big Bento 4 template (1218 forms for 20 Gb) but nothing happens and the screen remains blocked on “0 on 1218” for hours. Is this normal ?

[GLS]

Hello,
I am pretty new to Tapforms, coming from extensive use of MS Access on PC, some SQL, and minor Bento and Filemaker experience on Mac.

I am going around in circles without finding a way to solve a problem in a relational database that I am designing for billing consultations.

Here is the basic design:
One form (Clients) contains the client information.
This is linked to a Form (Consultations) in a 1-many fashion as a client can have multiple consultations, and this works perfectly.
I created a form (Invoice) to send out the bills. It links 1 to many to the Consultations form and has a linked table for the consultations records.

The Clients form links 1-many to Invoice as a client can have multiple invoices.

I would like to generate invoices for a client for consultations that are not yet billed (Billed field unchecked in the consultation record).

Currently in the Client form I can add an invoice, but the linked Consultations table in the Invoice form stays empty (I can however manually add the records).

Is there a way to automatically displaying the records of unbilled consultations for the client in the Invoice consultation table?

Ideally it would be grand to update to “checked” the billed consultation for the client upon finishing the invoice…

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,

GLS

[Brendan]

Hi Glenda,

Yes, Tap Forms can import from Bento.

There’s specific instructions here for that:

https://www.tapforms.com/help-mac/5.3/en/topic/bento-template-importer

So as Daniel said, you don’t have to re-enter all your data. Tap Forms will do it all for you from your Bento database.

If you aren’t able to export your Bento data as .bentoTemplate files, you can email me a backup of your Bento database and I can do it for you. Send to support@tapforms.com

[Daniel Leu]

You should be able to import your Bento database into TapForms. So there is no need to reenter all your records. Did you try that?

Migrating from Bento to Tap Forms Mac

BTW, usually it is better to open a new thread when posing a question.

Cheers, Daniel
---
See https://lab.danielleu.com/tapformspro/ for scripts and tips&tricks

[Glenda Finley]

I am trying to create a file for my recipes. I was using Bento for this but that is no longer supported. I have created fields that are sufficient for my needs but now I can not figure out how to populate those files with my over 400 entries. Can anyone help? I should say that I do not know HTML so all I have done is draw the boxes for my recipes, main ingredient, second ingredients, directions, etc. How can I get the words to populate? There may be a command, but I do not know it.

Glenda F.

[Brendan]

Hi Philip,

I just saw that your reply from September 10th was marked as spam. I unspammed it. Must have been because of the link. But to answer the question, even though Tap Forms does import Bento files and yes, Bento uses SQLite, Tap Forms doesn’t read the Bento SQLite database file. It relies on Bento first exporting a .bentoTemplate file which is a folder that contains a Template.xml file, a bunch of .json files, and a bunch of media files. Tap Forms reads the Template.xml file to get the form structure. Then reads the .json files to get all the data and matches that data up with the media files and imports all of that.

So Tap Forms would still not be able to read the SQLite files generated by the FileMaker migration tool. Unless it can also export CSV files.