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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 Save/Send Records As, then choose Snapshot Link. This will generate a file that you can save and then email (you can also check the ‘Create email with this file as an attachment’ box to save even more time).
This snapshot file contains information about the database at the time you create the snapshot: where it’s being hosted, what layout or record you are on, what the found set is, the sort order, etc. With this feature, when someone opens the Snapshot Link file, they are taken to the database and will see exactly what you were seeing when you created the link. Of course, they need to be able to access the database so you need to make sure that the person you send the link to can access it (make sure it’s being hosted and that they can hit that server from their computer). Also, if you have security on your files you could run into a situation where they don’t have access to the layout or record(s) that you were looking at.
Aside from those exceptions, the Snapshot Link is a handy feature. It saves you the hassle of emailing search instructions to someone, so they know which records to look for within a database, all in a couple clicks.
