ISO FileMaker Magazine

When you first develop your FileMaker solution you're typically dealing with sample and/or test data. Everything works great. It's fast and efficient and you're guessing users will just love using it. Until you hear feedback like "It takes forever to simply see a list of people to pick from."

As you scratch your head wondering why things got slow, it's likely because you didn't think about what's happening on every record of that simple little portal. Your once wonderful complex filter, which was working just fine on the 1,000 records, now chokes to death on the 10,000 records in the real world.

You ask yourself "Is there something I can do to make this faster?" and you find this video about Fast Filtering Portals. Yes, is the answer. You can optimize that portal filter such that the fewest number of CPU cycles are required in order to show a user's desired results. The trick is knowing how to make it happen with the tools we have available within FileMaker. Need to make your portal filters faster? This video will likely have the answer.

Developing software in FileMaker can be such a joy when you're able to solve so many problems so quickly. There is, however, a point where you start to solve so many problems that your solution starts to slow down and you find yourself wondering why.

Most commonly, it's the result of cumulative features compounding to make your solution slower and slower. Without careful consideration of the user interface, and how features are presented, it's easy to create a solution which starts to lag over time.

In this video, I show how portal filters really work and how to address the issue of a portal used for a very simple selection process. In most cases, your portal is only going to show a fraction of the number of fields found in its table. To this end, you must learn how to replicate the native portal filtering feature. Filtering with JavaScript/JSON is one of the most powerful ways to present data in both an efficient and faster way.

Finding your FileMaker solution is feeling slower as time goes by? You need the content covered in this video!

When first using FileMaker's Filter Portal Records feature it's easy to get excited about how you can limit the set of records to exactly what the user needs to see. You start adding a single filter and the result feels like magic. A simple search filter using a global field will let you extra exactly the records you want. It's great!

However, when start adding more and more filters things start to get complicated really fast. You have to become super comfortable with creating complex calculations with a lot of Boolean logic. If you don't know how to use your AND and OR operators, then it can really seem daunting.

In this video we take a detailed look at how to break down a complex multi-filter approach and make it seem really easy to achieve some super advanced portal filtering. If you've ever been confused about making your portals show exactly what the user needs, especially when using multiple filtering vectors, then enjoy the understanding you'll receive from watching this video.

In FileMaker, once you've filtered a portal, which displays a subset of related data, there may be situations where you need to get that data out. A prime example is needing to further manipulate the data within a spreadsheet.

A recent solution I was developing had this exact need. I needed to filter some financial data based on a wide date range. Yet, I still needed smaller subsets, think categories, of financial data and wanted to pull that data into a spreadsheet for a separate purpose.

In order to make this even possible, we need to know the exact records being shown within the portal. There's a bit of a trick in order to make this happen such that you can get the data onto the clipboard. The great thing about FileMaker is if you can find the menu option, then you know it's a script step. Holding down a modifier key while looking at the edit menu, reveals that Copy becomes Copy All Records.

The method of loading the records to be copied, is actually quite useful in a wide variety of situations within FileMaker. If your solution ever has the need to directly copy data being viewed from a portal, then you'll find all the pieces to the puzzle in this video and technique file.

In FileMaker, some features seem like they should be an easy solve. Yet, the dynamic nature of creating something in FileMaker means its development simply can't account for all the possible things a developer might want to do.

When it comes to showing the actual count of records being shown within a filtered portal one might think the solution would already be there. However, it's not.

You have to apply some creating thinking along with a bit of inside know-how in order to correctly show the total number of records being shown within a filtered portal.

In this video, I go through the meanings of "double filtered" and how to go about showing the correct information within your user interface when you choose to use the Filter option found within the Portal setup dialog box.

Portals are wonderful tools for showing related data relevant to what your solution is solving. Sometimes, however, there's a trick to getting them to show exactly what you want. The combination of functions required may not always be obvious and it can be hard to achieve the desired result.

Essentially, you have to know how to extract the specific key values which allow you to filter only the desired rows. In this video, I walk through all the specifics of creating a custom function which allows you to filter unique keys such that only the desired records will be shown.

If you've ever had the need to filter your portals in a highly specific way, then this video and the associated technique file will likely provide you with some great insight. In a short amount of time, you'll get those portal filters to work exactly as you need!

Like many things in life, there are multiple ways to solve a problem. It all comes down to what methods you're familiar with. If you only know one of the possible options, then that one method may limit you in terms of performance or efficiency.

In this video, we'll take a look at just a few of the possible methods of filtering data within FileMaker. The default, most accessible option, may be worth while if you've already got a working relationship. But, what about when you need to present the user with some options not currently in your data model? How do pick which one is best for any given situation?

Well, stick around and check out the video and file we provide you with and you'll be well on your way to making the best informed decisions about filtering data within your FileMaker solution.

It’s so easy with FileMaker, to simply add, add and add some more - especially to the Relationship Graph. You get the request to see a different set of data, and you hop right to it by adding a new relationship and table occurrence.

Wait a second! Each time you add something new to your FileMaker solution you’re making an agreement with yourself that you’re willing to maintain an ever growing garden of technological spaghetti. With a bit of planning and know-how, you can easily satisfy a growing number of data requests by making your portals able to filter out whatever you desire to show.

In this video, I walk through the use of a dynamic portal by way of filtering data using the Custom List function. It’s the ideal solution to being able to see whatever data you want to see from a relationship where the data is already being loaded from FileMaker Server. If you’re interested in a FileMaker solution which both performs well and also offers user flexibility, then you’ll find some answers within this video.

As a developer, it’s often hard to get out of a mindset where your response of “It’s simple silly, you just search for a portion of the word, not the whole word.” to the question of a particular search not providing a user’s expected results.

This type of response may come from a user when they mention they know the user “Petrowsky” is in the database but it doesn’t come across verbally that they’re really searching for “Petrowski” - which obviously doesn’t match the version ending in a “y” instead of an “i”.

This level of understanding, that you can simply enter “petrow” in order to search for both variations, isn’t inherently obvious to all users. So the next best solution is to provide some type of filtering process. Something where the user can narrow down their list of choices to find out where the disconnect is happening.

In this video, we look at a sublimely simple script which makes this type of task an utter piece-of-cake. If you’ve got users who need to make routine selections on filtered subsets of data then the knowledge contained within this video will pay dividends beyond just knowing how to filter based on an alphabet letter!

Have you discovered the big advantages of FileMaker’s Popover objects? Not using FileMaker 13 yet? This video may have all the reasons why you should switch as quickly as possible.

In this video, I showcase how simply powerful a Popover button can be. I was deciding whether I should call the video and file “Single Step Coding” because so many of the objects within the popover only use one single script step. I decided, however, that what I was really showing was how much power you get when you pack a lot of functionality within a Popover object.

Within one little Popover, I show you how to create, edit and delete data without ever closing the popover. This is all done in a very elegant fashion making your solution seem very clean, yet quite powerful.

Because of FileMaker’s Popover objects and sliders, your user interface may need a serious overhaul. These UI elements are game changers in how users interact with solution data. Long gone are the days of “show it all” layouts!