ISO FileMaker Magazine

Every solution starts out like an infant. It knows very little and works hard to manage your solution's data as it becomes a productive citizen of your digital society. As it grows, your solution will need to offer a variety of options. User A prefers things one way, while User B another.

Your job, as the developer, is to accommodate those whims and preferences, or settings as we’ll call them, in the most efficient way possible. As is somewhat typical, you may be halfway through development when you stop and ask yourself if there's a better way to manage the growing list of settings.

In this video, I showcase an effective method for managing solution settings. By combining popular FileMaker techniques, we can consolidate, present, and manage settings in a highly streamlined way. Whether your solution is decades old or a brand new build, there is always something new to learn about handling data. We will look at how to combine JSON with solution settings and how easy it can be to simplify the process.

The wonderful thing about creating software is it feels like you're able to create your own universe. You're the master of that universe and how it functions and reacts to its users. It's a very empowering feeling to know you can direct and control data in a way that makes it useful to others.

When considering all the directions that software can take there's always that simple fact that different people like different things. Heck, someone buys the Rhubarb from the grocery store - because they keep stocking it - right?

So, what is the best way to offer user specific preferences to your solution users? Well, as always, this depends on the type of preferences you're trying to offer. If you're looking for a streamlined and efficient method of storing and referencing user specific preferences, then we may just have the solution you're looking for. In this video, we walk through a very straightforward solution to both storing and updating user preferences for a wide array of solution functionalities.