Programmatically change default switchboard at startup?

[romeo_echo]

Hi there, I'm a first-time poster after finding many helpful answers on this forum...

I'm looking for a way to programmatically change the Default Switchboard via vb code.

My idea is, I want an autoexec macro to do a quick lookup to see which switchboard a user should get, then set that switchboard as default, then open that switchboard form.



Right now what I do is I have a separate copy of my front-end database for each different switchboard, which I think is kind of sloppy and can cause confusion. I'd much rather have just one front end that selected the correct switchboard at startup time.

Is this possible?

Thanks,

Romeo

[rpeare]

do you have your own security built into your database? i.e. they log in with a user name/pw? or are you looking to use their network username and determine which form they are supposed to get?

In either case you're going to have to build a table that has all the possible user names and which form they are allowed to see at startup and open that specific form

[romeo_echo]

Yes, that part's easy, I'm using the fOSUserName() function to find out who I'm dealing with (i.e. network login name), then I can lookup that up in a table to find which switchboard they should get. I just need to change the default switchboard programmatically or else the switchboards don't work properly.

I know I could probably design my own menu forms and subforms and then use those, but the switchboards are kind of dead stupid easy and convenient. I just don't think they were designed with multiple, initial switchboards in mind. If I can change the default switchboard programmatically it would solve that problem.

Thanks

[rpeare]

create a form called 'startupdecider' or something like that, make it the default opening form of your database.

I the ON OPEN event of that form run through your decision making process, open the appropriate form, close the 'startupdecider' form. To my knowledge you can't run code on startup before the database starts but you can trick it by doing it this way.

[romeo_echo]

That's a pretty good method...

I've actually got it already working: the autoexec macro calls a function which looks up the username and returns the startup form name for that user, and then it opens that form.

The main issue is that you need "normal forms", you can't use actual Switchboards. I was hoping to keep using the switchboards that I had and just programmatically change the default Switchboard.

Actually now that I think about it, I'm sure you could programmatically change the default switchboard by just getting into the "Switchboard Items" table and moving the "Default" tag under the "Argument" column. But it would probably be easier to just get away from Switchboards all together...

Thanks anyway!