fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) Update

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Over the past few months we’ve been busy adding new examples and features to our fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) solution based on customer requests and our own list of features we’d like to see. We now have new examples for the following Xero API endpoints:

  • Purchase Orders
  • Receipts
  • Expense Claims
  • Users
  • Currencies
  • Branding Themes
  • Credit Notes

We’ve also added the ability to download the Xero Invoice PDF as well as the Invoice Online URL – this allows you to include these in emails that you send to your customers (e.g. a ‘pay now’ link). We’re currently working on Overpayments and then will tackle Prepayments. If there’s any examples that we don’t currently have that you would like to see please get in touch and let  us know.

FileMaker and eCommerce Integration – Part 2

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In Part 1 of our series on FileMaker and eCommerce integration we outlined the challenges many small businesses face when they go live with an online store and the new workflow challenges that can create, leading to the prospect of having to do double data entry in multiple places.

As a small business ourselves we also experienced this pain when we went live with our own online stores. Our first online store was for our oldest product fmSMS which allows you to send/receive SMS messages from the FileMaker platform – this has always had it’s own dedicated website/domain so it made sense for the store to live on the same site:

http://www.fmsms.com/shop/

A few years ago we also started selling the first of our fmAccounting Link products for the Xero accounting platform and it made sense to sell this via a store on our main Databuzz website:

http://www.databuzz.com.au/shop

So we now currently have 2 online stores located at different domains, but we will eventually merge these together to simplify things. As both stores were built using the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress and hosted with the same web hosting provider, we knew that any integration solution for one of the stores would work for both stores.

For each order that came through the store we need to perform the following actions:

  • check for an existing customer in our company FileMaker CRM and if no match is found create a new Contact record
  • create a new Invoice and associated Invoice Items
  • create a Payment record against the Invoice
  • push a copy of the Invoice to our accounting software (Xero in our case)
  • add the purchaser to a mailing list in MailChimp for future email newsletters/updates

The process starts with an email from the online store letting us know a new order has arrived:

New Customer Order

We would then have to copy and paste all the details into our FileMaker CRM, push the Invoice to Xero using our fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) integration, then add the customer to the appropriate mailing list in in our MailChimp account. When you’re only dealing with a couple of orders a month you can probably cope with doing things manually, but once you start to get several orders a day you are then impacted by the time it takes to do all of these takes which are also prone to data entry errors. Like us you probably start wondering if there is a better way and can this process be automated.

The good new is that it can and having helped tens of customers in the past overcome similar FileMaker/eCommerce integration challenges so we knew where to start – ESS. ESS is the External SQL Data Sources feature that was first introduced way back with FileMaker Pro v9 and allows you to establish a live two-way connection between FileMaker Pro and the top SQL data sources. ESS originally supported these SQL data sources:

  • Microsoft  SQL Server
  • MySQL
  • Oracle

FileMaker Pro v15 introduced 2 new data sources:

  • IBM DB2
  • PostgreSQL

Most of the popular eCommerce stores are using one of the following backend databases to drive the store:

  • MySQL (used by WordPress/WooCommerce)
  • SQL Server
  • PostgreSQL

These are also supported ESS data sources so you can use the ESS feature to  get your FileMaker CRM talking to your online store. ESS allows you to view your SQL data from within FileMaker – it appears just like normal FileMaker tables. You can create new layouts to view the data, create relationships from your FileMaker tables to your ESS tables, access the SQL data from FileMaker scripts and more (there are some limitations and it does require setting up ODBC drivers – see the Accessing External SQL Data Sources (ESS) Overview and Troubleshooting for more details.

Once you have installed the appropriate ODBC driver and setup the System DSN you can then add an ESS table occurrence to your FileMaker relationships graph, just like you would for your normal FileMaker tables:

ESS Table Occurrences

You will need to have a basic understanding of your external SQL data source structure so you know which tables to add to your FileMaker graph and how they relate – details about WooCommerce can be found here. Once you’ve added your ESS table occurrences you can create new layouts based on each of these and start to view your online store data live in your FileMaker CRM. Here’s some examples showing some of the WooCommerce/WordPress tables that store online order details:

ESS Orders

ESS Orders Meta

ESS Order Items

ESS Order Item Meta

The above screenshots are showing data from 4 of the main tables that are used by WooCommerce to store order details:

  1. posts: this creates a record for each online order. This table is also used to store Product details
  2. postmeta: this stores a number of records related to each order, such as the billing/shipping and currency/tax details
  3. woocommerce_order_items: this stores line item details for each order
  4. woocommerce_order_itemmeta: this stores meta data about each order line item

As you can see by looking at these ESS tables in FileMaker we can see all the data about each order but it is located in at least 4 different tables, making aggregating the details each order so we can easily view the complete order challenging. We could create a number of FileMaker calculation fields to extra details about each order based on the meta_key for Orders and Order Line Items, but that would end up adding a lot of table occurrences and relationships to the graph and create another layout of unnecessary complexity.

There is a better way however that avoids all that unnecessary clutter on the graph – we can use SQL Views to create a more structured view of the SQL data we require. ESS fortunately also supports SQL Views which allow us to create a predefined SQL query that we then add to the relationship graph. We created 2 SQL views for Orders and Order Line Items to gather all the related meta data about each order and order item. When we add these to the graph and view them from a FileMaker layout here’s what we see for Orders:

ESS Orders View

and this for Order Items:

ESS Order Items View

Much better! For each Order we now get 1 record showing all the Order/Customer details, and for each Order Line Item we now get 1 record showing all the details about the Order Line Item, including the Product Price and SKU (the SKU is the same one used in Xero so it’s important that we can pass that through to Xero). We can then create a relationship between these 2 ESS table occurrences to relate an Order to its Order Items by the order_id value:

ESS Relationship

and be able to view a complete WooCommerce online order in FileMaker:

WC ESS Order

We now have a FileMaker layout showing all the details for a single WooCommerce/online order, including Customer Details, Line Item Details and related Product Details. From here’s a simple case of FileMaker scripting to move the data from the ESS tables to the native FileMaker tables (first checking for any existing Customers with the same name) and from there into Xero. We add a button to the Online Order layout to push the online order into out FileMaker CRM which handles all of these tasks, saving us around 15 minutes per online order (we have customers that are getting tens of orders every day so they time savings really start to add up).

If you’re not familiar with ESS it’s important to be aware of the following:

  • you will need to install ODBC drivers
  • if you’re hosting your file with FileMaker Server you can install the ODBC driver once on the FileMaker Server machine for all FileMaker Pro clients to use, which makes deployment a breeze
  • depending on your ESS data source and whether you are on Mac or Windows you may need to purchase the ODBC driver. There’s a full list of compatible ODBC drivers in the FileMaker Knowledge Base
  • you will need to get some documentation that explains how your SQL data source tables are structured so you know which tables to add to the relationship graph
  • when working with ESS tables it’s best to use a “read only” account that won’t let you edit any of the SQL data in case you accidentally edit/delete any of the online order records
  • your company firewall will need to allow access to the ODBC data source port
  • if you’re accessing a MySQL data source you will typically have to setup Remote Access to the MySQL database via your web hosting company (e.g. via cPanel).

In Part 3 of this series we’ll look into the options when you can’t use ESS and how you can still go about integrating your online shop with your FileMaker CRM. In the meantime if you would like to discuss integrating your online store with your FileMaker CRM please contact us.

FileMaker and eCommerce Integration – Part 1

FileMaker and eCommerce Integration – Part 3

FileMaker DevCon 2016 Recap

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devcon_16_banner_horz_white

The  2016 FileMaker Developer Conference was held at the same location as last year – Las Vegas, Nevada – and the same hotel – The Cosmopolitan – so everything felt very familiar.  I didn’t spend nearly as much time getting lost as I did in 2015. This was my 13th DevCon (out of 21) and the fourth time that Databuzz has exhibited.

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After leaving Australia in the middle of winter and arriving in Las Vegas in the middle of summer the first thing you notice is the heat:

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Most of the time at DevCon is spent indoors (I didn’t venture outside for a few days) so it’s only when you leave the hotel that it hits you and it got progressively hotter as the week went on. The Cosmopolitan has great views of the Las Vegas strip – here’s the view from my hotel balcony:

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After setting up the booth on the Monday I gave a presentation at the annual Custom Web Publishing User Group meeting – this is the 10th straight year that the CWP group has met and it’s always a must attend session for me. Then it was time for the Opening Keynote presented by FileMaker Inc. staff, where attendees get a glimpse at the future product direction for the FileMaker platform:

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The rest of the week was spent at the Databuzz booth in the exhibitors area, talking to developers from all around the world and doing lots of demos of our products. It’s also a chance to catch up with customers in person and put a face to a name that you’ve been emailing for many months.

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As with past years the most interest from attendees at our booth was in fmSMS and we did lots of demos showing how you can use the FileMaker platform to send and receive SMS/TXT messages. Looking at the message logs I can see we sent a lot of messages to attendees from the USA/Canada, France, Luxembourg, Sweden, Mongolia and Australia.

This year there was definitely more awareness of the Xero small business accounting platform compared to previous years and it was great showing our fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) solution to developers from all around the world. North America is now Xero’s fastest growing market (the other main markets are Australia, New Zealand and the UK) so we will definitely see more interest in Xero in future years.

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The venue for  DevCon 2017 was announced at the closing session – DevCon is returning to Phoenix, Arizona and the JW Marriott Desert Ridge from July 24 – 26. That will also have a familiar feel to it – it will be the fifth time DevCon has been at this venue. The closing session was also used to announce the winners of the FileMaker Developer Challenge. This year Databuzz and our good friends at Goya donated the monitors that we purchased for the conference to some of the charities involved in the Developer Challenge – Foster Kinship and the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth gratefully accepted these.


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See you in Phoenix in 2017!

FileMaker and eCommerce Integration – Part 1

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puzzle
Many of our small business customers have both a physical presence and an online presence when it comes to selling their goods and services. They  might have:

  • a physical retail store where customers can come and purchase goods in person
  • a mail order store where they take orders by mail, phone and fax and send the goods to the purchaser once they have paid
  • an online store which takes orders, processes the credit card transactions and notifies the business to fulfil the orders
  • a popup store/market store that runs every month or for short periods of time

When the business is starting up, or when they are adding a new method of selling goods and services, the tendency is for each of these stores to operate as their own silo. This ultimately leads to a lot of data duplication/double entry in multiple systems as the business deals with orders coming in from multiple store presences. Quite often we see the following workflow:

  • physical and mail order/phone orders are processed in the central office FileMaker CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution
  • online/eCommerce orders are processed via the online store attached to the customer’s website. The business is notified of new orders via email and these are then entered into the central office CRM system by customer service staff who then notify the accounts department to create an accounting entry in Xero or MYOB etc.

We wouldn’t generally recommend to customer’s that they use FileMaker to run their online eCommerce store, so there’s no problem with having the physical presence and the online presence separate (and it’s highly advisable from a security standpoint). However this leads to the problem of scattered information and ad hoc processes – wouldn’t it be better if all the information was in one place and you could see all the physical orders and online orders from the central FileMaker CRM? Could you save time and increase productivity by not having to manually re-enter all the online orders in both the main FileMaker CRM as well as your accounting software?

We’ve been helping customers for many years now integrate their online stores with their FileMaker CRM solution so they can view everything in the one place and automate the transfer of online orders into their office CRM, and then push that into their accounting software without having to re-type anything.

Here’s a list of online orders from a popular shopping cart as it appears in the web browser admin view:

WooCommerce FM List 2

 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could also view these same orders live in FileMaker:

WooCommerce FM List

and instead of re-entering each order manually, including the line item details:

WooCommerce Order WP

you could see all the online order details live in FileMaker:

WooCommerce FM Details

and with the click of a button you can push the order details from the online eCommerce system into your FileMaker CRM and apply some business rules at the same time, such as:

  • check for an existing customer in the FileMaker CRM and if no match is found create a new Contact record
  • create a new Invoice and associated Invoice Items
  • create a Payment record against the Invoice
  • push a copy of the Invoice to your accounting software such as Xero or MYOB
  • add the purchaser to a mailing list in MailChimp or Campaign Monitor etc
  • send a thank you email to the customer with a discount coupon

Here at Databuzz we recently faced the same challenges that we’ve been helping our customers with for many years – we opened our first online store last year and have been working on integrating this with our internal FileMaker CRM every since. In Part 2 and 3 of this series we’ll cover some approaches to eCommerce and FileMaker integration based on our experiences as a small business that uses FileMaker and Xero to run their business.

FileMaker and eCommerce Integration – Part 2

FileMaker and eCommerce Integration – Part 3

FileMaker Launches Small Business Service Business Toolkit

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service toolkit

 

In July 2010 FileMaker Inc. launched the first version of FileMaker Go for the iPhone and the iPad, beginning the push towards mobility and extending FileMaker’s reach beyond the office and into the field. FileMaker Go was particularly helpful for service businesses that had staff working remotely onsite with customers – for example servicing customer equipment or performing scheduled maintenance. FileMaker Go allowed these service workers to make the move away from paper and to a digital solution that help removed unnecessary paper work and data entry.

Over the past six years we’ve helped implement a number of FileMaker Go based mobility solutions for customers that have helped transform the way they do business. A typical workflow before FileMaker Go would like something like this:

  • office staff would allocate jobs for technicians/service staff via an office based FileMaker solution
  • these would be printed off and collected by the service workers at the start of each day
  • service workers would complete the jobs and record all the information in paper forms
  • at the end of the day the service staff would return to the head office and deliver the completed forms to an office based worker who would then re-enter the same data in the office database

With the introduction of FileMaker Go we can now extend the reach of the office FileMaker system to the remote field workers. An integrated FileMaker Go custom app can transform the old workflow in many ways and eliminate a lot of paper based forms and double data entry. As a result the new workflow looks like this:

  • office staff allocate jobs for the remote field workers
  • using an iPhone or iPad running a FileMaker Go custom app the service staff download any jobs allocated to them each day containing all the details of the job, customer details and equipment details
  • service staff visit each customer (they can view their address using Google Maps direct from FileMaker Go) and record details about each job. This might include time spent on site, parts used, equipment readings, photos and asignature from the customer who approves the job
  • if required an invoice can be generated and sent via email as a PDF onsite to the customer
  • at the end of the day or after each job is completed the data is uploaded back to the office system which in turn triggers a new workflow (e.g. to set the next follow up date, issue an invoice if one was not delivered onsite etc)

With an integrated FileMaker Go solution there is no longer any requirement to re-enter data back in the office, a process that can often take multiple hours each day. This frees up office staff to perform more meaningful and productive work (and can also mean you don’t need to hire as many staff or temp workers to perform this work).

FileMaker Go can help transform any service based business, regardless of whether you’re currently using a FileMaker solution in the office. We’ve implemented FileMaker Go/mobile solutions in many different industries over the past six years, including:

  • Real Estate – allowing property management staff to download a list of properties requiring end of lease inspections and complete the inspections onsite. All completed inspections are then uploaded to a central database back in the office and reports send to the landlord
  • Equipment Inspections – we have a number of customers that need to perform regular scheduled inspections on equipment such as septic tanks, gas tanks and properties. Inspections are allocated to a particular staff or area and then downloaded either daily or monthly as required and uploaded when completed.
  • Electricians – allowing electricians to download daily jobs and record time and parts used onsite for each job and upload back to the office each day

In recognition of how FileMaker Go can help service based businesses FileMaker Inc. has recently released a free Small Business Service Business Toolkit to help small businesses plan, create and deploy a custom app that will enable them to maximize customer satisfaction, drive growth and increase profitability. The Toolkit includes an eBook with case studies showing how small businesses, by replacing pen-and-paper processes with custom apps built using the FileMaker Platform, are experiencing tremendous improvements in overall work performance.

You can download a free copy of the Small Business Service Business Toolkit here. If you would like to discuss implementing a custom app for your service business please get in touch.

Clickatell SMS Gateway TLS Changes

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Clickatell have notified customers that they will be performing scheduled system maintenance on 14 August 2016. Following these changes they will no longer be supporting SSL 2.0 or SSL 3.0 but are adding support for TLS 1.2.

This only applies to HTTPS requests (not HTTP) made to the Clickatell API. We’ve completed some initial testing using their test TLS server and are happy to report all messages were delivered successfully. If you’re using fmSMS with Clickatell and HTTPS requests everything should continue to work after the 14 August 2016, but please let us know if you encounter any issues.

Databuzz showcases SMS and Accounting Integration Solutions at 2016 FileMaker Developer Conference

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Databuzz will be demonstrating their SMS and Accounting integration solutions at the 2016 FileMaker Developer Conference this week in Las Vegas:

  • fmSMS: our award winning 2 way SMS solution for FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Go, FileMaker WebDirect and FileMaker Server. fmSMS allows you to send an SMS from FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Go and FileMaker Server to almost any mobile phone in the world, reaching over 800 networks in more than 200 countries. You can get more information about fmSMS from the fmSMS website at http://fmsms.com
  • fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition): our solution that integrates between FileMaker Pro and the Xero Accounting Software. Xero is the market-leading small business cloud accounting software in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and is making great progress in the United States market. fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) lets you upload and download Contacts, Invoices, Payments, Bills, Timesheets and more between FileMaker and Xero. You can get more information from the fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) product page at http://www.databuzz.com.au/fmaccounting-link-xero-edition/
  • fmAccounting Link (MYOB AccountRight Edition): our solution that integrates between FileMaker Pro and the MYOB AccountRight Accounting Software (Australia and New Zealand). MYOB AccountRight runs either in the Cloud or on the Desktop, and fmAccounting Link (MYOB AccountRight Edition) allows you to upload Contacts, Invoices, Payments and more at the click of a button. You can get more information from the fmAccounting Link (MYOB AccountRight Edition) product page at http://www.databuzz.com.au/fmaccounting-link-myob-accountright- edition/
  • fmAccounting Link (MYOB Essentials Edition): our latest solution that integrates between FileMaker Pro and the MYOB Essentials Accounting Software, the easy online accounting software from MYOB (Australia and New Zealand). fmAccounting Link (MYOB Essentials Edition) allows you to upload Contacts, Invoices, Payments and more at the click of a button. You can get more information at the fmAccounting Link (MYOB Essentials Edition) product page at http://www.databuzz.com.au/fmaccounting-link-myob-essentials-edition/

    Databuzz will also be offering a DevCon show special for the entire week – all products will be discounted by 10% when you purchase via our online stores at:

    http://www.databuzz.com.au/shop

    http://fmsms.com/shop

Some of our Favourite Changes in FileMaker Pro 15

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I recently wrote about the number of bugs that were fixed in the FileMaker v15 platform (Pro, Server, Go and WebDirect) – over 150 by my count. Now I would like to cover some of the “sleeper” features of the FileMaker v15 release – some of which are included in FileMaker’s marketing to highlight the new version and some that are not mentioned at all in any of the release notes.

FileMaker Inc. have published a list of Behaviour changes in FileMaker Pro 15 which you should all read (I’ll be mentioning one of the items on this list). Otherwise the changes that I’ll be discussing below were discovered through notifications from bugs I had reported that were addressed in v15, reading the FileMaker documentation (including the FMP Acknowledgements.pdf), reading posts on the FileMaker Community forums and testing the software in real world use.

PDF Changes – FileMaker Pro v15 introduced a number of changes to the Save as PDF feature. The ability to generate a PDF file was first introduced in FileMaker Pro v8 – FileMaker Inc. licensed a PDF library from DataLogics. This has changed with v15 – FileMaker Inc. are now using an open source PDF library called Hummus PDF. The Hummus PDF library is available for both C++ and NodeJS environments – hopefully this change in PDF libraries will see FileMaker Inc. address two of my top feature requests: PDF generation under FileMaker Server and Append to PDF support for FileMaker Go.

The change in PDF libraries, along with some other PDF behaviour changes, is leading to smaller PDF files generated from FileMaker Pro. In our tests we’ve seen an average 30% reduction in PDF file sizes, which is great when you’re generating PDFs to email or working across a remote network. As with any major change like this you should run some tests on your solutions to ensure your PDFs still look the same with v15 – there have been some reports on the FileMaker forums about issues some issues are encountering with certain layouts, objects etc, so make sure you test this before rolling out v15 to all your users if PDF generation is a critical part of your workflow.

FileMaker Inc. recently released an update to FileMaker Pro v14 (14.0.6) as well that also updates the PDF library to the same one used by FileMaker Pro v15, so existing v14 users can also benefit from the reduction in PDF file sizes that the new library generates.

(Make sure you check out the FileMaker Product Ideas area where you can suggest new features and also vote on existing features.)

Mouse Wheel – for many years the mouse wheel under FileMaker Pro has worked differently on Windows compared to the Mac, and in my experience this has been the cause of much confusion as Windows users scroll their mouse wheel only to suddenly find they have changed records when they though they were scrolling the window up or down. For many years we’ve recommended to our customers to install Mouse utilities like KatMouse which allows you to change the behaviour of the wheel in FileMaker Pro on Windows, but with FileMaker Pro v15 the mouse wheel finally behaves the same way on Windows as on the Mac.

Under FileMaker Pro v15 the scroll wheel will only scroll a layout or an object, just like it does on the Mac. It won’t flip you through the records anymore – Windows users will have to click on the navigation buttons just like on the Mac (on the Mac you can use the Apple Magic Mouse to swipe left/right to quickly scan forwards/backwards through records when in Form view – I haven’ tested this on Windows yet). As this change is reversing decades of how it used to work, some users who prefer the previous scroll wheel functionality can use hacks to modify the behaviour of the mouse wheel again, though we’re recommending to all our customers that they stick with the default behaviour.

Truncate Table – the Truncate Table script step was the only new script step added to FileMaker Pro v15 and it’s one we’re very happy to see. As it’s name implies (and for those familiar with the SQL Truncate command) this script step deletes all records in the specified table regardless of the current found set. In some solutions we have a temporary table used to generate reports or to import temporary data for processing. Often the record count for these tables can be into the tens of thousands of records or more, which means when we need to clear out the temporary table when running a new report users will see the deleting records dialog box which generally freaks them out the first time (not to mention that it can takes several minutes to delete large numbers of records over the network). Now with the Truncate Table script step we can quickly and silently delete all records in one go in seconds without the user noticing.

There are a number of issues you need to be aware of when using Truncate Table, including:

  • both FileMaker Server v15 and FileMaker Pro v15 are required if the file is hosted by FileMaker Server
  • it attempts to lock all records in the table before deleting them. If it can’t lock all records (for example, if a record is being edited by another user), Truncate Table stops and returns an error code
  • it does not delete related records even if the relationship is set up to do
  • Server-side scripts and Custom Web Publishing run this script step as if the With dialog option is Off

If you would like to read more about the Truncate Table script step we recommend the following articles:

Script Comments That Wrap – we love the new FileMaker Script Workspace that was introduced in FileMaker Pro v14, but as we started using it and making script comments we noticed one annoying change. Script comments didn’t wrap to the next line and you couldn’t scroll to see what wasn’t visible on the screen. Here’s some screenshots showing the change in script comments from v13, v14 and v15:

script comments v13

The above screenshot shows FileMaker Pro v13 – you can’t see the rest of the comments but you can scroll to the right to view them.

script comments v14

The above screenshot shows FileMaker Pro v14 – you can’t scroll to see the remaining comments. You can click into the comment and then move the cursor to the right to see the rest of the comments, which is not a great experience.script comments v15

In FileMaker Pro v15 above the comments now wrap automatically – no more scrolling or moving the cursor to all the comments. If you use a text editor when working with other languages such as HTML, PHP etc then you will be familiar with this behaviour and welcome the change.

Search your of FileMaker Server favourites – this change alone saves me a few minutes every day. I work with lots of different clients who have their own FileMaker Servers which I save to my list of favourites in FileMaker Pro. Currently my list has around 70 different servers which I’ve accumulated over the years, so when I come to open a file on a client’s server I have to try and remember where in the list their server is (I’ve memorised them so I know if there towards the top, middle or bottom sections of the list). Now with FileMaker Pro v15 I can simply do a search in the Open Remote dialog box:

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 12.15.21 PM

No more remembering where in the list they were – I simply type part of the server name (it doesn’t matter whereabouts in the name the search string you enter is – I can type ‘fm’ or ‘acme’ or ‘.au’) and FileMaker Pro will filter the list to show any matches. I’ve been wanting this feature for many years so it’s great to finally see this one – anyone who has a long list of server favourites will upgrade to v15 for this feature alone!

 

Wells Fargo Now Sharing Data with Xero

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Last week Xero announced that it had entered into a data sharing agreement with Wells Fargo, one of the top US banks. Xero users will now be able to get bank feeds directly from Wells Fargo into Xero without having to manually export and import files. Xero is the first major technology company to partner with Wells Fargo to help their common customers share data between their two platforms.

Xero recently surpassed more than 700,000 subscribers around the world and North America is their fastest growing market with more than 62,000 subscribers. In the UK, with the addition of Barclays earlier this year, Xero now has five of the top six banks already running direct feeds to Xero giving them coverage for over 90% of UK’s small businesses.

We’ve noticed an increase in the number of enquires about FileMaker and Xero integration from North America over the past 12 months, particularly from customers looking for an alternative to QuickBooks. We can expect more major US banking integrations in the coming months, similar to what we have seen in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

If you’re looking for a “do it yourself” option for FileMaker Xero integration check out fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) – it includes examples for authenticating, uploading and downloading Contacts, Invoices, Payments and more. It’s 100% unlocked allowing you to integrate the functionality into your existing FileMaker solution, helping your company save time and money by removing the double data entry between FileMaker and Xero.

This article in Inc. magazine has an interesting perspective on what the Wells Fargo Xero agreement will mean for small business customers in the US.