Meet Claris FileMaker 2023 with Claris Product Managers Rick Kalman & Ronnie Rios
Doug Wallis, Claris FileMaker product manager, and Ronnie Rios, Claris Connect product owner, join the Chicago Area FileMaker Developers Association (CAFDA) to introduce Claris FileMaker 2023. They discuss the performance, scale, and reliability improvements across the platform and demonstrate some of the new features—including the new Trigger Claris Connect Flow script step. Watch the recording of their presentation and Q&A here.
Introducing s3.fm by Sully of Mandlebrot LLC
August 6, 2021 — Since 2006, AWS S3 has been the industry standard for programmable cloud storage. It’s fast, cheap, flexible, reliable, secure and available around the world. If you’ve ever watched Netflix, played Minecraft, looked at Pintrest or Reddit, you’ve used S3. If you need to share files, an S3 bucket is where you want to be. In this meeting, Sully of Mandlebrot LLC, introduced a tool that will make the superpowers of AWS S3 available to every FileMaker developer, regardless of skill level.
s3.fm is a no-code tool for using your FileMaker container data with AWS S3. There’s nothing for you to learn or maintain: just copy-paste one variable and one url into a two line script and let s3.fm do all the heavy lifting. Even the newest developers can have their container data in S3 in under an hour. There are no plugins, no coding and no upload limits, just simplicity.
If you’re a more advanced developer who’s familiar with REST APIs, you can also use your s3.fm API Key to call our growing list of public endpoints. Do things like /upload, /makePublic, /preSign, /copy, and /delete your files. If we have time, we’ll also pop the hood on s3.fm to discuss how to build stateless, serverless microservices.
Sully walks through the process of creating your own private AWS S3 bucket. If you’re interested in coding along with Sully, make sure you’ve signed up for AWS before before watching this video of the August 6, 2021 Chicago Area FileMaker Developers Association (CAFDA) meeting:
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/create-and-activate-aws-account/
Learn more at:
https://mandelbrotllc.com
https://aws.s3.fm/
FileMaker Deployment Strategies
April 2, 2021 — Mislav Kos, Technical Solution Architect, shares strategic FileMaker deployment methods.
An Introduction to join::table
February 5, 2021 — Have you ever wondered how you can use your FileMaker skills to give back to the community? join::table might be the answer…
Makah Encarnacao of Soliant Consulting walks through success stories from join::table, the non-profit she co-founded that connects pro bono developers with non-profits. She also discusses join::table’s latest initiative, diversitable, a program aiming to increase diversity in tech through mentoring and training. Makah then demos FileMaker apps that help diversitable function.
Beth Murillo, a diversitable committee member, then demos a resume building app she created in FileMaker to help diversitable participants build their own resumes.
Finally Vanessa Costanzo of NaviCu, also of the diversitable team, wraps up with exciting updates from Women Innovating Together.
Advanced FileMaker Techniques
January 11, 2021 — Ross Johnson, Senior Application Developer at Soliant Consulting returns to share some of the cool FileMaker tricks he has been working on. Regular CAFDA attendees have been privileged to experience Ross’s creative solutions to FileMaker challenges in person and, now Ross’s ideas can be shared by all
Download the files that Ross demonstrated during the meeting, which include:
- Multi-page PDFs from text blob: Trick to get giant text blobs to print to multiple pages
- Find in page: UI feature to search found set and jump to result
- Checkbox selector: UI feature to select multiple records
- Fuzzy search feature: UI feature to search records and display results even for non-exact matches or misspelled search criteria.
- More dynamic PDF reports: Alternative method for creating PDFs allowing for tighter control on the content displayed on the page. (E.g., Display records from multiple tables on same page, insert page break anywhere)
Mandelbrot PBX: FileMaker and the Twilio Programmable Voice API by Sully
November 6, 2020 — With the pandemic making work from home the norm, most traditional voice communication systems come up short. Many FileMaker businesses are looking for ways to integrate voice service into their solutions and for those of us who love code, Twilio makes that much easier. Twilio’s Programmable Voice API allows developers to build voice functionality into our applications without having to learn how the publicly switched telephone network is wired. By using webhooks, Insert from URL script steps and a well planned relationship graph, we developers can help our users take advantage of the best voice communications tools available without leaving FileMaker.
CAFDA regular Dave “Sully” Sullivan (Mandelbrot LLC) will be leading the discussion by introducing the Twilio Programmable Voice API and a newly released FileMaker addon, Mandelbrot’s Public Branch Exchange (aka “PBX”). Using PBX as a demo file, Sully will show just a few of the ways that Twilio and FileMaker can be integrated to help your users get the most out of their FileMaker solutions.
Some of the demonstrations Sully has lined up for CAFDA:
- Avoid robocalls on your business lines
- Register a VOIP phone to work with Twilio
- Route inbound calls to several destinations
- Use FileMaker records to enhance your Caller ID
- Create an inbound call queue for your call center
- Share a phone line with a coworker in another state
- Use business caller ID instead of your personal number
- Create an IVR phone tree (dial 1 for sales, 2 for service)
- Join a conference call as a coach (only one participant can hear you)
- Use artificial intelligence to keep calls from going directly to voicemail
Referenced referral link: www.twilio.com/referral/rLEJsS
The New Execute FileMaker Data API Script Step
September 18, 2020 — Just introduced in FileMaker 19, the new Execute FileMaker Data API script step offers us another way to gather data from our FileMaker apps. Like its big brother, the Data API, this script step returns data in JSON format, as a JSON array. Unlike the Data API, this runs directly in your app using the FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Go, or WebDirect clients. This will even run on a local file that is not hosted. Join us as we examine how it works and explore different scenarios where you might use it.
Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You — FileMaker and Webhooks
September 4, 2020 — Sometimes your FileMaker solution needs to receive data in a format set by the sender and the sender insists that it needs a URL to send it to. How do you tackle that? In this webinar, Wim Decorte, Senior Technical Architect at Soliant Consulting shows why you’ll need a webhook to do this and why it’s really not that scary. In fact he claims it’s actually a lot of fun. That’s Wim for you.
FileMaker iOS App SDK
August 14, 2020 – With the FileMaker iOS App SDK, you can deploy a custom FileMaker application using existing enterprise deployment methods and use custom launch icons, all without having to install FileMaker Go on your iOS device. In another one of our virtual CAFDA meetings, Matt Hintz, Senior Application Developer at Soliant Consulting, discusses the process for setting up your app in Xcode, and the challenges of maintaining your application for mobile users.
Adopting Cloud Infrastructure with the FileMaker Platform
July 10, 2020 – Considering the many options in the shifting landscape of cloud providers and offerings, how does the FileMaker Platform fit into your cloud strategy? Mike Duncan, Senior AWS Cloud Engineer at Soliant Consulting, examines and explores strategies for cloud adoption and how to evaluate and plan for cloud migration. He also presents best practices that can be applied to the FileMaker Platform. He shows some behind the scenes infrastructure we have invested in at Soliant and demos several ways to expand on Cloud technology and in a FileMaker deployment.
FileMaker & HIPAA
June 19, 2020 – Healthcare is one of the highest growth industries in the world, but are you prepared to support it? Perhaps you’ve contemplated projects that require HIPAA compliance, but aren’t sure what that will require of you and your development team. Maybe you’re familiar with HIPAA, but not the implications of HITECH, or you’re uncomfortable with the prospect of expanding access to compliant systems for clients who are now working remotely.
With nearly two decades of experience developing for regulated environments, Heather McCue, Lead FileMaker Developer at Harmonic Software Production Studios, discussed the obligations and requirements associated with HIPAA-compliant projects. She also shared compliance-specific techniques, best practices, and other considerations for development and supporting compliance across multiple environments.
Meet Claris FileMaker 19
June 5, 2020 – Claris FileMaker 19 is Claris’ first open platform, allowing developers to extend the platform with shareable add-ons, making it even faster for anyone to build modern apps.
FileMaker has always enabled developers, at all skill levels, to create custom apps to improve their workplaces. Now, developers can extend the platform using AI and JavaScript and even package their work as plug-and-play add-ons others can use.
Create in a snap. Extend the platform. Build smarter apps.
Introducing Carafe v3
May 15, 2020 – Since its launch last August, Carafe, Soliant’s open source FileMaker JavaScript integration tool, has been undergoing continual development. These improvements have led to easier configuration and deployment, simple upgrade paths, and support for offline libraries. In this webinar, we introduced Carafe v3 and demonstrated how you can easily integrate JavaScript libraries into your FileMaker apps.
What’s in a Name? Naming Conventions in FileMaker
May 1, 2020 – Every day that we develop in FileMaker we are naming scripts, table occurrences, variables, fields and many more. We don’t always take the time to consider how we should name things in structured manner and how this can improve our efficiency as a developer. In this workshop we discussed best practices utilized by our Soliant Consulting team and open a discussion for how others approach this method.
Animated Alerts Using Native FileMaker
April 17, 2020 – As it becomes easier to connect your FileMaker to other systems, it’s even more important to keep your FileMaker UI as impressive as these other systems. Our guest Chris Conger from Recruiting Pro Software shares his own version of toast alert to do toast style animated alerts in native FileMaker.
Integrating FileMaker with Office 365 Using Microsoft Graph API
April 10, 2020 – In this recorded webinar, Soliant Consulting Senior Technical Architect, Wim Decorte demonstrates how to integrate FileMaker and Microsoft Office 365 using the Microsoft Graph API.
