Stick with FileMaker or Choose a FileMaker Alternative?
What is it about the FileMaker Platform that keeps developers coming back when there are so many newer products around that may claim to offer a similar range of features, or better?
What is it about the FileMaker Platform that keeps developers coming back when there are so many newer products around that may claim to offer a similar range of features, or better?
While Airtable has lots of strengths and works well in certain circumstances, FileMaker offers more flexibility and broad range of customization possibilities.
Last week Claris announced the first public availability of the new Claris Platform Bundle. Do you deal with scattered information and inaccurate data? Gain greater visibility across your entire business with the cloud-based Claris Platform which integrates the full capabilities of FileMaker Pro with the new Claris Studio environment, Claris Connect, and more.
Last week, Claris announced two exciting new initiatives, the first a new Software as a Service (SaaS) platform called Claris Studio, and the second a new program for helping Claris users get the most out of their solutions.
The latest release of FileMaker Pro, 19.2.2, includes a few new developer tools as well as a revised quick-start experience. The quick-start experience is still in preview on MacOS only, but I had a chance to give it a whirl and I found some interesting use cases.
Due to COVID-19, we recently had to invent a way to sign forms on-site without sharing devices. Part of the conversation went like this:
He thought for a minute and replied, “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll make a way for a user to sign a form without ever touching the iPad. How about we create a record just for signatures? We can send a link out to the client that will open a WebDirect interface. It would present them their signature record on their own device, and boom! Touch-free signatures.”
“Brilliant!” I said happily. “Let’s go! I’ll grab some pizza.”
FileMaker has always included starter solutions, simple databases with basic structure that allow anyone to use as a starting point. Through the years and various versions of FileMaker, the solutions have become more advanced and complex to show the new features of FileMaker.
With the advent of Claris FileMaker 19, we are starting to see some new FileMaker add-ons, a brand new feature that is still technically “coming soon” according to Claris. One of the first products available for FileMaker using the new add-on architecture is the newly revised DayBack calendar product from Seedcode. We have been integrating the DayBack calendar for many years now and have seen the product evolve over time. This latest edition is taking advantage of many of the new FileMaker 19 capabilities, and has some really great new features. I’d like to go over some of the similarities and differences between “DayBack Classic” and DayBack 19 as well as benefits to upgrading.
The process of updating FileMaker files in iOS has always been sort of a question mark, with multiple ideas for how to best accomplish it, each with their own limitations. We developed a process to update files in iOS a number of years ago, but we’ve updated the process with some of the newer FileMaker 18 features that make the process more seamless, while altogether giving it a more native look and feel.