Every summer, our team enjoys traveling to DevCon, FileMaker’s developer conference. As a FileMaker Platinum Partner, we attend the conference to build on our skills, meet with clients, and share our knowledge.
In fact, a handful of team members are presenting and sharing their insights with attendees this year:
Advanced Training
Bob Bowers, President
Monday, 8/5, 9:00-4:30
Learn advanced techniques and strategies for creating high-performing, scalable FileMaker custom apps. Explore tools and techniques to make you a more efficient and confident developer. This session includes a combination of demonstrations and hands-on exercises. Topics include: Perform Script on Server, ExecuteSQL, virtual lists, Insert From URL, custom functions, Script Triggers, JSON, advanced scripting, calculations, and layout techniques. Demo files and resources will be available so you can continue to practice and learn on your own after class.
Server Monitoring with Zabbix
Mislav Kos, Senior Technical Project Lead & Wim Decorte, Senior Technical Solution Architect
Tuesday, 8/6, 1:30-2:30
The removal of the Statistics chart from the admin console has left a lot of developers scrambling to come up with alternate ways of monitoring the health of their deployments.
The free Zabbix software provides a way to do this and much more. You can track a variety of server metrics for one or multiple servers and configure alerts or other actions to be triggered by certain events; e.g. if free disk space falls below 10%.
Data Modeling – Hands-on Lab
Martha Zink, Senior Technical Project Lead
Tuesday, 8/6, 1:30-3:45
The choices you make when organizing your information determine what your app can show to the user and what your app can do. This lab will give you information and experience in creating a strong foundation for your app. You’ll start outside of FileMaker: learning key concepts about data modeling, planning out an app by identifying entities, and creating a diagram of the data model. Once you’ve done the planning, you’ll learn to translate that plan into FileMaker Pro Advanced, giving you a strong architectural foundation for your app. This lab will give you a chance to tackle data modeling hands-on, so bring your laptop, your brain, and your questions.
Detective Boot Camp: Debugging Best Practices
Makah Encarnacao, Technical Project Lead
Wednesday, 8/7, 11:00-12:00
Debugging is like being a detective in a crime movie… where you are also the murderer”
Filipe Fortes
In this session, we will explore how to set up your scripts for debugging success. We will take a deep dive into how to debug using FileMaker’s Script Debugger and Data Viewer. Finally, we will explore some common “crimes” and how to expose the culprit in each scenario. These examples will explore different concepts to enhance your debugging arsenal. After attending this session, you will have sharpened your detective skills, and hopefully dwindled your destructive tendencies.
From Clutter to Clarity: Redesigning Layouts for Improved User Experience
Mark Baum, Senior Application Developer
Wednesday, 8/7, 2:45-3:45
Are your interfaces easy to interpret and intuitive to use, or are they so complex that they require explanation and special training?
In this session, I’ll take a series of cluttered real-world legacy layouts and show in time-lapse fashion how I would redesign them for an improved user experience.
Along the way, I’ll discuss design principles and patterns. I’ll also demonstrate FileMaker-specific skills such as working with styles and themes, leveraging specific object properties to indicate interactivity, and customizing icons.
I’ll also show the same layouts as re-envisioned by several other designers within the FileMaker Community.
Come to this session to find out what Zabbix can do and how to set it up with your FileMaker solution deployment.
Big Or Small: How to Contribute to The Community
Makah Encarnacao, Technical Project Lead
Thursday, 8/8, 11:15-11:30
You’re great at your job. You work hard; you solve problems day in and day out. You’ve learned a thing or two over the years, and you’d like to share your talents beyond your job – to contribute to the community. Perhaps you’d like to share your pearls of technical wisdom. Perhaps you’d like to be a great mentor – like the mentor you had early in your career. Perhaps you’d like to help with a social cause you believe in. In this session, we’ll talk about the different ways you can add to the FileMaker Community – and why you might find that you get more than you give.
Soliant.cloud: Taking FileMaker Hosting to the Next Level
Bill Heizer, Senior Technical Architect
Thursday, 8/8, 1:30-2:00
In this session, I’ll share insights on how to migrate your FileMaker application to the cloud. See how bridging FileMaker, IT Infrastructure, and Amazon Web Services through Soliant.cloud can serve as an ideal solution.
We’ll examine the components of a platform as a service to support a rich FileMaker deployment in AWS without limits. Learn about instance builds and monitoring of both services’ availability as well as the costs of leveraging AWS APIs, maintenance, security roles and policies. We’ll explore SSL, FileMaker plugins, networking, API access, backups, disaster recovery, server side Scripting, and administrative access. See how launching Soliant.cloud can increase your application’s capabilities.
Come Visit Our Booth
We’re sponsoring the conference again this year, so make sure to check out our booth too. You can meet our top developers and consultants.
We’re looking forward to the event! Will we see you there?
