fmAccounting Link (MYOB AccountRight Edition) Preview Video

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We’ve just uploaded our first preview video for fmAccounting Link (MYOB AccountRight Edition). This video demonstrates the following:

  • authenticating against the MYOB AccountRight API
  • downloading a list of available AccountRight Company Files
  • selecting the AccountRight Company File and entering the credentials for the selected Company File
  • uploading a Contact from FileMaker Pro to AccountRight
  • uploading an Invoice from FileMaker Pro to AccountRight
  • uploading a Payment from FileMaker Pro to AccountRight
  • downloading Chart of Accounts, Tax Codes, Categories and Inventory Items from AccountRight to FileMaker

The video also demonstrates how you can integrate with MYOB AccountRight (a Windows only application) from a Mac OS X computer.

You can watch the video below or directly on YouTube via this link.

We should be releasing fmAccounting Link (MYOB AccountRight Edition) in the next couple of weeks – please Contact Us if you have any questions in the meantime.

FileMaker Success Pack Promotion – 10% of Bundle Packs

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FileMaker Inc. have announced a new promotion for the current quarter – you can save 10% when purchasing a 5-Pack or 10-Pack bundle.

The FileMaker Success Pack is a great way to get everything you need to develop and deploy custom business solutions for your team. This bundle includes FileMaker Pro licenses, a FileMaker Pro Advanced license, a FileMaker Server license, and a download of the FileMaker Training Series: Advanced ebook. Save 10% if you act by March 26, 2015. Contact us for more details.

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Databuzz releases fmSMS v3.5 with FileMaker WebDirect Support

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Databuzz today announced fmSMS v3.5, an upgrade to their award winning solution that lets you send and receive SMS/TXT messages from within FileMaker Pro.

fmSMS allows you to send an SMS from FileMaker Pro to almost any mobile phone in the world via one of the supported SMS Gateways, reaching over 860 mobile networks in more than 220 countries. SMS is great means of direct communication with customers, staff, suppliers, and students.

fmSMS v3.5 has been updated to support FileMaker Pro v13 and FileMaker WebDirect allowing access via a web browser on a desktop or laptop. fmSMS also includes support for sending messages from FileMaker Go running on the iPad or iPhone. Databuzz will be demonstrating fmSMS v3.5 at the 2014 FileMaker Developer Conference, to be held in San Antonio, Texas from July 28-31, 2014.

What’s New in v3.5

  • updated for FileMaker Pro v13
  • added support for FileMaker WebDirect
  • expanded supported SMS Gateways to over 50 providers internationally
  • added support for the new Perform Script On Server script step (requires FileMaker Server v13)
  • bulk SMS in FileMaker Pro v13 now uses the new List of summary field for faster performance
  • updated for FileMaker Go v13*

SMS is perfect for appointment reminders, phone messages, promotions, segmented marketing, school absence alerts, and password confirmations. With SMS you can reduce your costs and play less “telephone tag”.

fmSMS works with multiple SMS Gateway providers internationally and supports the following features**:

  • Send single and bulk SMS messages (messages are typically delivered in under 15 seconds)
  • Send long messages (greater than 160 characters)
  • Works with over 50 SMS Gateway providers internationally
  • Delayed Delivery – send a message now for delivery at a future time
  • Alphanumeric Sender ID –
  • Delivery Receipts – track the status of sent messages
  • Message Logging – track the history of all sent messages
  • Message templates – create an unlimited number of pro forma templates
  • 2 Way SMS – allow recipients to reply to messages and have them appear in fmSMS

“fmSMS is now easier to integrate into a customer’s existing FileMaker solution than ever,” said Andrew Duncan, Director of Databuzz. “We’ve simplified the licensing and included support for the entire FileMaker platform – you can now send an SMS from FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Go, FileMaker WebDirect or FileMaker Server.”

Availability, Pricing, and Compatibility

fmSMS v3.5 is available now from the fmSMS website at http://www.fmsms.com. A 14 day trial version is available for both Macintosh and Windows. Workgroup Licenses start at AUD $495.00. fmSMS requires FileMaker Pro v12 or FileMaker Pro v13.

Upgrade Information

fmSMS v3.5 is a free upgrade for owners of fmSMS v2/v3.

* FileMaker Go support requires the fmSMS file to be hosted by FileMaker Server

** Not all SMS Gateways support all features of fmSMS. Some features might incur additional charges by your selected SMS Gateway. Some features require hosting by FileMaker Server v12/v13 with Custom Web Publishing using the PHP API and a static IP address. See our website at http://www.fmsms.com for more details.

Media/Customer Contact:

Andrew Duncan

Phone: +61 418 468 103

sales@databuzz.com.au

http://www.fmsms.com

http://www.databuzz.com.au

About Databuzz: Databuzz is a long standing member is a member of the FileMaker Business Alliance and has been developing and deploying FileMaker solutions for clients in Australia and internationally since 1999. Our clients are individuals, small-medium businesses, government agencies and multi-national corporations. Databuzz was founded by Andrew Duncan, a Certified FileMaker 13 Developer. In 2010 Andrew presented a session at the annual FileMaker Developer Conference on integrating SMS/TXT Message Integration with FileMaker. For more information please visit our website at http://www.databuzz.com.au.

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FileMaker is a trademark of FileMaker, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Getting the IDs for a Filtered Portal

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One of my favourite features of FileMaker Pro v13 is the new “List of” summary type option, which is used for creating a return-delimited list of non-blank values in a field. For example if you wanted a list of all Customer IDs for your found set of records you can now simply reference a Summary field that uses the List of type option:

List of Summary Field Type

 

I’ve found the performance to be excellent and it can now replace the use of Custom Functions, looping scripts etc that were previously used to generate a list of IDs for a found set of records. We’ve also another great use for it – in conjunction with filtered portals it can be used to get the IDs for the currently filtered portal records. This makes it simply to filter a portal, get the list of filtered IDs which can then be used in a multi-key relationship to group those filtered records for further processing.

Portal filtering was introduced in FileMaker Pro 11 and lets developers easily filter a portal by simply editing the portal setup – you don’t need to add unnecessary clutter to your relationship graph to support portal filtering. However one of the limitations with portal filtering is that the results of calculations are based on the full set of related records, not just the records in the portal that are currently filtered. This means that you can’t simply use functions like the List function to return a list of all the Customer IDs that are currently filtered as it will return a list of all Customer IDs for the underlying relationship used by the portal.

However you can now use the new “List of” summary type field with a filtered portal to quickly get the list of filtered record IDs. You simply need to create a Summary field in your “child” table that you are filtering that is a List of the IDs, then create a script that retrieves this value.

Here’s a screenshot showing a simple filtered portal of Customers by State. When you select a State from the pop-up menu the list of customers changes to match the selected State:

 

Filtered Portals Demo

You’ll notice below the portal is another field that displays the list of Customer IDs for the currently filtered portal records. We’ve added a script trigger to the State pop-up menu filter that checks for any filtered records and retrieves the CustomerIDs for the filtered records by retrieving the value of the List of Customer IDs Summary field. The script has to go to the first row of the portal to establish the correct context first – here’s what the script looks like with the step that gets the filtered IDs highlighted:

Get Filtered Customer IDs

 

You can download this demo file to explore this technique – please post any comments below.

FileMaker Pro 13 – HTTP POST and HTTP Headers

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In FileMaker Pro v13 you can now perform an HTTP POST when importing XML data or using the “Insert from URL” script step. Both HTTP GET and HTTP/S POST are supported – GET and POST are generally the 2 most popular HTTP Request Methods when working with web services.

FileMaker Pro v12 already supported HTTP GET so nothing has changed here – you only need to specify the URL to perform an HTTP GET request. To perform an HTTP POST request you need to specify a URL starting with either:

  • httppost
  • httpspost

You then include a “?” character in the URL to separate the request URL from the POST data. Everything before the first “?” character is the request URL and everything after the first “?” character is the post data. For example to query a web service that converts Fahrenheit to Celsius you would use the following URL:

httppost://www.w3schools.com/webservices/tempconvert.asmx/FahrenheitToCelsius?Fahrenheit=100

FileMaker Pro recognises that you wish to perform an HTTP POST by the use of “httpost” at the beginning of the URL. The URL for the HTTP POST then becomes everything up to the first “?” character:

http://www.w3schools.com/webservices/tempconvert.asmx/FahrenheitToCelsius

and the POST data is everything after the first “?” character:

Fahrenheit=100

We get an XML result like this:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?><string xmlns=”http://www.w3schools.com/webservices/”>37.7777777777778</string>

which we could easily parse using FileMaker functions to get the actual Celsius value into a FileMaker field (see Demo File link at the bottom).

HTTP Headers

One of the main limitations when performing an HTTP POST is that we are unable to set the HTTP Headers. When working with web services – particular SOAP/XML based web services – you will often be required to set specific headers before sending the HTTP POST data. With FileMaker Pro 13.0v1 the following headers are set automatically and cannot be changed:

User-Agent: FileMaker/13.0

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Hopefully a future update to FileMaker Pro will allow developers to set the HTTP Headers for each request – in the meantime you will have to continue using of the available FileMaker plugins (such as the BaseElements plug-in)

 

HTTP POST Demo.fmp12

Bookmarking the FileMaker Pro/Pro Advanced 13 Help File on Mac OS X

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If you’re like me and you bookmark the FileMaker Pro/Pro Advanced Help so you can view it in your web browser instead of the Mac Help Centre you’ll find the v13 index here:

/Applications/FileMaker Pro 13 Advanced/Extensions/FileMaker Help/FileMaker Help.bundle/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/FileMaker Pro Help/index.html

(you need to right click on the FileMaker Help.bundle and select Show Package Contents to find the remaining folders)

I create a new folder in my bookmarks for “FileMaker 13” and then bookmark the following pages for easy reference:

  • index/home page
  • New features in FileMaker Pro 13
  • FileMaker Pro error codes
  • Script triggers reference
  • Script steps reference
  • Functions reference

fmSMS and FileMaker Pro v13

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We’re pleased to report that fmSMS v3 is compatible with FileMaker Pro/Pro Advanced v13 that was released today. We haven’t encountered any issues so far in our testing and have been able to send single and bulk messages successfully.

We’re planning a small update to fmSMS to take advantage of the new Perform Script On Server script step, which will remove the need to have a FileMaker Server scheduled script running every x minutes on the server to send messages that were generated on FileMaker Go v13 clients. Using the Perform Script On Server script for FileMaker Go v13 clients will allow them to compose an SMS and have it send immediately, rather than waiting for the scheduled server side script to send it on it’s next scheduled run.

If you encounter any issues with fmSMS v3 and FileMaker Pro v13 please let us know.