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Blogs

Featured Entries

A Conversation About '2 Factor Authentication'

By Josh Ormond February 8, 2016

[ Edit: 3/16/2016 - With the help of some other people, we have been able to recover, or recreate some of the original images from original thread. ] Security is always a big topic when it involves data, or people, or possessions. Recently, over on the FileMaker Community, there was a very beneficial discussion regarding security. Unfortunately, that discussion was the victim of a necessary action...and was deleted. It was deleted, because the discussion was tied to a video that, as was det
- 1 comment
- 5,557 views
Hacking Your Own FileMaker Platform Solutions

By Steven H. Blackwell April 7, 2016

Hacking Your Own FileMaker Platform Solutions Should FileMaker Platform developers mount hacking attacks on their own solutions? At first glance, this may seem an odd question. But I believe that the answer is “Yes, we should.” Consider this. As developers we see our solutions from a totally different perspective than Threat Agents see them. Without practicing our own hacking skills, we can become blind to the vulnerabilities a Threat Agent can exploit to compromise the Confidentiality
- 1 comment
- 5,515 views

Multilingual Solutions

I've talked to other developers, read articles and even attended presentations on how to create multilingual FileMaker solutions. I've always thought to myself... "I'll never have to do this myself" so I only half listened. Now I have a client who needs multilingual field labels, titles, button text, tooltips and placeholders. I'm going to walk readers through the process of determining the best solution for my particular client so you can learn the way I did. You may have to adjust your approac

John Mark Osborne

March 18, 2021

Successful UI Design - Part 2

FileMaker themes are simply a collection of the popular CSS standards plus a few extra attributes which are FileMaker specific. Each element on your FileMaker layouts is defined by these CSS settings. They can be seen when extracting them from the clipboard, and if you know the right location to retrieve and store them, can be defined by any enthusiastic developer. When FileMaker, now Claris, first introduced themes they likely had the intention of allowing users and/or third parties to create

FileMaker Magazine

March 15, 2021

When 2 is greater than 10

Today we’re going to take a quick look at a potential “gotcha” that can crop up when doing numeric comparisons. Jason DeLooze and I discussed the general behavior back in 2011 (Space Is The Place), but this time around I want to focus on one particular set of circumstances where the problem can arise. At… Continue reading When 2 is greater than 10 View the full article

Kevin Frank

March 14, 2021

Successful UI Design

How easy is it for you to design the user interface of your FileMaker database? Are there any tips you have which makes the process easier? If so, then I would love to hear them! In this video, I'm providing you with the best information I have about a successful UI design process. It's the opening video to a deep dive about how themes actually work within FileMaker. I start with a blank layout and go over the major areas of what I consider when starting the design of a new database or a re-ski

FileMaker Magazine

March 11, 2021

Video-sharing Website Lights Up Web

Gospel-Inspired Web Community Sees Light of Day eXcelisys Sets Up Video-Sharing Platform for Christian Musicians Imagine a cozy, happy space on the internet dedicated to positivity, to encouraging people to be the best versions of themselves. Imagine a platform devoted entirely to providing Christian musicians and writers with a place to share their work. Imagine “Massive Miracle” – a new Gospel-inspired web community launched by brothers Bedcy and Rops Previl. Born in Haiti, Bedcy came

eXcelisys

March 9, 2021

Fun with SQL Joins and Currency Formatting

Demo file: sql-join-fun-etc.zip requires FM 18 or later. Recently I was asked to create a mini-report combining data from a pair of related tables via ExecuteSQL. This provided an opportunity to think about SQL joins, and also to come up with a way to apply currency formatting to dollar amounts in the SQL query result,… Continue reading Fun with SQL Joins and Currency Formatting View the full article

Kevin Frank

February 27, 2021

Catching Duplicates with Validation

One of the best feelings for any database developer is knowing that duplicate data simply can't sneak into your solution. You've got clean data such that when you search for a specific email address you know there's only one and it belongs to the right entity. In the associated video and sample file you'll get all the details for how you can use FileMaker's Unique value validation option. You'll see how you can prevent FileMaker from showing it's annoying dialog box which uses the name of the f

FileMaker Magazine

February 19, 2021

FileMaker Integrations

FileMaker Slack Integration

With a simple and robust API, Slack is quickly integrated into custom apps of all types, and FileMaker is no exception! Our guide will show you how to send messages to your Slack workspace from FileMaker workflows. Includes a video and a sample file. Read the full article here.

dbservices in FileMaker Integrations

February 16, 2021

Why then How

I once asked someone on the forums why they wanted a particular solution. I did this because they were asking for a technique that seemed like a lot of unnecessary work. I was attempting to provide a better answer that met their true needs within the abilities of FileMaker. In other words, why give a man a fish when he really wants a fishing pole. The response I received was, "Why is not relevant to how." Wow! This guy couldn't be any more wrong. Such a shortsighted approach to programming is no

John Mark Osborne

February 16, 2021

Securing QR Barcodes

Pretty much all over the world you'll find technology which can scan barcodes. Smartphones with cameras just waiting to scan either their very first, or even their 1000th barcode scan. With just over a decade since the first iPhone came out, it's pretty hard to not find a use case where a barcode can help you retire some antiquated manual process. Barcodes can be used almost anywhere to make faster and/or easier solutions. Given that FileMaker Go supports all major barcode types, you simply nee

FileMaker Magazine

February 11, 2021

Case Sensitive Searching

Out of the box, FileMaker is a really easy solution for inputing data and simply finding the results you want when searching that data. There are, however, times when you need to break away from FileMaker's "solve all" solution of case insensitive searching. Times where you simply want to present some data within your user interface - without setting up extra relationships or fields. Or, those times when you simply need to search based on the case sensitivity of the data within a field. In ord

FileMaker Magazine

February 5, 2021

A Bit More about Proof+Geist

By now you’ve all heard the earth-shaking news: the merger between the Proof Group and Geist Interactive. The new company, Proof+Geist (the ‘+’ is silent, by the way), brings together the best of The Proof Group and Geist Interactive. All that you know about those separate entities are now as one. Now led by Ernest […] The post A Bit More about Proof+Geist appeared first on Geist Interactive. View the full article

Todd Geist

February 5, 2021

Something is Happening here at Geist Interactive

Hello there 🙂 We have some exciting news to share with you. Geist Interactive has merged with the Proof Group to form Proof+Geist (the + is silent). This is an acceleration of our decades-long mission of empowering people to do great things, a mission we have always shared with the people at the Proof Group. […] The post Something is Happening here at Geist Interactive appeared first on Geist Interactive. View the full article

Todd Geist

February 2, 2021

Performance Tuning

FileMaker Performance Lab Meeting January 2021

On January 19, 2021 we met online for the second time to discuss my FileMaker performance lab testing results. For the case you either missed the meeting, or attended and want to recall some details, a recording of the meeting is now available... In the meeting I talked about the impact of record size on performance being often higher than impact of any other factor. As a surprise I also showed my first results of testing actual simultaneous clients connecting to FileMaker Server

HOnza in Performance Tuning

January 31, 2021

Examples & Tutorials

Generate Scalable PDF Barcodes Purely with Calculations

Have you ever dreamed of being able to generate high quality scalable barcodes in FileMaker solely using calculations, with no plug-ins, fast enough, in a way compatible with server-side scripts, FileMaker Go and FileMaker WebDirect, and completely free of charge? Your dream has just come true... There are various solutions for barcodes already available, from special barcode fonts, through Brian Dunning’s custom functions using rotated underscore as a symbol primitive, various web se

HOnza in Examples & Tutorials

January 31, 2021

Native Web Scraping with JavaScript

Some of my most favorite moments, when working with technology, are when you see the result of a few lines of code do what used to take hours and hours of work. Seeing the fruits of knowledge labor which replaces a lot of manual labor. It's glorious! The example I'm mentally referencing is any time you need to extract some content from a web page and it's literally SITTING RIGHT THERE in front of your face and you end up using your precious time doing the good old copy and paste. Every day the

FileMaker Magazine

January 22, 2021

File IDs, Table IDs and Field-Level Schema

Demo file: file ids, table ids and field-level schema.zip (requires FM 18 or later) INTRODUCTION Recently I was asked to help document a FileMaker solution by creating and populating a “schema” table as per the above screen shot. One of the requirements was to programmatically determine internal ID numbers for the file and for the… Continue reading File IDs, Table IDs and Field-Level Schema View the full article

Kevin Frank

January 19, 2021

Card Window Progress Bars ( updated )

Who doesn't want to know how long something takes? It's not like we, as the busy bees we are, have all the time in the world - right? Well, how about some convenient progress information. One of the most common procedures within all of computing is to cycle or iterate over a set of something. In FileMaker, this comes in the form of records. A record loop is one of the most common things you'll ever do within FileMaker. Setting a field value to something else across a range of records? You'll l

FileMaker Magazine

January 14, 2021

FileMaker Integrations

FileMaker Sage Intacct Integration

Double data entry is often the enemy of companies that use both FileMaker and Sage Intacct. In this article, we will demonstrate how you can eliminate the hassle of manually copying the information by integrating your FileMaker solution with Sage Intacct. Includes video and sample file. Read the full article here.

dbservices in FileMaker Integrations

January 12, 2021

Execute FileMaker Data API

FileMaker Pro provides a variety of methods for extracting your data from its database. From memory, we have standard relationships and calculated concatenations, the Copy All Records script step, scripted data loops and using the ExecuteSQL function. In FileMaker 19, we're provided with yet one more method for pulling data out of the system. The Execute FileMaker Data API script step allows us to use what was formerly available only from outside of FileMaker Pro via a url. Now, within our scri

FileMaker Magazine

January 7, 2021

FileMaker add-on Found Set: Changing the Limit and Offset

The Claris FileMaker Add-ons, released just a few updates ago, are one of the components that make up the Open Platform release. They’re useful in solving problems for FileMaker developers. Calendars and Kanban boards are popping up all over the community. They’re not without their issues, however, but most of what’s there we can control. […] The post FileMaker add-on Found Set: Changing the Limit and Offset appeared first on Geist Interactive. View the full article

Todd Geist

January 6, 2021

Twenty-Twenty in Review

A lot has happened in 2020 but I'm not hear to preach about the pandemic, the presidential race or George Floyd. A ton has transpired in the FileMaker market too! Probably the biggest news is JavaScript and FileMaker living in perfect harmony. But, I'll also pontificate about quarterly releases, Claris Engage, public speaking and even publishing in the FileMaker market. All of these subjects have come to exist or have changed drastically in the 2020 FileMaker market. So... sit back and enjoy th

John Mark Osborne

January 5, 2021

Server Side Importing

There's a great feeling about writing functional code when it's something you can rely on. You know it's just going to work. Which, for some import routines, doesn't always feel this way. Sometimes the import may fail or you can't figure out how to make it work. Columns may get renamed, they may be shifted around and vary or you may be importing from multiple different providers. If you're consolidating data from multiple sources or you have a situation where you need to manipulate the data bef

FileMaker Magazine

December 31, 2020