Several years ago, we built a sponsorship management FileMaker solution for our nonprofit client. The system is used to manage the entire process of sponsoring third-party events, symposiums, conferences, including review of applications, funding distribution, accounting, and document management.
The client recently redesigned their sponsorship application using SurveyMonkey and was looking for a way to integrate it into their existing FileMaker solution. SurveyMonkey not only provides tools to design applications but also has a suite of easy-to-use features for form management. While we considered creating the application in FileMaker, this seemed like a case where leveraging the strengths of SurveyMonkey made the most sense.
The Process
The next step was to design an effective method for importing SurveyMonkey responses into the existing FileMaker solution while making sure the code was flexible enough to ensure subsequent modified surveys could be easily imported.
We briefly considered manually exporting data from SurveyMonkey and then writing a script to import the matching fields, but this solution is not very flexible and would lead to increased costs to maintain the code later. Our solution was to use industry standard integration tools (JSON, cURL) available in FileMaker 16, along with the SurveyMonkey’s integration interface (API), to develop a method to pull responses directly from SurveyMonkey into FileMaker with the click of a button.
Utilizing a number of different API calls and creating a map between SurveyMonkey data fields and FileMaker fields, we created a solution that is easily modifiable for subsequent changes to the SurveyMonkey forms while implementing a robust approach to importing data into the existing FileMaker solution.
While FileMaker is certainly capable of duplicating the functionality of a service like SurveyMonkey, our goal was not to re-invent the wheel. This solution highlights how the integration between FileMaker and other services can be done quickly and and efficiently. The resulting solution provides a streamlined solution for the staff at our client and a clean, maintainable structure for the developers. By using modular coding practices, we’re well positioned to re-use our SurveyMonkey FileMaker code in future applications for other clients as well.