Estimated Time To Read This: < 1 minute       It makes perfect sense to use “Auto-resize Layout Objects” in order to show more content from within the fields already showing on your layouts.  Another example of how you can use this feature would be to show more fields on the layout when the screen size is large enough to allow for it.  In this quick (18 seconds) video, I demonstrate how you can combine anchoring with the z-order of your layout objects in order to conceal the least important fields ... 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: 4 – 6 minutes       There are a few ways to create new related records within FileMaker Pro. Each of them has its own pros and cons.  The technique that I’m discussing today is an undocumented one (its main con).  I’ve been using it for a few versions of FileMaker Pro now, it’s extremely fast, and has never before let me down.  Discussing techniques that don’t have a name can prove difficult though, so I’ve been using the goofy name of ... 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 – 4 minutes       We all know that some things can get lost in translation from one language to another. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/72213316@N00/3405698843 Something similar can happen when you try to translate an idea from your native tongue into a computer language.  Unfortunately, when this happens to me, it’s usually my fault (computers are extremely good listeners — if something goes wrong, it’s usually a matter of us not speaking the language ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       Gantt charts are (in my opinion) the best tool to help keep track of project activities and hours. Even with all the tools and built-in charts that FileMaker has for us, there will still be times where you’ll need to think outside the box to accomplish what you want to do. A Gantt chart is just one of those things. There are some really neat plug-ins you can use to produce Gantt charts, but we opt for a simpler, all FileMaker solution that doesn’t rely on ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes       This week I’ve decided to post about the FileMaker community in general and all the helpful resources that are out there.  It’s a sure sign of a good product – one the users believe in – when people are willing to take time out of their schedules and share their knowledge with anyone who needs it. The FileMaker community is definitely one of the most helpful out there. Let’s look at what FileMaker Inc. offers to its users: The ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       I’ve had a chance to use FileMaker Go for a couple of months now, and I’ve been impressed with the amount of functionality they’ve managed to pack into a portable application – it’s a big improvement over the old FileMaker Mobile. Granted, it doesn’t have all the functionality of the desktop client, but  FileMaker does seem to be dedicated to supporting it. The 1.1.1 patch released in September adds several new features, ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 5 minutes       When FileMaker Inc. released FileMaker Go for iOS 4 devices in July, it changed things for developers. All of a sudden we had a new platform for which to develop, and one that has unique opportunities and capabilities. It also left many of us scratching our collective heads after we played with it for a while and realized that using the same layouts designed for the desktop version of FileMaker Pro wouldn’t always be practical. I say scratching our heads ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 3 minutes       Recently, Alan discussed how flexible FileMaker can be, by letting you select a different custom menu for each layout.  While that kind of flexibility is invaluable, managing a large number of custom menus can be quite tedious.  I think it’s also rather noteworthy that FileMaker Pro’s custom menus can be set up in such a way that you won’t need multiple custom menus in order to accurately represent each layout.  Since the dialog box for ... 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: 4 – 6 minutes       In today’s webinar, I discussed some of the advantages of bringing data from Google Analytics into FileMaker Pro. I also illustrated how simple it can be to accomplish. In order to make this task even easier for you, I want to provide you with some helpful links, and even some sample files to get you started. Helpful Links: Getting Started –> This explains the basics like what you need in order to begin using the Google Analytics Data Export ... 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: 3 – 4 minutes       Have you ever created a FileMaker calculation that was a little complicated but it made sense at the time? And a few months later you look at that calculation again and you can’t figure it out? I have to admit, my memory is pathetic. If I don’t write stuff down or put it in an email, it’s gone by the next day. Same with constructing calculations: if I don’t document them or format them in such a way to make them easier to read, I often can’t understand ... 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 – 3 minutes       For quite some time now, it’s been commonplace within the FileMaker development community to lock-down FileMaker’s interface in an effort to take control over various native behaviours that FileMaker Pro exhibits.  With the dawn of newer releases of FileMaker Pro, and their new feature sets, I’m seeing less and less of a reason to do this anymore. Doing this interface lock-down involved hiding the status area (and locking it), which contained a ... 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 – 3 minutes       One of the questions I often get asked is “who are you and how did you get in my house?” but after that it tends to be whether or not we offer FileMaker hosting.  The answer is no but I can typically point people to other organizations that do offer that service. There are a number of reasons why you may need to outsource your hosting requirements… in some cases, you may not have the hardware infrastructure to do your own hosting or maybe you have people ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       Excitement that built in anticipation of FileMaker Inc.’s Developer Conference, taking place August 15 to 18 in San Diego, California, has finally broken! I have the privilege of attending this year’s DevCon, alongside another CoreSolutions developer (Matt Leering – check out his FileMaker blogs for handy tips) and we’ve looked forward to learning what other developers are doing with the products, and all the latest news from FileMaker and its community ... 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       FileMaker, Inc. launched a new thin client called “FileMaker Go” for the iPhone and iPad on Tuesday, July 20th. This is exciting news because it means that FileMaker databases can now be easily accessed while on the go. This client application will be able to open .fp7 files which are the same files that can be opened with all versions of FileMaker Pro since version 7. FileMaker Go was completely re-written from the ground up, so that it will fully ... Read More

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 minutes       If you’ve ever had the opportunity to attend the FileMaker Developer Conference (this year from August 15 to 18 in San Diego), you’ll know that it’s more than scripts, schema, calculations and relational database modeling – quite simply, the conference is all about the music. Database developers are a talented lot, and each year the conference holds an unofficial jam session that showcases the musical finesse of developers from around the globe. It’s ... 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