ISO FileMaker Magazine

Is there really any question the PDF file format will be going away any time soon? Personally, I don't think so. And, neither should you. Adobe released their license to the technology in 2008 and it became an open standard for the world to use. Airlines use it for tickets, ticket companies use it for concerts and basically it's the digital equivalent of good old real-world paper for the digital world.

So what does this mean to you and your FileMaker database? Well, if you've got data within your database or you're capturing data in something like Web Direct, then knowing you can merge that data into a form fillable PDF can be invaluable. Especially if you need to put that data into a fixed format - like a PDF!

By running a server side script, and running some freely available software which is super fast an efficient, you can send out contracts, invoices, notices or even event tickets with merged in data from your FileMaker database.

Yes, you can certainly generate a PDF right from within FileMaker using your own data, but there are those situations where replicating an existing PDF just takes too much time. So just merge the data into a form fillable PDF. Plus, it just might be faster than generating it from within FileMaker!

While FileMaker may promote the low-code/no code aspects of FileMaker Pro, there's a lot to be said about knowing how to design a great system as opposed to thinking you'll end up with one by default. Especially, one which will perform under load and scale to the degree which FileMaker can.

This type of knowledge is learned and simply won't come out of the box when you just start adding fields to your database. If you need to store images, or any type of heavy media, then it may not be a good idea to carelessly start throwing container fields into your tables. In fact, there's a whole bunch of details to know about FileMaker and how it transfers data on a record level basis. As well as knowing what can be done to optimize your storage of container based data.

While you'll want things to be easy for your users for adding media, and you'll also want to build a system which will be easy to maintain and update. That's what this video is all about. An optimized approach to container storage and making it easy on yourself when you're going to be working with these types of solutions in the future.

When developing a FileMaker solution, you often want a system where the distribution of labor is such that other administrators can create and manage the users of that system. It can't always come back to the developer who has the only Full Access account.

When considering FileMaker's authentication methods, you basically have three options. Internal, external and third party. The external option is typically Active Directory on Windows or OpenDirectory on Macintosh. The newer third party options are from Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

However, with both external and third party, you have to manage users and their passwords outside of the FileMaker space. If you're wanting to use FileMaker itself to mange users and passwords, then you'll be using FileMaker's internal accounts. The trick is to have a way to manage those accounts within your database. And, that's up to you to both create and manage.

This video is about using a dedicated Users table and how you can securely manage the communication between your table of users and the actual users list within FileMaker's internal accounts. Need to provide a secure method of allowing certain users the ability to create and delete accounts? This video will have the know-how you need.

The number of features available within FileMaker Go on a mobile device is more than icing on the cake. It's just downright cool we have access to so many features. And, all without having to write super complex code.

There is, however, some learning to do when it comes to interacting with URLs and web viewers. It turns out that many web sites, including Google's web based maps site, will change its url as you interact with the web viewer. This causes a problem when you supply an original url to the web viewer and the user expects the same result when clicking on a button which opens the external Google Maps iOS app. The url, which includes needed pieces of information, may vary depending on the interaction with the web viewer.

Fortunately, this video covers all the information you need to know when working with urls and parsing them from either web viewers or from any other location. This video will help you not only interact with the Google Maps iOS application, but also with any other external application which is to be opened from within FileMaker Pro. Need to integrate other iOS apps with your FileMaker Go app? Give this video a view!