March 18 Meeting Agenda Annnounced

Our meeting this month is shaping up to be an event you won’t want to miss. Our speakers have been doing some traveling lately and are back amongst us with their insights.

To lead off, Brian Ginn, fresh from his recent travels in China, will regale you with–not his photographs and videos of the Chinese countryside and New Year’s celebrations, unfortunately–but with the culmination of our series on script triggers. For those of you that have ever set up a nice little tab set in FileMaker, only to have it forget where it last was when you switch to a different layout and back again, Brian has a cool way to make sure that your tab selections stay right where you last left them. His demo will also demonstrate his passion for all things with the words “social” and “media” in their names by showing you how to integrate Google Docs, straight from the cloud and right into your own programs.

Also returning from a foreign country (one called California), KFUG member Teresa Wilkins will share her experiences at last month’s FileMaker Bootcamp. This long-running, intensive immersion experience is held in Southern California and boasts several famous FileMaker luminaries on its faculty. Teresa says, “Bootcamp! It’s not for everyone, but if it’s right for you then you’re gonna love it. I’ll give a broad-strokes overview of what the experience was like and who might benefit most from it. I’ll share some tasty knowledge morsels that I picked up - quick bites and food for thought! Then I’ll end by sharing some great resources for users at every level, with an emphasis on custom menus and the brilliantly accessible wisdom of Jerry Robbins.”

Fresh off an encore engagement in Fort Wayne, Indiana (not quite as exotic as the aforementioned locales, but the natives are friendly), Jonathan Fletcher will have a handout and short presentation on FileMaker-related resources available around the ‘net. From helpful blogs to downloadable software, the internet houses a wealth of useful information for the aspiring (and experienced) FileMaker user/developer. Want to know how to get your questions answered? There’s a site for that.

And for the hot news of the week: FileMaker 11 is out! That means that FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Pro Advanced, FileMaker Server and FileMaker Server Advanced all have new versions with a metric boatload of new features and stuff to talk about. Jonathan will end his presentation with a short overview of some of the higher profile new features to be found in the latest versions of our favorite toys.

That said, stay tuned for an official announcement about the return of the Bill and Bill show. Bill Kaiser, FileMaker Inc.’s Midwest Business Account Manager and Bill Heizer, FileMaker Inc.’s Senior Consulting Engineer spoke to our group in November and wowed us with their presentation on FileMaker 10. Well, they’re going to do it again with FileMaker 11. Invites will be going out to the wider community of registered users in Kentucky and Southern Indiana, so we expect another SRO turnout. While tentatively scheduled for the May 20th meeting at this point, we’re not inking it into our Day-Timer just yet. We’ll let you know the minute we get firm confirmation.

Don’t forget you can get more info about our next meeting and also RSVP at: http://fmpug.com/scheduleMeetings.php

Thanks again and see you on the 18th!

–
Alan Bird
Jonathan Fletcher
Brian Ginn
Bill Holt
Byron Songer

Special Product Briefing: Getting the Most Out of the FileMaker 11 Product Line

On March 16, 2010, our guests will be Alexei Folger (Senior Systems Engineer), and Glen Suarez (Business Account Manager) from FileMaker, Inc.

Please register using the link provided as space is limited. Your registration will be especially appreciated and will help us in planning for food and refreshments! Register Now!

In this meeting, we’ll get an update on the FileMaker 11 Product Line, discuss some of our current issues, and have some of our most pressing FileMaker questions answered.

Whether you are new to FileMaker or an experienced developer, you will find this meeting useful and informative. You’ll discover all the exciting features that make FileMaker Pro 11 such a valuable tool–such as FileMaker Charts, scripting, calculations, the enhanced Layout/Report Assistant, Quick Find, Inspector, Portal Filtering, Snapshot Link and more! You’ll also learn about resources that are available to help keep you up-to-date.

Don’t miss this special opportunity to talk with Miss Alexei and Mr. Glen face-to-face and meet other like-minded FileMaker users and developers.

Please note, we’ll be meeting in a new location this month:

City of Scottsdale’s Paiute Neighborhood Center
Building 9 Lecture Hall
6535 East Osborn Road
Scottsdale, Arizona 85251

The Lecture Hall is large and features tiered, stadium-style seating with hook-ups for laptops, so feel free to bring yours!

Getting the Most Out of the FileMaker Product Line

On March 16, 2010, our guests will be Alexei Folger (Senior Systems Engineer), and Glen Suarez (Business Account Manager) from FileMaker, Inc.

Please join us for an in-depth discussion about how to get the most out of the FileMaker product line.

In this meeting, we’ll get an update on FileMaker, discuss some of our current issues, and have some of our most pressing FileMaker questions answered.

Whether you are new to FileMaker or an experienced developer, you will find this meeting useful and informative. You’ll get a thorough understanding of key features to help you build better FileMaker databases. You’ll also learn what resources are available to help keep you up-to-date.

Don’t miss this special opportunity to talk with Miss Alexei and Mr. Glen face-to-face and meet other like-minded FileMaker users and developers.

Food and drinks will be provided, too!

Please note, we’ll be meeting in a new location this month:

City of Scottsdale’s Paiute Neighborhood Center
Building 9 Lecture Hall
6535 East Osborn Road
Scottsdale, Arizona 85251

Angelo Luchi:Hosting

This month, Angelo Luchi presented on the various ways you can host your FileMaker data. The meeting was sponsored by MSN Media, who provided the pizza and drinks.

He covered many of the usual suspects, including:
• Local hosted server
• Remote hosted server (like his Drooling Dog hosting, Portland’s own ODI Technology)
• Peer to peer (sheer evil - supports up to 10 users, but never ever a good idea IMHO)
• Web hosting, including PHP, Lasso, IWP, and others
• Mobile device, such as iPhone, iPad, Crackberry
• Citrix / Terminal Services

There are may things to think about in all this. Latency is an important factor, not just the raw bandwidth.

Backups are critically important. If you’re not doing an offsite backup, you should. Use Amazon S3 for your data ($.10 per GB per month, which is crazy cheap) 360Works SafetyNet, SugarSync, DropBox, or other solutions like this that move data to the cloud.

Hosted databases should be optimized for speed. Don’t store large files in container fields. Use solutions like SeedCode calendar or fmSearchResults that have very simple TOs, and rely of local processing of data in variables or global fields, and simple portals. The perfect example of what works poorly in a hosted environment is a portal that shows 20,000 rows of data. I think this is bad design no matter how you slice it, again IMHO.

Terminal Services is the Microsoft solution.
Not as well optimized as Citrix in any method, but less expensive. Printing support is poor - really only for populate HP laser printers. Very bad for multi-function inkjet type devices. Mac support is very poor. Graphics look bad - no support for transparencies or gradations. You’ll want to reduce them. Pretty good control of the environment. Terminal services drops connections frequently, so it’s a really good idea to test.

GoGlobal (http://www.graphon.com/) is a similar service. It started life in the Unix world, and now runs on a machine as small as Windows XP running on a Mac mini, supporting 10 sessions. It’s less expensive than TS or Citrix for small sites.

Citrix is great. The engine has been updated much more than Microsoft, so it’s quite a bit more optimized. The licensing, while expensive, is based on concurrent users, and not total users like FileMaker is licensed. To deploy it, you need to know it pretty well. Amazon EC2 has a single user CitrixXenApp tool that you can play with, which is amazing. Angelo said he’d post a link to that. Maybe This?

Citrix supports a wide array of devices and platforms. It supports all major browsers, and now runs basically as a browser plug-in. There are clients for Linux, old and new versions of Mac and Windows, iPhone, Palm. There is even a citrix client for TRS-80. (kidding) Plug-ins run really well, and update beautifully. You can publish an entire Windows desktop or just an app.

The new product that Angelo showed is the ability to run a full Citrix connection that includes a FileMaker client starting at $65 a month per user. This is not licensed for concurrent use, but for each user. It might be perfect for a few users who are on the road to access a complex application, where other users connect to the server directly. This might also be perfect for a developer who travels the country in an RV and wants to do work on client systems, even though the local WiFi is really bad. I wonder who we know like that. Hmm.

March 22nd - FileMaker Inc.

Please join us for a special meeting to introduce FileMaker 11!

Alexei Folger and Phil Smith from FileMaker will be on hand to demonstrate and dive into the use cases for this great, new version of your favorite product. There are a host of great new features to enhance your development including the ability to:

And much more!

RSVP for this meeting today!

FileMaker will be sponsoring Pizza and beverages so bring your appetite, for knowledge as well as pizza, and come see what’s now possible with FileMaker Pro.

Alexei Folger Senior Systems Engineer FileMaker, Inc.

Phil Smith Business Account Manager FileMaker, Inc.

Questions?

Have a question for Alexei or Phil? Leave a comment below and we’ll ask it during the meeting…

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KYana FMPUG - Part Deux

Well, last month didn’t seem to have scared too many of you away. About a dozen more souls braved the chilly winter sunshine to seek out another darkened room to watch geeky Keynote presentations and FileMaker demos. And were glad of it!

Byron Songer dishes out delicious FileMaker-ness for all wanting to learn more about their favorite data muncher.

Byron certainly showed off his extensive experience with FileMaker in the latest installment (FMP 102) of his series on the nuts and bolts of basic data and interface design as it applies to everyone’s favorite database development environment. Presentation and demo files here.

Jonathan progressed from object script triggers (last month) to what can be done with layout script triggers (all seven of them) and why. Presentation and demo files here.

A little refreshment and meeting some new comrades in the FileMaker Revolutionary Cause rounded out a perfect FileMaker-er outing.

Next month you get to listen to some special people who haven’t presented to the group before, so mark your calendar for March 18 (and watch this space) and tell your boss you’re not coming back after lunch that day. If you’re self-employed and your boss doesn’t let you off, they’re a slave-driver and don’t deserve such a great employee as you. See you then!

Feb 22- Deployment

Overview. Angelo Luchi of The Drooling Dog will be speaking.

Deployment

Deployment is a critical step in the success of your solution. In this session Angelo will explore the various methodologies for FileMaker Application deployment and help you determine which one(s) are appropriate for a given situation. He’ll be covering Citrix, Hosting, In-House Server, IWP,PHP. He will explore some benefits and issues with each process.

He’ll also be talking a bit about a new service that he’s offering through his hosting business that can help you or your client deploy through Citrix quickly, easily and economically.

Angelo Luchi is a 10+ year veteran developer of FileMaker software. In that time he has been building enterprise FileMaker applications, innovative web applications, integrating FileMaker with Web Services, and building a reliable FileMaker hosting infrastructure. Angelo is the owner of The Drooling Dog, LLC, a Seattle based company providing FileMaker and Web development as well as a multitude of hosting options, to the community. He offers coast to coast server availability and now Citrix XenApp hosting.

RSVP for this meeting today!

Angelo Luchi The Drooling Dog

Questions?

Leave a comment below and we’ll get it to Angelo to make sure he gets to it…

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Developing and Marketing Your FileMaker Solution and What Do You Want From Your User Group?

Developing and Marketing Your Solution

Let’s talk about what it takes to develop and market commercial FileMaker solutions. We have quite a few members who have launched vertical-market solutions and a lot of members who would like to learn more about how it’s done. If you’ve got a successful vertical-market solution, please join us and share your product(s) and your expertise. If you don’t have a shrink-wrap solution, please join us and learn why you might want to.

What Do You Want From Your User Group?

Are you getting what you want from your FileMaker Pro User Group? Your suggestions, ideas and opinions are needed! Let’s talk about making changes to enhance the value of membership/participation and to grow our group!

See you there!

Audrey

About a Dozen Get the Goods!

Byron shows off his best FileMaker 10 tricks

Make sure you don’t miss out: put next month’s meeting 2/18 on your calendar right now, why don’t you? We’d love to have you join us and you’d love to learn more about FileMaker 10 in general and Script Triggers in particular. Right? Right!

Byron and I gave out all manner of FileMaker-y goodness. Byron has posted some files related to his presentation, Intro to FileMaker 10, here.

My presentation on Script Triggers can be found here. It’s a PDF with the notes and my sample FMP file. (FMP 10 required.)

See you next month!

Jonathan

What topics would you like to see as FMPug.TV Presentations?

We are working on some ideas for FMPug.TV broadcasts and wondered what topics you might like to see.

Let us know in the comments area of this post.