Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       One of my favorite new features introduced back in FileMaker 8 was the inclusion of local and global variables. It cut down on the need to define extra fields for temporarily storing data in scripts (for example, storing the value of a primary key when creating a related record, keeping track of certain values when looping through records, etc). One of the things that I wished you could do, though, was display the contents of these fields on a layout; you still needed to ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Yesterday in Toronto CoreSolutions co-hosted a FileMaker Go briefing with FileMaker, Inc. I would like to say thank you to Keith Robinson, Mia Roop, and in particular Matt O’Dell who had a splendid presentation and gave us a thorough demonstration of many of the features of FileMaker Go. Thank you also to our own Steve Hearn, who developed a FileMaker Go ‘Sales Module’ that we demonstrated at the event. During the session attendees saw how other ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       A few months back, I wrote a post about FileMaker’s built in PHP Site Assistant. It’s a handy tool for creating simple sites, but I find it a bit limiting when it comes to creating more complex sites; so I usually tend to write websites in PHP from scratch. It’s actually been possible to do this for a while: around the time FileMaker Pro 5.5 was released, Chris Hansen wrote the first version of FX.php, which was the first solution I found that allowed you ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       CoreSolutions is pleased to offer our own in-house developed FileMaker Training Courses as well as the FileMaker Training Series (FTS)modules developed by FileMaker Inc. The courses we offer range from the absolute novice with FileMaker such as how to use the basic features of a FileMaker database to building eye catching charts and reports. The FTS modules are designed to cover all aspects and best practices when developing in FileMaker Pro and are highly ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       “Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary; one either progresses or retrogrades.” Mme. Du Deffand Wise words indeed from a lady who died over 230 years ago.  Some things never change. To get better or even to stay the best means continually improving oneself.  This is the same in life as it is in work. Speaking of work… We have a team of FileMaker developers – all ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Recently, I was working on a solution where some users only had View access to specific records in one of the tables. I set up a privilege set to do what I wanted, and – once I had worked the kinks out – things were working pretty smoothly; the test account I created could only see data in the records they were supposed to. The only hiccup was that the rest of the records showed up with “<no access>” in the fields – which is kind of ugly, and not ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       In my previous posts I have often indicated the resources that are available to you when it comes to FileMaker.  They are all great resources – in many cases of little or no cost to you and for the most part are available 24/7.  However – even with all the great resources available you can’t beat live one-on-one with a real person who knows what they’re talking about. Enter CoreSolutions Support Blocks… A support block is an ideal ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       FileMaker Inc. doesn’t make a very big deal about it, but for years FileMaker Server has played nice in Virtual Environments. A Virtual Environment uses physical hardware and software to allow multiple instances of virtual machines to run concurrently. Each virtual machine has its own operating system and the host software provides resources like disk, memory and peripherals. A typical server might only be using a small percentage of its memory, disk or CPU. By ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       If you’ve ever been to a website like Amazon, you know it’s pretty easy to send your friends or family to the exact item you’re looking at — it’s as simple as copying the URL and sending it to them in an email. In fact, many of these sites have a link on each product that will do this for you automatically. The new Snapshot Link feature in FileMaker Pro 11 does something similar, and it’s easy to use. In the File menu, just go to ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Since 1999 CoreSolutions has published FileMaker Naming Standards. These standards are developed in an effort to share the efficiencies we’ve realized over the years by using a cohesive set of naming rules that make our systems recognizable by any of our developers, even in systems a decade old. When FileMaker Inc. published their FileMaker Development Conventions white paper in 2005, CoreSolutions was part of the team of independent developers that made that happen. It ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Remember the old days, before FileMaker Pro 11, where you had to copy custom functions from one file to another by creating a new custom function and then copying all the code and parameters manually? (That was a even pain to type out, let alone perform!) This was extremely time consuming, especially in older projects where all tables had their own files. FileMaker added a neat new feature to their latest version that some of you may not know of. Keep ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Everyone is still feeling the pinch of the economy and although things are looking up, we all steadfastly have our belts tightened – albeit perhaps a couple of notches looser than they have been.  In many organizations, the first thing to get cut (and the last thing to be reinstated) is staff training and development.  It’s hard to find the budget to pay for courses or to allow staff to be out of the office when their time is more profitable at their ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Following up on last week’s CoreFM blog, one of the interesting things about FileMaker® Pro’s Status toolbar is that you can actually override the behavior of some of its buttons by using custom menus. It’s something that takes a bit of work to set up, but once you get the hang of it, it allows for quite a bit of flexibility. Looking at the custom Menu Dialog and editing the new record command, it looks something like this: On the right, there are options to ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes       When you think of charts in FileMaker, you’re probably thinking of plain, simple charts. Charts can be manipulated to make an assortment of things. Here are a few examples. Combination Charts You can display a hybrid of two charts by superimposing them and making the topmost chart transparent and matching the scales. One thing to keep in mind is that the built-in tooltips will not work for the bottommost chart since the top one is covering it. (superimposed ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       When I talk about FileMaker Pro I tend to refer to it as the 10-million piece puzzle with the box that doesn’t have a picture on it. Why? Because the puzzle will be what you make of it. Now, I know this may sound daunting, but I promise it’s not. I may be an end user of FileMaker Pro, using a database our team at CoreSolutions Software developed, but I’m constantly amazed at how easy it is to use. Granted, a database is only as good as the developer who ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       While it might not be seen by a lot of users, the re-designed Inspector is one of the more useful new features for developers in FileMaker Pro 11. While it’s been around in one form or another for a while, up until now it’s been pretty basic, allowing you to adjust the size and position of an object, as well as (in more recent versions) the object name. The new Inspector keeps all of that, but also takes a lot of the functionality that used to be hidden in ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       In some cases, it can be beneficial to make a single report layout flexible enough to handle multiple reports. Hypothetically, let’s say that we have a Teacher Certificate system with the ability to generate and print teacher certificates, the accompanying letter, and restrictions (if any). The problem is, that depending on whether the teacher is teaching an elementary, high school, or continuing education class, a different accompanying letter needs to be ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       We recently celebrated the success of three of our FileMaker developers becoming FileMaker 11 Certified Developers.  We always knew they were certifiable but now they have a certificate to prove it! It got me to thinking about what that certification actually means to us as a business and to our clients.  Let’s face it – before FileMaker introduced Certification back in 2004 with version 7; pretty much anyone could hang their shingle out as a FileMaker ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       This week FileMaker Inc. released updates for all the FileMaker products bringing them to version 11.0v2. You can find the download page by choosing “Check for Updates” from the Help menu in FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Pro Advanced or FileMaker Server Admin console, or by visiting this link. This update repairs a number of bugs in FileMaker Pro including a fix to snapshot links not recognizing files with external file references. Behaviour was also changed for merge ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Using portals in FileMaker Pro is a great way to view a lot of related information on a single screen. For example, if you’re sitting on a contact record, you can have portals that let you view activities, invoices orders, etc. for that contact, all at a glance. If you have a lot of records in your database, you might have to do a lot of scrolling to find, say, an invoice from a few years back. FileMaker 11 has introduced a new feature called “Portal ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 4 – 6 minutes       FileMaker is a great software application – we all know that. As with all great applications – to keep making it better means they need to come out with different versions which in turn means that you do need to upgrade from time to time and FileMaker are committed to release a new version every 12 – 15 months. FileMaker recognized early on that upgrading can be a costly venture and have come up with a number of ways to make it as cost effective as ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 1 – 2 minutes       In FileMaker Pro 9 one of the major changes was a non-modal dialog for scripts and script editing. Along with that was the ability to put scripts in folders. Now in FileMaker Pro 11, that ability has been extended to layouts. An improved Manage Layouts dialog allows the developer to create folders of layouts as well as separators (appear as lines separating layout names). It also allows the developer to edit the layout options, show/hide in layout menus, re-order ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       The world is quickly becoming a “Get it here and now” society with so many of us needing to be “plugged in” and looking for the easiest way to get what we need when we need it! We have learned to multi-task whether we wanted to or not, and in this vain we are almost forced to look at other ways we are able to obtain the training we require without the hassle of traveling or going off-site for hours or days at a time. With every position I have held, I ... Read More