Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       The Resource module of PD Place provides a great respository for documents, videos and web sites that can enhance their professional development. An item added to the resources of PD Place can be restricted to public or private users, but in general your employees will have full access to all of the content. It is also possible to link specific resources to any number of in-services via the in-service detail screen. If you do this, then users who view the ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       You don’t have to take it from me.   A quick google search of the terms, “professional development” and “student achievement” will provide a profusion of scholarly articles that discuss the merits of teacher professional development and the direct correlation between it and student achievement.  We all know that staff excel when they possess the skills and knowledge to fulfill their role as educational thought leaders and students excel when they are ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       There are times when things look like they are in chaos, the details become so overwhelming that the larger picture gets lost – and so does the project. It is common for people to go in to a project with amazing visions in their heads, and all the great things their new silver bullet will do to fix their business – and then reality sets in when their team just can’t put their vision in to action. This is not a failure of the vision, but the method through ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       PD Place will streamline your professional development programs and save your organization valuable time and money, but that’s not all!  Did you know that you can use PD Place to generate a revenue stream for your organization?  In this blog, I outline a few different ways of how you can utilize PD Place to create a new source of income for your company and establish your organization as an industry leader in professional development.  With PD Place, your ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 9 – 15 minutes       Over the years, there have been a number of different file formats that the various versions of FileMaker Pro have used.  Currently, we at CoreSolutions Software Inc. are only supporting the .fp7 file format which pertains to FileMaker Pro versions 7 through 11.  If you’re using one of the earlier file formats in your database system, I would highly encourage you to upgrade.  There are of course many reasons to upgrade, and these reasons range from ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       The leaves are falling One by one Summer’s over And school’s begun It was just about this time last year that I wrote a blog  on “Back to school once again”.   And here we are a year later.  How time flies!!!!!   Once again, I had my two kids (well teenagers) stand on the front step for pictures on the first day of school.   As in past years they did so to please me (albeit reluctantly).   It was a sad moment for me, as this will be the last ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       PD Place provides a number of search features to aid end users in finding the in-services of interest to them. All of these search methods display their results on what is called the Search Result screen. There are a number of preferences that can be used to customize this screen to your own environment. This blog will look at some of the these preferences in a little more detail. These preferences can be found in the “Class Search & Display – ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Yesterday in Toronto CoreSolutions co-hosted a FileMaker Go briefing with FileMaker, Inc. I would like to say thank you to Keith Robinson, Mia Roop, and in particular Matt O’Dell who had a splendid presentation and gave us a thorough demonstration of many of the features of FileMaker Go. Thank you also to our own Steve Hearn, who developed a FileMaker Go ‘Sales Module’ that we demonstrated at the event. During the session attendees saw how other ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 6 – 9 minutes       I know you’re probably thinking, “There’s nothing Zen about managing professional development.  It’s stressful, time-consuming and when last minute changes arise due to classroom fumigation, it can feel quite maddening!”  What if I were to tell you that there is a way to run professional development programs at your Higher Learning Institution that is efficient, effective and will leave you feeling at ease?  The purpose of this blog is to elucidate ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes       There is an optional field in the in-service detail screen which by default, is labeled as  the “Special Event ID” . This field can be used in conjunction with the “Email Attendee List” report as an effective tool in managing some unique situations. One application is where you wish to extract managerial information about the attendance associated with a number of unique in-services.  The special event ID and Email Attendee List ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       I make lists. I like lists. They keep me organized and help me prioritize my work. They also help me track where my time is going. Recently I have found myself focusing a great deal on my lists. Crossing things off my list has become a large priority. Just yesterday I crossed 6 things off my to do list while at work. I really like the sense of accomplishment that comes from taking my highlighter and marking a list item. Yesterday I noticed that as I was working ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       *Note: Please click images to enlarge The Instructor Statistics Report in PD Place is a great tool to show you how many in-services your instructors are teaching and their average satisfaction based on post-in-service evaluations. In order to take advantage of this report you will need to ensure you make use of the evaluation feature for each in-service and direct participants to fill out the evaluation after each in-service they attend. You can even block the printing of ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       A few months back, I wrote a post about FileMaker’s built in PHP Site Assistant. It’s a handy tool for creating simple sites, but I find it a bit limiting when it comes to creating more complex sites; so I usually tend to write websites in PHP from scratch. It’s actually been possible to do this for a while: around the time FileMaker Pro 5.5 was released, Chris Hansen wrote the first version of FX.php, which was the first solution I found that allowed you ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Every time I attend a conference or trade show I always learn something new. In most cases people will come away with lots of ideas and useful information that will help them improve themselves both professionally and as an individual. Sometimes what you see and hear at a conference reaffirms what you are currently doing or gives you that extra push to implement something new. At a recent education conference, the presenter was showing a new system that his IT ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       CoreSolutions is pleased to offer our own in-house developed FileMaker Training Courses as well as the FileMaker Training Series (FTS)modules developed by FileMaker Inc. The courses we offer range from the absolute novice with FileMaker such as how to use the basic features of a FileMaker database to building eye catching charts and reports. The FTS modules are designed to cover all aspects and best practices when developing in FileMaker Pro and are highly ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       The benefits of business blogs are numerous. They are a great tool for communicating with customers and for employees to share their expertise on a subject. They work well to build additional web traffic with little direct costs associated. They create a community and grab attention. For these reasons it is no wonder that business blogs are sweeping across the internet. My topic today is a little bit of an aside for myself – as well as offering some (hopefully) ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Registration restrictions can help you manage in-service attendance to ensure the right employees are able to register for events and in-services. First you need to find the in-service you would like to add registration restrictions to and click on the pencil icon under the admin column to enter the in-service admin portal Once you are in the admin portal you will need to click on the “Edit Registration Restrictions” link.   Now you can start to create ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       In version 3.8 of PD Place, new functionality was added to the Qualification modules called “Qualification Clock Hour Rules”. If you do not currently track clock hours, I suggest you continue to read this document since there are preferences which allow you to change the clock hour labeling so that you could transform the tracking from clock hours to points, credits or any other category that is applicable to your organization. This new feature ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Situations can arise where you need to have a “tough conversation”. It’s a conversation you don’t want to have but may be necessary.  It could be in your personal or work life, but one thing is certain, it’s not an easy task.  Weather you need to tell that client their project won’t be finished on time or you need to tell your roommate you accidentally dropped that special vase her grandma gave her while dusting, it’s difficult to bring yourself ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       We’ve all been there at one time or another.  With confidence we go and make a change and voila, it looks beautiful.  After we celebrate our prowless, a few days later we go over what we did and notice that something just isn’t right.  Why are all my people at the wrong location?  Why are they assigned to the wrong school? At times like these, the existence of a good backup and recovery strategy is paramount.  In the case above, the creation of a ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       With each new version of PD-Place, many new and exciting features are added. These features range from minor adjustments to large scale changes. How does the PD-Place team determine what new features are added? When the PD-Place team receives a new feature request, the request is recorded in a list of changes. This list of changes is reviewed by the PD-Place team between releases. If the request is a feature that many clients will find useful, the feature is ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Last month I read a great blog post about “Positivity in your Workspace” that you can read here.  It got me thinking about my own workspace and how I can create a “positive” atmosphere.  The blog suggests having pictures or reminders up about your “whys”.  Your “whys” are things that are most important in your life and the goals you want to achieve.  Also, you should have inspirational quotes and iPod playlists that are sure to get you pumped ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       Criticism. We’ve all faced it in one way or another. But what happens when social media is involved? With the recent logos unveiled by Gap (and we saw how well that went) and Starbucks, it’s been interesting to see how companies are managing the firestorms brought on by Twitter, Facebook, blogs and more. While fake Twitter accounts have popped up to add some levity to the discourse, it seems companies are starting to understand that communication is a ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       (Source: formrouter.com) Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a very relaxing and fun-filled holiday. The time off was certainly welcome as it gave me time to think about many of the everyday items that we use; items, for some, that haven’t changed for many years. The thing that came to the forefront for me was the use of traditional paper-based forms. Paper-based forms, originally designed by hand and now commonly designed in many popular software applications ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       When FileMaker Inc. released FileMaker Go for iOS 4 devices in July, it changed things for developers. All of a sudden we had a new platform for which to develop, and one that has unique opportunities and capabilities. It also left many of us scratching our collective heads after we played with it for a while and realized that using the same layouts designed for the desktop version of FileMaker Pro wouldn’t always be practical. I say scratching our heads ... Read More