Is this possible: One FileMaker database solution, but used by two separate business entities?

[dmontano]

Hello all,

I am truly curious if this is possible - emphasis on "possible".

Can two separate business entities, say Charlie's Boat Rentals and Jane's Art Gallery use the exact same database and run their respective businesses with the same FileMaker Database Solution with no interference or knowledge of the other business existence?

Imagine Charlie and Jane are married and they MUST keep their business records completely separate for financial and sanity reasons. They should be able to each login and simply see what is relevant to their particular business. Is this possible?

SOME THINGS I THINK ARE REQUIRED

A table that could be called "BUSINESS DOMAIN", that would hold two records:

1. Charlie's Boat Rentals
2. Jane's Art Gallery

A mechanism that ALWAYS displays any tables records within the solution as belonging to one of the two BUSINESS DOMAIN’s. In essence, all records created in any of the tables would have to know which of the two businesses the record belongs to. Reports would need to be segregated entirely, etc.

I understand things like TOTAL RECORD COUNT for a table would need to be re-imagined as a FOUND SET COUNT of a BUSINESS DOMAIN versus the whole table. I'm sure there are other things that would need to be put in place to make this possible. I really think this could be achieved.

I am seriously asking this because I have two businesses and they are not closely related by industry in any way (one is in the automotive industry and the other is in the print industry). The biggest difference is in the ITEMs table, but frankly, many functions would be exactly the same: Estimating; Invoicing; Contacts; etc. 

The idea of me developing this database and then making a copy for production for one business and another copy for the other business means all future "features" and "fixes" will be a HUGE pain. I would love to just log in and go to either business information system.  

Any input is appreciated.

[comment]

6 hours ago, dmontano said:

Can two separate business entities, say Charlie's Boat Rentals and Jane's Art Gallery use the exact same database and run their respective businesses with the same FileMaker Database Solution with no interference or knowledge of the other business existence?

I don't know if that's a good analogy to your situation. Anyway the answer here is yes, at least WRT interference. They would simply login as different users and their privilege set would deny them access to any records other than those tagged by their account name. Then it's up to the developer to prevent situations where a bunch of records labeled <<no access>> would crop up - such as replacing the Show All Records command with a bogus find (any find will automatically omit records for which the user has no access).

And there may be other details to consider e.g. serial numbering of records.

 

6 hours ago, dmontano said:

The idea of me developing this database and then making a copy for production for one business and another copy for the other business means all future "features" and "fixes" will be a HUGE pain.

Maybe not:
https://support.claris.com/s/article/New-FileMaker-data-migration-tool?language=en_US

 

[dmontano]

17 hours ago, comment said:

the answer here is yes, at least WRT interference

Hi Comment, thank you very much: this is good to know!

17 hours ago, comment said:

Maybe not:
https://support.claris.com/s/article/New-FileMaker-data-migration-tool?language=en_US

Ah ha! This is much better to know. This actually addresses my conundrum that I was starting to think about more and more.

Much appreciated.

[bcooney]

Another approach is to maintain one code base on your dev server and ship to the two production systems servers using the migration tool (unless you are a member of the SBA program, your license agreement limits the server to hosting a solution for only one business entity). I usually have a field in a single record table, named Tenant, that distinguishes the client and possibly branches functionality. We depend on our free tool, OttoFMS, to manage deployments. 
 

watch a week of video tutorials here. 

 

[Josh Ormond]

One other consideration, is about the EULA around multi-tenant use. There are a lot of scenarios where you need to have an SBA license to have multiple customers hosted on the same server. 

[dmontano]

8 hours ago, bcooney said:

Another approach is to maintain one code base on your dev server and ship to the two production systems servers using the migration tool

Thank you Barbara for the link to the videos.

I am glad I asked this question in the first place as I had been growing more concerned about how to keep more than one "instance" of a solution updated with future fixes and features. Knowing that there are tools available to make this possible allows me to keep plugging away and cross that bridge when the time comes.

As an aside: I am thinking it may be good practice for me to try the Data Migration Tool on a bi-weekly-type schedule so I can learn more from it. It also "appears" to me that it could help "clean-out" some erroneous tid-bits I have seen in the past in my database file.

For example, at some point in time I renamed my FileMaker database file on my filesystem. A simple, seemingly straight-forward thing to do. However, I noticed somewhere along my continued development that the previous database name would appear (I do not recall where - maybe "exporting" or "save as"?)

A brief research found others experienced this too and a handful of suggestions to fix were offered. One suggested solution (that is relevant to the Data Migration tool) involved creating a clone, or using the recover command (which I read has concerns a developer needs to be aware of).

In any event, I am just speculating that if I practice using the Data Migration Tool it may just happen to "cure" the database name anomaly that I happen to come across.

I appreciate the feedback.

8 hours ago, Josh Ormond said:

One other consideration, is about the EULA around multi-tenant use. There are a lot of scenarios where you need to have an SBA license to have multiple customers hosted on the same server. 

Thank you Josh for highlighting this.

[comment]

13 minutes ago, dmontano said:

somewhere along my continued development that the previous database name would appear (I do not recall where

https://support.claris.com/s/article/FileMaker-Pro-displays-the-original-filename-when-printing-to-PDF-on-macOS?language=en_US

 

[dmontano]

7 minutes ago, comment said:

https://support.claris.com/s/article/FileMaker-Pro-displays-the-original-filename-when-printing-to-PDF-on-macOS?language=en_US

Thank you much! 

Sound like I just need to move the file to a Windows machine, print, and presto: solved. I don't have a Windows machine, but this certainly is not a "biggie" of a problem. More of an anomaly that cause one to think "what's wrong". 

I also ran a DDR and searched for the old filename and it exists in the DDR. (Note, I have not done the procedure to fix yet.)