Can we post feature requests?

[Eric de Mildt]

Just new to Tap Forms, after using Filemaker for 25 years for small-business-accounting (self-employed free-lancer).
As Filemaker is getting too expensive, and its iCloud-sync a real mess, I found Tap Forms just as good for my needs. And a really clear and flexible app to work with. Quite astonishing considering the price-tag and the fact it is written by (am I right?) just one person.

Recreating (and improving) my old “system” was quite easy, I’d nearly say “a pleasure” ;-)
I did have to spend a couple of days figuring out new ways for some things, and when and how to use the scripts, but after that importing 20+ years of Filemaker-data went nearly flawless.

That’s why (now I start nagging ;-) I’m a bit disappointed by the lack of several features (and a little mistake) :

– Custom Lay-outs on iPhone version ( As I’m on the road all the time, lack of this makes Tap Form a bit “unusable” for me as I can’t print and send on the go the most important thing: invoices and reminders ;-)
I realize it’s not easy to implement but really would make Tap Forms perfect (for me at least ;-)

– You have to set a default value for empty fields in a formula in order to get a result for a Calculation field. You can’t leave a field empty.
Could there be a solution for this? (at least a possibility to Not Print Empty Fields for example? I had a look at script, did I miss something ?

– And a little “mistake”: the Euro-symbol gets placed behind the number if Field/Currency setting is to Euro, and if OS system’s Region is set to, for example France or Belgium. (This OS Region setting needs to be correct for other apps).
But in real life, we also put € before the number. So it’d be great to have that possibility.

Anyway, keep up the good work!
Eric

[Eric de Mildt]

why is my earlier post marked as spam?

[Eric de Mildt]

why are my posts marked as spam?

[Brendan]

Hi Eric,

I’ve unspammed your post.

Yes, I build Tap Forms alone. Mostly on my couch, in the TV room :). Although in the past I have hired a couple of developers to help me out with some features of Tap Forms, but just for piecemeal stuff here and there.

1. Yes, I agree that custom layouts on iOS would be great. And I know a lot of customers have asked for it. It’s a huge project. But one day (I know I’ve been saying this for a long time), I’ll get to it.

2. You can modify your formula to account for the empty fields so the formula can still be evaluated. Add an IFEMTPY(Field; THEN VALUE; ELSE VALUE) or IFNOTEMPTY(Field; THEN VALUE; ELSE VALUE) check around your fields to give them a default value. For example: IFEMPTY(Quantity; 0; Quantity). This will return 0 if the value of Quantity is empty, otherwise if it’s not empty, it will return the value of the Quantity field. So now your formula is guaranteed to evaluate and you don’t have to set a default value for all your fields referenced by your formula.

3. I’m not actually placing the currency symbol anywhere myself. I ask the operating system to format the number and provide it the current user’s locale. The OS then decides where to place the currency symbol. In cases where you specify your own currency, I just tell the locale what the currency is the user has chosen. The OS then decides how to format the value.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Eric de Mildt]

Hi Brendan, thanks for the quick response!

1. So I guess we we’ll be patient, yet full of hope ;-)

2. Don’t know if it’s realistic to ask, but actually I was looking for a way to not show the 0 values;It’s OK they’re now valued at 0. For example in my invoice I have lots of different quantity fields I fill in when appropriate, but leave blank if not needed. Andt I’d like these 0-valued fields not to show up on my printlayout.
(I could manually choose font-color white for each 0-field on each invoice I want to print, but I’d like to avoid the tinkering ;-)

3. So it’s an Apple thing, ;-) Curious if they’ll respond as quickly as you do ;-)

Thanks!
Eric

[Daniel Leu]

RE #2, if you implement your formula using a field script, then you have more control on the return value. There you can return an empty string instead of a 0.

[Brendan]

You could also use a Calculation field to do this, but return "" instead of 0 if the value is empty, but then you’d also have to use the FORMAT() function to format your result instead of just using the Number Format setting, and set the Result Type of the Calculation field to Text.

[Eric de Mildt]

Hi Daniel and Brendan,

Never thought of that myself of course, and it works ;-)
Thanks for your help !
Eric

[Anthony Davies]

Whilst IOS does not support custom layouts, with bit of careful form design ..it is possible to achieve a reasonable Invoice document direct from phone or iPad.
Example of one of mine.

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[Sam Moffatt]

@anthony-davies that looks really cool!

[Brendan]

Yes! That’s awesome!

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