Agenda

Claris Partner Meeting

Partner Meeting with representatives from Claris:
Marie Normand, Global Partner Manager
David Loeb, EMEA Partner Manager
Clay Maeckel, Software Architect
Douglas Wallis, Product Manager

Brewery tour and walking dinner

Brewery tour and dinner at De Koninck

The most fun adventure in Antwerp? A tour through our City Brewery! That is not only a must-see, but especially a must-do due to the countless interactive experiences. No, you do not have to follow a guide: you do this visit at your own pace. Moreover, before and during your visit we treat you to a perfectly tapped tasting. So put our tour on your bucket list, or better yet: come experience it immediately!

Address:
ANTWERP CITY BREWERY
MECHELSESTEENWEG 291
2018 ANTWERP

Opening Keynote

Time to gather everyone to kick off the conference! 🎉 Short introduction by ClickWorks and Square Moon. Keynote by Marie Normand and Douglas Wallis from Claris.

Fika

Time to stretch our legs, grab a coffee and a snack, connect to other attendees and catch some fresh air before the upcoming sessions!

The Monolith vs. Distributed Architecture

How FM solutions aren’t the FM solutions from the past…

Icons, Fonts & Colors : The good, the bad and the ugly

With FileMaker - from a UI/UX design point of view - we can do so much… As usual with this platform we have infinitely of freedom… But as a sage said ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ As a developper or designer, we have the responsibility to know and put into practice the fundamentals of design because our solutions have user interfaces. I will review the basic principles of a good UI design and what are the good uses of Fonts, Icons and color…

24U's Greatest Mistakes and Recent Successes [Sponsor]

We all learn from mistakes. But learning from your own mistakes is painful, so take this opportunity to learn from ours. In this session, HOnza is going to share some of our biggest mistakes and what we've learned from them. As a bonus, HOnza will also share some of the most inspiring successes from our recent projects.

Surviving The App Jungle

In this session, you will learn how to efficiently navigate between different layouts in your FileMaker solution. The talk will cover various techniques and best practices for designing intuitive navigation interfaces, such as using button bars, side menus and global variables. You will also learn how to handle complex navigation flows, including deep linking and hierarchical navigation.
By the end of the session, you will have a better understanding of how to create a seamless user experience that enables users to quickly and easily move between different parts of your app.

FM Betterforms [Sponsor]

Build powerful FileMaker powered web apps without learning advanced tooling.
Gain complete control over your app's styling and functionality without limitations. Seamlessly integrate advanced features such as Progressive Web App (PWA) support, OAuth authentication, and third-party libraries.

Facilitating scanning input in a warehouse - a case study

Key topics:
Use of QR codes, dynamic text to speech, intelligent order processing

Situation:
Customer is an organic wholesale food supplier with a large customer base. A large number of orders need picking and packing in an efficient fashion that is easy, reduces errors and is versatile. Orders are picked by a team of packers using forklifts in a large warehouse. Multiple orders need to be packed accurately and packed onto pallets that are loaded onto a lorry, organised by delivery. Items are quantities of supplied products and bespoke mixes.
Traceability needs to be maintained from source to final customer to satisfy the Soil Association.

Before implementation
Packers would receive the orders on an iPad. They would locate items using their knowledge of the warehouse and pick them, return to the forklift and mark the item as packed. This generated numerous errors as many products are similar. It was also time consuming to return to the forklift every time. Scanners were introduced to scan supplier barcodes which are of numerous barcode styles.

Solution to be discussed
Wrist mounted scanners capable of reading QR codes were introduced and QR codes attached to every pack, simplifying traceability. A location map was generated, so location of products could be predicted and a recommended picking order could be suggested. Text to speech was introduced so that packers could be directed to the next item, with the amount of information calculated dynamically so that only a brief phrase is used if the next item is close, or a much longer sentence if the item is further away. The wrist scanners allow for fast input, which can be checked for accuracy. Users are able to specify the voice they hear. Load planning is done on the orders so multiple orders can be packed together and loaded appropriately.
User reception is generally positive. Picking accuracy has increased significantly. Picking speed has also increased. Overall, the adoption of this solution has generated a measurable increase in income for the organisation.

Focus
The talk will focus on the text to speech element and how that has been implemented.

Lunch

Time to fill our stomachs instead of our brains!

C.R.U.D in FileMaker and why you should care…

[C] … Create, [R] … Read, [U] … Update, [D] … Delete are well known operations in the real world outside of FileMaker. There are good reasons to standardise those procedures. Why should FileMaker be any different?
We have implemented our own flavour of these and were able to reduce code lines by a lot while improving on the quality and updatability of our code.

Of course, this comes at a cost (performance) but in most cases, this can be mitigated. Overall better code in many operations, improved readability, better standardised error handling and less chances of a rookie switching to the wrong layout in Brows-Mode are just a few of the benefits.

FMcloud [Sponsor]

Our Cloud Gives You the Speed You Are Looking for, We Take Care of the Rest for You.
Revolutionary FileMaker cloud hosting service on Linux/Docker. High Availabilty. Your FileMaker App 24/7. Best Value.
Claris Innovation Award.

Harnessing the Power: Integrating FileMaker with Power BI 

Are you interested in providing your client with amazing, interactive and fully up-to-date reports?... if you're determined to finally integrate your FileMaker with Power BI through API, don't miss this session.
The objective is to explore the benefits, functionalities, and practical applications of this integration, empowering attendees to leverage their data effectively and make informed decisions. 

Syncing Secrets Unleashed: Mastering Conflict-Free Data Replication

Discover the secret to taming one of Computer Science's most notorious challenges. "Syncing Simplified: Mastering the Art of Seamless Data Synchronization." Delve into the complexities of data syncing and the challenges of achieving eventual consistency in distributed systems. Get acquainted with CRDTs (Conflict-free Replicated Data Types) and their pivotal role in conflict-free data synchronization. But don't worry if you're not building a sync engine! We will also reveal valuable code techniques that every developer can incorporate into their toolkit. Learn how we successfully built server-to-server and server-to-device sync engines with field-level conflict resolution, and walk away with practical insights that will help you conquer the world of data synchronization. Don't miss this opportunity to become a syncing wizard and elevate your coding prowess!

Webhooks

Webhooks and the Claris FileMaker Platform   - what are webhooks and why should you use them? - overview of options for webhooks (open source, do it yourself, commercial solutions) - live demonstrations using services like Stripe, Twilio and Shopify

Inspector Pro [Sponsor]

Leverage advanced diagnostics, perform in-depth analysis, and gain insights with new visualizations.
Use InspectorPro to analyze your FileMaker solutions:

• - Detect problems and warnings
• - Identify references and dependencies for any element
• - Compare differences between solutions
• - Process DDR on Server (PDoS) for fast, flexible results
• - Share development progress with your team.

And so much more...

Claris Technical Session

Technical keynote with Q&A by Clay Maeckel, Software Architect and Douglas Wallis, Propduct Manager.

Fika

Time to stretch our legs, grab a coffee and a snack, connect to other attendees and catch some fresh air before the upcoming sessions!

Panel Discussion

Join Matt Navarre, Wim Decorte, HOnza Koudelka, and Clay Maeckel in an insightful discussion on FileMaker performance and the latest community issues.

Artificial Intelligence

We look at the current state of AI. What’s new in the last year and how have things moved on since ChatGPT showed up on the scene? Starting with a comparison of generative AI and predictive AI we demonstrate how these can be integrated with your FileMaker systems and when one or the other is the right choice. I’ll explain what embeddings are and how they’re a useful option in many cases. We’ll also look at some of the indicators that AI may not be the best way forward.

The power of abstraction: less is more

How to re-use the same structures to handle different kind of data and deliver a widely configurable and resilient system. An example on purchase, sales and stock processes.

Conference dinner at the ZOO

Address: Koningin Astridplein 20-26, 2018 Antwerpen

This edition will feature a seated dinner with an open bar (no drink tickets needed) in the beautiful, historical Marble Hall, next to the famous Antwerp Zoo.

As one of the architectonic highlights of Art Nouveau in Belgium, it is the ideal setting for our evening dinner.

The impressive columns of pink marble, the high ceiling in pure Art Nouveau style, and the high windows add to a special, spacious, and stylish impression.
On entering the Marble Hall, one is immediately aware of an overwhelming sense of light and space. High windows bath the Marble Hall in beautiful soft daylight. The Belle Epoque atmosphere still lingers here.

Dinner guests are invited to roam around in the adjacent Verlat Hall and the Winter Garden: a late 19th-century architectural gem of glass and steel providing a tropical illusion.
Entering this Winter Garden is like arriving in a dense woodland, where you can walk among hundreds of butterflies during the Spring and Summer.

Apple Maps integration

This a high level presentation for those that have never integrated with Apple Maps before or have been thinking about this and not sure where to start etc.

Key Points:

• MapKit JS vs Google Maps API
• Basics of requesting MapKit JS access
• Creating a simple map of an address in a FileMaker solution using the Web Viewer
• Plotting multiple markers on a map
• Options for customising the appearance of the map

How XML is used inside FileMaker and how we can leverage this make our development easier, better and bolder

XML is a text-based markup language that has been used in software for many years. FileMaker started supporting XML very early on, and for many, many years, we have used it as a data interchange format, for web publishing, etc.
XML is however also used internally within the FileMaker application itself.
This internal use of XML has become more and more important over the last several versions of FileMaker, and is crucial to the future direction the platform is moving in.

We will dive deep into "Save a Copy as XML" as well as Add-Ons and the FileMaker clipboard, both of which also are XML-driven. We will also review a number of other less-known uses of XML inside FileMaker, and look at how things have evolved over the last several releases.

We will also show examples of how to leverage XML to dynamically generate code and provide developer intelligence about your FileMaker software solutions.

Become a champion of modular code

Do you like to do the same thing over and over again?
No?

That’s why we turn to modular code and in this session I will share my best tricks and ideas on how to build modular code, that can be reused again and again so you can become more efficient. After all, that’s what we try to help our customers to be every single day.
Modular code can be a simple code snippet, but also a full fledged module. And with the new Add-on feature, we get an even easier way to re-use our modular code. We can even share with colleagues and with the community.

Fika

Time to stretch our legs, grab a coffee and a snack, connect to other attendees and catch some fresh air before the upcoming sessions!

Elements For Building Great Solutions

What are the factors that are reflected in great solutions? This session will cover:

• How to structure, manage and maintain your code so both your clients and developers are happy.
• Some forms of technical debt FileMaker developers face, and how to communicate this to your clients so they understand the impact it can have on the overall health of your solution’s codebase.
• • Inspirational resources to light up your user experiences so that clients enjoy using the solutions you develop for them, and continue to engage you for your services.

Script Transactions

Detailed overview of script transactions.

Error Handling: top-down or bottom-up approach?

💡 We will present the secrets of gracefully handling errors like a pro, while keeping your sanity intact. We'll share tips, tricks, and maybe even some funny anecdotes, so you can spend less time pulling your hair out and more time building amazing apps. 💪

User Password Synchronisation without transmitting the password

We built or own centralised UserManagement platform, where every user is able to change his:her name, change the password or recover it, if forgotten.
This comes with a whole set of challenges.

• You can not save a password in a database.
• You can not transmit a password over the web to your FileMaker solution.
• Transmission has to be asynchronous, as a FileMaker solution can be offline, at the time of the password change.

I will show, how we made this possible, even against these odds.

Using Snapshots for Navigation

Inventive use of snapshots for a unique user interface experience.

FileMaker Performance Update 2023

How fast is FileMaker 2023? Can we run a lightweight FileMaker Server on Raspberry Pi? How can you make your FileMaker apps run fast enough to avoid user complaints? If you care about performance of your apps and solutions, come to this session to get the latest performance test results and optimization tips, including fresh optimization example(s) from the last year. There are ways to make things not twice or three times, but sometimes even thousand times faster. Do you want to come well prepared for this session? Try BenchTest at https://24usoftware.com/benchtest, perform your own tests, and prepare questions to ask.

Lunch

Time to fill our stomachs instead of our brains!

Claris Studio: how can we use it today?

If you want someone to show some Studio to you, please join my session.
I will show Studio, Claris Server, Claris Pro and a suggestion for transfering data to FileMaker 

MBS Plugin [Sponsor]

The award winning MBS Plugin is easily the most powerful plug-in available for Claris FileMaker today. There are over 7,100 functions that allow Claris FileMaker developers to extend their solutions in some amazing ways. Each function does a little task and in their combination you can unleash the full power of our plugin.

How to succeed with your Project (and not die trying)

A FileMaker project is not only scripts, tables and layouts. It can imply several issues related to special requests, difficult-to-deal-with customers, budget limit, deliveries in time, multi-users, web connections, developers issues, and much more. In this presentation, always under my opinion and experience, I’ll explain what’s for me the key to success. Don’t miss it.

Mastering Business Analysis for Database Solutions

OData and the data bridge model...

One of the tasks that will meet in our development journey is how to add completely new functionality to a legacy system, that might not be well maintained or constructed. You know the type, hundreds of fields which are calculations based on other summary fields!! It might already look like a building with far too many greenhouse extensions.

With the introduction of OData to our range of tools, are there ways in which we can make the absolute minimum of changes to the existing system? We need to avoid disruption or downtime, and the risks associated with ‘live’ development, while keeping a definite separation between any new functionality (in a brand new file) and we don’t want to be carrying a sack of bricks around each time we touch the existing data. The key requirement to make the absolute minimum number of changes to the legacy system.
This session provides some real-world techniques and tips from at least one of these projects that went live during this year. Not so much a case-study or ‘how-to’, but pointers to how a sideways look at the initial architecture requires decisions that can positively change your whole development style, while illustrating some pinch points that need to be addressed.

Claris Studio: in-depth

I will show the different types of fields and their formatting, syncing the field schema to FileMaker Pro, the calculations (comparison between Claris Studio and FileMaker Pro) and pre-filled forms. I will use a case study to show different views.

Let's chat!

Discover how ChatGPT can dramatically simplify your role as a FileMaker developer. Learn how to harness the power of ChatGPT to craft a new generation of intelligent apps using FileMaker. A free demo file will be available after the session. Examples include using ChatGPT as a mock data generator, research assistant, code debugger, development assistant, copywriter, webscraper, and much more.

Smörgåsbord

A veritable feast of tips, tricks, and in general cool things from around the Claris community. See examples of how top developers are pushing the limits of what the Claris platform can do and pick up some tips and techniques to improve your own development along the way. There's something for everyone at this buffet of insights.

Key Points:

• API and external software integrations
• Physical device and hardware integrations
• 3rd party products and services
• Community driven examples and ideas
• Past ideas that have driven new ideas

Leveraging Language Models for Automated Form Auto-Filling in FileMaker: A Revolutionary Approach [Sponsor]

This summary highlights the groundbreaking work of our team in harnessing the power of Language Models (LMs) to automate form filling in the FileMaker platform. Our innovative system has the potential to revolutionize the way forms are processed and streamline data entry workflows in various industries. This summary presents the key features, benefits, and applications of our system, emphasizing its impact on enhancing efficiency, reducing errors, and optimizing user experience.

Fika

Time to stretch our legs, grab a coffee and a snack, connect to other attendees and catch some fresh air before the upcoming sessions!

Using Notion for project management

We will present Notion, how it works and how we use it to better manage all our projects.

Demystifying Linux

First Linux is a great platform for running FileMaker server, and so it’s worth everyone learning about it for their future implementations, regardless of what OS you’re currently running.

Second Linux is easier than you think it is. If you haven’t played with FMS on Linux yet, then I’m hoping that you’ll come away from this excited to start.

Third Claris have made a big point on Linux in the new Claris platform. There’s a fair bit to say about that as a choice, but for now it means it is worth us all getting our heads around Linux for experimenting with the Claris platform.

Picking a Path for Automated Workflows

The session will cover the ins and outs of workflow automatic and how to navigate the options when designing a workflow.

Closing Keynote

Time to say goodbye.