Welcome To FMForums

Welcome to our community, full of great ideas on developing your FileMaker solutions effectively,
for peer-to-peer support of the FileMaker Platform and related products and services.

Register and join the conversation!

Sign In

or

Sign Up

Blogs

Featured Entries

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
- 5,519 views
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
- 5,559 views

FileMaker Pro Interface design

Over the time I’ve been a developer with Linear Blue I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of different styles of design. Some good, some bad, some very ugly. The trend in FileMaker Pro interfaces has vastly changed over the years, moving from multicoloured and uncoordinated patchwork layouts to fairly sophisticated and simple layout design.... View the full article

Paul de Halle

April 27, 2016

FileMaker Pro Interface design

Over the time I’ve been a developer with Linear Blue I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of different… View the full article

Paul de Halle

April 27, 2016

Virtual List Reporting, part 1

Self-plagiarism alert: to avoid repeatedly referring the reader back to earlier virtual list articles, portions of text from those earlier articles are incorporated here. Welcome to the first installment of a two-part series on producing reports using the virtual list technique, or more properly, collection of techniques. Demo file: VLR-part-1.zip Invented and popularized by Bruce Robertson, virtual lists are […] View the full article

Kevin Frank

April 27, 2016

The FileMaker Platform API’s Are Your Friends, Right?

The FileMaker Platform API’s Are Your Friends, Right? The FileMaker Platform supports integration with a variety of Application Programming Interfaces (API’s), and it has done so for a very long time. These API’s allow FileMaker Platform developers to integrate their solutions with other technologies and applications. This is an incredibly useful capability; indeed, from both technological and business-process standpoints, it is essential. Many FileMaker developers are not aware, howev

Steven H. Blackwell

April 26, 2016

FileMaker iOS SDK - Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the FileMaker iOS App SDK series, in this article I will take you through setting up Xcode and creating a provisioning profile for an iOS device. Click to read more...

JCurrie

April 22, 2016

Hide Calculation Coolness

One of the best new features added to version 13 of FileMaker was the Hide Calculation. Not only does it allow you to hide any layout element as needed, but it provides access to the calc engine for creating any $local or $$GLOBAL variables on a layout-by-layout basis. Knowing that all layout elements pass through the hide calculation before being rendered to the user is also a helpful thing to know. In this video, I’ll walk you through the process of using the Hide calculation in order to make

FileMaker Magazine

April 20, 2016

Button Bar Tricks

No Access? Watch the preview video here. ButtonBarTricks_Pre.mp4 Attachment Size ButtonBarTricks.zip 372.35 KB By Matt Petrowsky When developing within tools like Xcode, the sky’s the limit in terms of providing user interaction and user feedback. Fortunately, with FileMaker, we have access to many of the core interaction elements from iOS. Popovers are a great example of a critical iOS UI element. When FileMaker 13 was released we got the wonderful Popover objects. To follo

FileMaker Magazine

April 11, 2016

Button Bar Tricks

When developing within tools like Xcode, the sky’s the limit in terms of providing user interaction and user feedback. Fortunately, with FileMaker, we have access to many of the core interaction elements from iOS. Popovers are a great example of a critical iOS UI element. When FileMaker 13 was released we got the wonderful Popover objects. To follow that up within FileMaker 14, we got the new objects named Button Bars. These new objects were an enhancement on the ages old Button objects. The co

FileMaker Magazine

April 11, 2016

FileMaker iOS SDK - Part 1

As you may be aware FileMaker Inc have given developers a toolset ("SDK") for creating standalone apps for iPhone and iPad, from FileMaker databases. The process is a little tricky and there're plenty of things to be aware of... Click to Read the full article...

JCurrie

April 10, 2016

Hacking Your Own FileMaker Platform Solutions

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

Steven H. Blackwell

April 7, 2016

Set Variable by Name

Recently, in the midst of various reporting and charting projects, I’ve found myself wishing for an easy way to “dynamically instantiate” one or more variables… in other words, set them by name, with the name determined programmatically, as opposed to being hard coded. This issue has come up from time to time on this blog […] View the full article

Kevin Frank

April 6, 2016

A day in the life of an IT Apprentice at Linear Blue

We caught up with Santtu Rantala; our Apprentice IT & FileMaker Developer to discuss a day in the life working as an Apprentice at Linear Blue – As an Apprentice FileMaker Developer at Linear Blue I’ve been given the opportunity to work closely with experienced FileMaker Developers to learn more about what’s involved in development... View the full article

Paul de Halle

April 6, 2016

A day in the life of an IT Apprentice at Linear Blue

We caught up with Santtu Rantala; our Apprentice IT & FileMaker Developer to discuss a day in the life working… View the full article

Paul de Halle

April 6, 2016

Web Scraping Data

Attachment Size WebScrapingData.zip 383.66 KB By Matt Petrowsky FileMaker can be such a wonderful desktop tool for harvesting and managing a lot of data. It’s because the user interface is baked right there into the backend database. You can whip up a powerful data parsing solution in no time. Can it handle the data? Yep! Can you build the interface right there? Yep! This sense of “data power” can be compounded even more with a little bit of know-how. When you’re not afraid to ste

FileMaker Magazine

March 31, 2016

Web Scraping Data

FileMaker can be such a wonderful desktop tool for harvesting and managing a lot of data. It’s because the user interface is baked right there into the backend database. You can whip up a powerful data parsing solution in no time. Can it handle the data? Yep! Can you build the interface right there? Yep! This sense of “data power” can be compounded even more with a little bit of know-how. When you’re not afraid to step, just a bit, outside of FileMaker’s user interface and simply plug-in to ano

FileMaker Magazine

March 31, 2016

Fast Summaries Revisited

If you do complex data analysis, then from time to time you probably need to group, summarize, and parse data into variables and/or fields. There are various ways to accomplish this, including the Fast Summary technique, which regular readers of this blog may be familiar with, as it has made a number of appearances here […] View the full article

Kevin Frank

March 31, 2016

Aligning FileMaker Security Requirements To Business Interests

Aligning FileMaker Security Requirements To Business Interests March 29th 2016 There has been a considerable amount of discussion recently in various FileMaker Platform venues about database security. Much of the discussion has focused on the use of one technique or another, and most of those techniques actually detract from the security of FileMaker systems rather than enhance security. Absent from these discussions, however, has been any description of

Steven H. Blackwell

March 29, 2016

Slideout Menus

No Access? Watch the preview video here. SlideoutMenus_Pre.mp4 Attachment Size SlideoutMenus.zip 322.33 KB By Matt Petrowsky Slideout menus have been around for quite some time in the mobile world. They often come alongside an icon of three short horizontal bars which are commonly called a hamburger menu. Called as such because it looks like two buns, with one above and one below the meat in between. This icon is also suspiciously similar to a "List view" icon in our familiar

FileMaker Magazine

March 24, 2016

Slideout Menus

Slideout menus have been around for quite some time in the mobile world. They often come alongside an icon of three short horizontal bars which are commonly called a hamburger menu. Called as such because it looks like two buns, with one above and one below the meat in between. This icon is also suspiciously similar to a "List view" icon in our familiar world of FileMaker. While the UI pattern still has a lot of use in the mobile world, it's becoming increasingly "out of fashion" and referred t

FileMaker Magazine

March 24, 2016

Sending Email from FileMaker using SparkPost

Back in 2014 we wrote our most popular article to date about integrating FileMaker with the online email service Mandrill. Recently, Mandrill have announced that they are ceasing their free service and are turning it into a Mailchimp add-on service that will cost a fee. In this article we detail how you can switch to using SparkPost, a free mail service that is the preferred alternative to Mandrill (even Mandrill themselves recommend it!) We provide a demo file and information on how you ca

Daniel Wood

March 18, 2016

Securing Service Credentials

No Access? Watch the preview video here. SecuringCredentials_Pre.mp4 Attachment Size SecuringServiceCredentials.zip 381.86 KB By Matt Petrowsky Security credentials, such as critical passwords, API secret keys and other methods of authentication are the gatekeepers to vast troves of data. These are the pieces of information you want to be most careful with. You don't want to spread them all throughout your FileMaker solution making the "attack surface" an easy steal for anyo

FileMaker Magazine

March 17, 2016

Securing Service Credentials

Security credentials, such as critical passwords, API secret keys and other methods of authentication are the gatekeepers to vast troves of data. These are the pieces of information you want to be most careful with. You don't want to spread them all throughout your FileMaker solution making the "attack surface" an easy steal for anyone. In this video you'll learn about how the Full Access settings apply to both custom functions and how this relates to scripts which reference those custom funct

FileMaker Magazine

March 17, 2016

Emerging Security Trends Affect FileMaker Platform

Emerging Trends in Information Security Affect FileMaker Platform By Steven H. Blackwell March 17th 2016 The recently concluded annual RSA Security Conference showcased a number of important emerging trends in Information Security that likely will affect FileMaker Platform developers and Administrators of FileMaker Platform systems. In this BLOG entry, I will describe some of these and offer some observations about how they might apply to the FileMaker Platform.

Steven H. Blackwell

March 17, 2016