Please join us May 22: FileMaker Go at the Philadelphia Apple Store!

Published on May 16, 2012. 0 Comments

RSVP: http://www.fmpug.com/rsvp.php?eventID=1324

Please join us this May 22 for a very special gathering of Philadelphia Area FileMaker User Group with a focus on the latest version of FileMaker Go. Our location this month is the downtown Philadelphia Apple Store Briefing Room. Representatives from FileMaker, including regional Systems Engineer Matt O’Dell, as well as FileMaker Business Alliance members will be highlighting the FileMaker Go 12 features as well as productivity-improvement solutions built on the FileMaker Go 12 platform.

We will also be reviewing FileMaker Go solutions from Kevin Ayers and a few surprises as well. Seating will be limited for this unique evening so reserve your spot today!

Date & Time:
Tuesday May 22, 2012
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Location:
Apple Store, Philadelphia Walnut Street
1607 Walnut Street
2nd Floor Executive Briefing Center
Philadelphia, PA 19103

Map of location: http://tinyurl.com/6rw8egv

RSVP: http://www.fmpug.com/rsvp.php?eventID=1324

(NOTE: We have no plans to serve food at this meeting.  We usually provide dinner for the user group, but since this is our first time using the Apple Store’s facilities, we can’t do it this time.  I’m not sure if it’ll ever be possible at that location, but we’ll find out.

If you can, try to get there early and pick up food in the area.  The Apple Store’s well situated for both fast food and more sit-down type eating.  Or if you can hold out you can make a night of it and go for food after 8.  There are some higher end restaurants in walking distance (http://www.butcherandsinger.com/, http://eatmarathon.com/, etc).)

Continue reading ‘Please join us May 22: FileMaker Go at the Philadelphia Apple Store!’

 
Published in FileMaker, FileMaker Go, FileMaker Inc. and Meeting Announcements by Colin Keefe. Tags: Tags: , .

Secure reporting through the web viewer and Javascript

Published on May 15, 2012. 2 Comments

You might have already known that you can program data to the web viewer on the fly using the “data:,” prefix in your web viewer location. So for example, if you wanted a web viewer on your layout to always display the data in the field SampleTable::HTMLText field, you could have the web viewer display that as if it were a hosted webpage by making your web viewer’s location “data:,” & SampleTable::HTMLText. You might even have used global variables to store highly variable HTML on the fly.

Now let’s take it a step further. Let’s say you need to build a report in your system. This report will be highly complex. The requirements are also a bit tricky: Continue reading ‘Secure reporting through the web viewer and Javascript’

 
Published in Tips and tricks by Robin Story. Tags: Tags: , , , .

FileMaker 12 Developer Grab Bag File from last night’s presentation

Published on April 25, 2012. 3 Comments

Thanks to Matt O’Dell for an excellent and informative presentation last night on FileMaker 12!

As promised, he’s provided us with the FileMaker 12 Developer Grab Bag file he used during the course of the 12 walkthrough, and we’re posting it here for download.

Happy FileMaking!

 
Published in FileMaker, FileMaker Go, Meeting Recaps and Tips and tricks by Colin Keefe. Tags: Tags: , , .

Please join us April 24: Matt O’Dell on FileMaker 12

Published on April 11, 2012. 0 Comments

Greetings FileMaker Enthusiasts,

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker Developer Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, April 24th, 2012 at 6:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the IT Solutions Fort Washington Office.

414 Commerce Dr., Suite 150, Fort Washington, PA 19034

Google Map

Please RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting.

FileMaker 12

Matt O’Dell: FileMaker 12!

Join FileMaker Systems Engineer Matt O’Dell for a close look at the new FileMaker 12 product family.

Matt will explore the new design features in FileMaker Pro 12 that immediately boost solution usability and developer productivity through a completely reworked design surface.  He’ll discuss enhanced container fields, charting improvements, and more.

Matt will also walkthrough performance and reliability improvements in FileMaker Server 12, including improved backup efficiency through progressive backups and hard links, a more stable architecture, and support for enhanced containers. Finally, he’ll look at FileMaker Go 12 – which is now FREE.

About the Presenter

Matt O’Dell is a Systems Engineer with FileMaker in the Northeast. He has 10+ years experience using FileMaker and building web solutions. Along with being a certified FileMaker Developer, he also is an authorized FTS trainer and a certified MySQL 5.0 developer. Prior to working for FileMaker, Matt was an application developer, trainer, and  tech support professional with Soliant Consulting in Chicago.

About the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group

The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group was founded in 2004 as an initiative by FileMaker Business Alliance Platinum member IT Solutions Consulting.  The group’s goal is to provide an open forum for FileMaker developers and those interested in FileMaker to meet, brainstorm and network.

We hold meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month at 6PM, in the office of IT Solutions Consulting, Inc., at 414 Commerce Drive, Suite 150, Fort Washington PA.

Meetings are open to all, regardless of background and there’s no charge to attend.

Please subscribe to our Mailing List to get announcements on upcoming meetings. The list is set to Announce only, so the volume is typically between one and 2 emails a month.

Twitter

We’re also an FMPug Chapter.  Consider membership today, especially if you purchase training, plugins, 3rd party products, or web/filemaker hosting – FMPug membership affords considerable discounts across a range of offerings.

Finally, The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group is hosted by:

IT Solutions Consulting, Inc.

Employee ownership – fueling our innovation, strengthening your business.

http://www.itsolutions-inc.com/

IT Solutions is proud to be a member of FM Academy, a consortium of leading FileMaker development companies in the United States whose purpose is to further educate FileMaker users and developers to encourage best practices and foster further adoption of the software through online webinars.  Learn more here:

http://www.filemakeracademy.com/

 
Published in FileMaker, FileMaker Go and FileMaker Inc. by Colin Keefe. Tags: Tags: , , .

FileMaker 12 is here!

Published on April 4, 2012. 9 Comments

FileMaker Inc. announced the release of FileMaker 12 this morning.

From a both a developer and UI perspective this is a huge release – new design tools, css-based applied themes, better charting, a new file format, server improvements – there’s a ton of stuff to talk about.  It’s a little mind-blowing.

Fortuitously FM Academy announced today the 12 Days of FileMaker 12 Series - a free, open and comprehensive series of Webinars to run over the next month, covering in depth the new features in FileMaker 12, starting April 10.  Register today.

IT Solutions, the sponsor of Philly FileMaker, is a member of FM Academy, and Jerry, Chad and I will be running three of the 12 webinars.

Happy FileMaking!

Colin

 
Published in FileMaker, FileMaker Inc. and IT Solutions Consulting by Colin Keefe. Tags: Tags: .

Please join us March 27: Kevin Ayers – Using Name/Values for Multiple Script Parameters and Beyond

Published on March 22, 2012. 0 Comments

Greetings FileMaker Enthusiasts,

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker Developer Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, March 27th, 2012 at 6:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the IT Solutions Fort Washington Office.

414 Commerce Dr., Suite 150, Fort Washington, PA 19034

Google Map: http://tinyurl.com/37mhhh

Please RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting:

http://www.fmpug.com/rsvp.php?eventID=1269

Kevin Ayers: Using Name/Values for Multiple Script Parameters and Beyond

Longstanding PFUG member and presenter Kevin Ayers will discuss passing name/value pairs in Script Parameters – techniques that permit more flexible and maintainable code.   There’s a world beyond Get(ScriptParameter) that’s worth a deep look, and Kevin will share his experiences to the group.

About the Presenter

Kevin Ayers has been the in-house FileMaker developer for Drexel University’s College of Engineering since 2002. He is a certified developer for FileMaker 9, 10, & 11. In addition to his FileMaker work he also guest lectures to the students at Drexel about the design process and engineering disasters.

About the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group

The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group was founded in 2004 as an initiative by FileMaker Business Alliance Platinum member IT Solutions Consulting.  The group’s goal is to provide an open forum for FileMaker developers and those interested in FileMaker to meet, brainstorm and network.

We hold meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month at 6PM, in the office of IT Solutions Consulting, Inc., at 414 Commerce Drive, Suite 150, Fort Washington PA.

Meetings are open to all, regardless of background and there’s no charge to attend.

Please subscribe to our Mailing List to get announcements on upcoming meetings. The list is set to Announce only, so the volume is typically between one and 2 emails a month.

http://fmpug.com/mailman/listinfo/philly_fmpug.com/

You can read our blog to get updates and meeting recaps:

http://www.phillyfilemaker.org/

Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/phillyfilemaker

We’re also an FMPug Chapter:  http://www.fmpug.com/  Consider membership today, especially if you purchase training, plugins, 3rd party products, or web/filemaker hosting – FMPug membership affords considerable discounts across a range of offerings.

Finally, The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group is hosted by:

IT Solutions Consulting, Inc.

Employee ownership – fueling our innovation, strengthening your business.

http://www.itsolutions-inc.com/

IT Solutions is proud to be a member of FM Academy, a consortium of leading FileMaker development companies in the United States whose purpose is to further educate FileMaker users and developers to encourage best practices and foster further adoption of the software through online webinars.  Learn more here:

http://www.filemakeracademy.com/

 
Published in Uncategorized by Colin Keefe. Tags:

Lightweight web-based Calendar from a Web Viewer using a single URL string

Published on March 2, 2012. 0 Comments

I was at a client the other day that has a Creative Media business.  She uses FileMaker to track the jobs and to direct the employees what to work on.

The other day she mentioned that often her users promise to have work done on a particular day.  Sometimes the day promised turns out to be a holiday.  My client was thinking out loud.  She didn’t want to build and maintain a complete holiday module.  All she really wanted was a calendar showing government holidays.

The web viewer to the rescue!  On the database home page we placed a web viewer that shows a calendar.  After a short excursion googling free calendar resources we found calendarlabs.  They provide free online calendars that perfectly fit our bill.

Implementation

When the user opens the database, we need to set two global variables.  These define the current Month and the current Year as a starting point for the calendar.  After these are set, we placed a web viewer on the home screen calling the web calendar.

Here is where we point the web viewer:

“http://www.calendarlabs.com/print-online-calendar.php?y=” & $$YearCal & “&m=” & $$MonthCal & “&v=month&wc=00&h=0&c=8″

For those that like to tinker, here is how you read the URL;
the base address is www.calendarlabs.com.  The .php component indicates that we are calling a php web page.
the y variable is the year. We are assigning the filemaker variable $$YearCal to this.
the m variable is the month. We are assigning this the filemaker variable $$MonthCal
the v variable determines the view, which we are setting to “month” (“year” is another option)
the wc variable has two digits, the first digit shows the week number if it is a 1, the second digit determines the first day of the week (0 is sunday, 1 is a monday etc)
the c variable determines what holidays to show – “8″ for US holidays; “2″ for Canadian.

Once I figured out the URL structure the last thing to do was to add some navigation buttons.  There is a forward, back and home button.

Here is an image of the web viewer that I have added to our demo file (which you can grab here).

Happy FileMakering!

 
Published in Uncategorized by Jerry Salem. Tags:

FileMaker DevCon 2012 Session Schedule Announced

Published on March 2, 2012. 0 Comments

You can find the schedule here.  Now might be an appropriate time to pick up the $300 early bird discount – there’s a lot of great stuff in there.  One interesting change in the Conference is the addition of Vendor Demos as a Conference Track – you’ll see them sprinkled through the posted schedule.

PhillyFileMaker’s own Jerry Salem of IT Solutions will be presenting on Tuesday at 2PM.  Feel free to ignore all other tracks in that slot and give Jerry your full, undivided and devoted attention.

Look Both Ways Before Crossing the Street: System Documentation

Session Description

Why bother writing comments or documentation or following standards in the back end; especially if all the users ever see is the user interface? Now ask yourself another question: if you are hit by a bus, will your clients, colleagues, or development teammates be able to understand the code you have written to a degree that they can complete the project without you? Even in the rare cases where the answer is “yes,” inheriting your undocumented code may well jeopardize the project by delaying the schedule and putting it over budget. The simple act of following standards and creating documentation will make you a better programmer and will also help you to remember design choices you may have made years ago. What exactly are the things you should document? This session will help you make wise choices about the type of documentation to keep for a system, and also to create documentation that will actually help you and others understand your solutions.

Products & Technologies
  • FileMaker Pro
What You Will Learn
  • Learn to comment an entire solution to remember what you did months or years in the past
  • User documentation is just as important for the developer as for the users. Make it work for you!
  • All choices are made for good reasons, those reasons may not be true anymore, and what were those reasons?
  • Give yourself the discipline to be a better developer

 

Put it on your calendar! COR010.ics

 
Published in Conferences, DevCon, DevCon and News by Colin Keefe. Tags: Tags: , , , .

Reminder: PFUG Meeting tonight!

Published on February 28, 2012. 0 Comments

Just a reminder that we’ll have Tom Jenkins and Scott Zeigen of MedDB LCC here tonight at 6 PM.

They’ll be showcasing their  WindowUtility™ plugin, and there will be a raffle at the end of the meeting for a developer version of the product on Mac or PC!

Details here.

 
Published in Meeting Announcements by Colin Keefe. Tags: Tags: , , , .

Please Join us February 28th: Scott Zeigen – WindowUtility™ Plugin

Published on February 14, 2012. 0 Comments

Greetings FileMaker Enthusiasts,

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker Developer Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, February 28th, 2012 at 6:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the IT Solutions Fort Washington Office.

414 Commerce Dr., Suite 150, Fort Washington, PA 19034
Google Map

Please RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting.

Scott Zeigen – WindowUtility™ Plugin

This month’s meeting will showcase WindowUtility™, a FileMaker plugin developed by Scott Zeigen and Tom Jenkins of MedDB LLC (formerly Medical Databases).

The demonstration will mostly be on the PC platform where WindowUtililty’s functionality gives the developer almost complete control of both the FileMaker Application window and FileMaker database windows. If you dislike the annoying window flashing and abrupt size changes on PC, WindowUtility™ helps you eliminate this is your FileMaker solutions. The plug-in can hide, size, move, lock window size, remove widgets, remove the title bar (PC), and even minimize the FileMaker PC application window to a task bar “ballon”, just to mention a few of its 50 functions.

At the end of the demonstration, there will be a raffle for a developer’s version of WindowUtility™ for either the PC or Mac platform! MedDB’s other commercial plugins include SetPrinter™ (cross platform printer selector), CalculatorFM (crossplatform calculator), CalendarFM (cross platform single & dual calendar dialogs)m TimeOut™ (cross platform screen locking plugin) and Mac-WinDialog (cross platform customize-able dialog boxes). All these plugins are in use throughout MedDBs commercial FileMaker solutions.

About the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group

The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group was founded in 2004 as an initiative by FileMaker Business Alliance Platinum member IT Solutions Consulting. The group’s goal is to provide an open forum for FileMaker developers and those interested in FileMaker to meet, brainstorm and network.

We hold meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month at 6PM, in the office of IT Solutions Consulting, Inc., at 414 Commerce Drive, Suite 150, Fort Washington PA.
Meetings are open to all, regardless of background and there’s no charge to attend.

Please subscribe to our Mailing List to get announcements on upcoming meetings. The list is set to Announce only, so the volume is typically between one and 2 emails a month.

http://fmpug.com/mailman/listinfo/philly_fmpug.com/

You can read our blog to get updates and meeting recaps:

http://www.phillyfilemaker.org/

Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/phillyfilemaker

We’re also an FMPug Chapter: http://www.fmpug.com/ Consider membership today, especially if you purchase training, plugins, 3rd party products, or web/filemaker hosting – FMPug membership affords considerable discounts across a range of offerings.

Finally, The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group is hosted by:

IT Solutions Consulting, Inc.

 

 

Employee ownership – fueling our innovation, strengthening your business.
http://www.itsolutions-inc.com/

IT Solutions is proud to be a member of FM Academy, a consortium of leading FileMaker development companies in the United States whose purpose is to further educate FileMaker users and developers to encourage best practices and foster further adoption of the software through online webinars. Learn more here:

http://www.filemakeracademy.com/

 

 
Published in Meeting Announcements by Colin Keefe. Tags: Tags: , , , , , .