ISO FileMaker Magazine

While younger generations of Internet users are increasingly adopting communication tools like Discord, it's challenging to envision a future devoid of at least one distinctive means of communication - email. Could a world without email imply that government agencies, utility providers, and other entities transmit messages based on your DNA sequence, linked to your registered devices? The possibilities are intriguing.

But for the present moment, email remains a crucial part of our digital landscape. The transition toward a paperless society is still underway and is likely to persist for many decades to come.

So, the key question is, have you seamlessly integrated HTML emails into your FileMaker solutions? If not, rest assured that you'll acquire a comprehensive understanding of both implementation and troubleshooting when it comes to facilitating communication between FileMaker and an SMTP server. This video offers a practical script and in-depth insights into successfully sending multipart mixed emails. Whether your HTML email simply involves basic formatting, like bolding certain text, or incorporates intricate features like a logo-adorned letterhead, sending the email via SMTP is your destination. Let's make that journey a smooth one and ensure you're well-equipped with all the requisite knowledge.

FileMaker Pro has some very simple and straight-forward validation options. For example, if you only want one field named email to only ever have a single copy of a given email, you choose the Unique option in the Validations section of the field's options.

But, what if you want to allow a given contact record to have multiple email addresses. How do you check for uniqueness across multiple fields? The same email could appear within one field and then would be perfectly valid in a second field which doesn't contain the original email.

Well, here's the solution. Watch this video and use the provided technique file to simply copy the solution into your own FileMaker database. We'll use some creative tricks in order to make the process both robust and very powerful!

What would a database solution be without the ability to send email? Well, it would be a database solution without the ability to send email - but who wants that right?

Email is obviously an integral part of our modern day communication. And, despite what the Twitters, Facebooks and Instagrams of the world would have you believe, email is here to stay.

The easiest way to add email support to a FileMaker database is to simply use the Send Mail script step. But, that’s boring, and sometimes it doesn’t work. Especially when you’re using an email client not supported by FileMaker. The Send Mail step alone also has limited use when, most of the time, the intended objective is to integrate data from the database.

Therefore, we need to integrate the data from our fields. The easiest way to do this is to use FileMaker’s <<mergeFields>> right within the content of a text block somewhere on the layout, or off to the side of the layout, and then using the function GetLayoutObjectAttribute ( “My_Merge_Email” ; "content" ).

The problem we hit is that this is not user friendly. You don’t often give users the ability to edit layouts. So why not emulate the way FileMaker works with merge fields and simply do the same thing using data which is stored within fields?

This video showcases one of the most streamlined and easy-to-implement solutions for handling merge values into content stored within a field. Using the content provided here you’ll have an email merging and sending solution within mere minutes every time you need it!

For the email purist, the only valid email is a plain text email. For the rest of the world there's HTML email. Currently, FileMaker only supports native sending of plain-text emails.

The available Send Mail script step is certainly a capable solution for sending your plain-text emails - and solves the problem most of the time. You can use your own SMTP servers or send email via a free hosted email account such as Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail.

If, however, your goal is to join the rest of the marketing world and make your email correspondence appear as clean and professional as the Apple's of the world, then you'll need to know how to make it happen within your solution.

This video provides the code and the know-how in order to integrate HTML Email sending within your FileMaker solution. True, you'll inevitably need a plug-in to make it happen, but with the new Perform Script on Server step, you can have the server send the email for you. No need to mess with client side configurations. Just create the script, put the plug-in on server and send your HTML straight from FileMaker!