ISO FileMaker Magazine

When someone asks a simple question like "How can I make FileMaker export a second worksheet in Excel?" The method you use to achieve this may not be immediately apparent. Especially if you've not worked with other programming languages like Python. Rest assured, however, you can certainly solve most any FileMaker problem as long as you're willing to take a little journey into the land of other tools.

And, it's probably not as scary as you think it is. Yes, FileMaker is nice and comfortable, but it has it's limits. When you want to become a power developer, you have to become familiar with what's possible.

In this video, I walk through the use of Python, in conjunction with FileMaker in order to export a multiple sheet Excel workbook. Need to include Excel calculations, multiple worksheets, graphics and charts? Do the corporate leaders demand that you provide your report within Excel? Well, let's take a quick trip to Python land and we find all kinds of wonderful gems in our brand new toolset!

Occasionally, you hit certain issues within FileMaker development where you're just stumped as to why you can't do something. Let's take a super simple example like being able to show and hide a button based on having selected a given portal row. How do you know when the user is within the portal? How do you know when they've left?

Think it's easy? Try to solve this issue without watching this video first. You'll quickly find out, that because of how FileMaker's "event model" works, known as script triggers, that some times things happen when you want and other times they don't. And, ultimately, you don't have control. FileMaker picks the Pre vs. Post.

Unless, that is, you get creative with how you solve this particular problem. In the case of Pre vs. Post script triggers, it is possible to extend how FileMaker behaves. In this video, I showcase how to solve the simple problem of showing and hiding a given button when a portal row is selected. It's a bit of a trick, but it can certainly be done.

Additionally, if you don't yet know the value of knowing when a user has a given portal row selected then you'll learn that lesson as well by watching this video!

As with all software projects, one of the biggest prices you'll ever pay is the accumulated technical debt. It's a cost which starts as soon as you make the choice to simply write a new script with every new feature you add into your FileMaker solution.

Thus, the trick with creating something which is easier to manage is to simply decide to limit the number of things you create. So, what does one do when you've made that decision? Well, you focus on using the available toolset, using great organization and creating a small amount of utility scripts in order to limit the number of things you would otherwise have to create.

In this video, I showcase an enhanced version of a system I designed a while back. It's a method for making simple, or even somewhat complex searches within the UI of your solution. You simply specify what you're searching for within the script parameter you're passing into the script. With the availability of JSON now, we have a very descriptive method of knowing what is being searched for.

Importing data may be a very common task for some of your FileMaker workflows. Of course, not all data is going to come from the wonderful world of an online API. Some software just doesn't make its data available through the Internet.

So, what you often need to do is get hold of the import file and then create the script. But, what happens if your data for import is in some obscure location and may be hard for the user to find? Well, in that situation we want to work with as many known values as possible in order to automate the process. Getting things to the point where the user really only needs to click a single button is a great solution.

In this video, I showcase all the pieces to the puzzle of automating most any importing workflow. You really only need to know where the data is coming from and if you need to move things around to make the process just a little bit easier.

This is a great video if you've never taken a look underneath the hood at your own computer's operating system. It will reveal a lot of insight into the many things you can do with FileMaker Pro once you know how to access the myriad of available tools.