Quick Find Alternative, cURL, FMS Admin, more

So Much to Learn

I haven’t had time to blog much recently, which is a shame, because there is so much interesting and creative work to learn from. I have been collecting blog posts and article while absent from blogging.  Here are just a few of the many worthy posts I found worth sharing.  More to come later.

FileMaker Quick Find Alternative

Siroos Jafary examined ways to improve on the FileMaker Quick Find feature, showing two ways to improve the results:

In this blog post we will learn two alternative methods that give us more flexibility on performing quick find in FileMaker. Both methods can perform quick find in FileMaker on fields from table occurrence of the current layout and their child records but in slightly different ways.

Check out the full post, and download the free FileMaker Example File provided.

Source: FileMaker Quick Find Alternative – Intelligence Avenue Inc.

FileMaker 17 Server Admin Console

If you haven’t installed, configured and worked with the FileMaker 17 Server Admin Console, you’re in for a big surprise. FileMaker rewrote the console from the ground up. And even seasoned FileMaker users will need to spend a bit of time getting used to it.  Christopher Edwards, of Beezwax, wrote a very coherent post on this back in May:

In a good way, the new interface is deceiving. With FMS versions 13 through 16 administrators first selected a module on the left, then a tab on the top. Now admins select a tab on the top then a pane on the left. More than just an inversion, the reorganization goes deeper. For example, various web settings used to be grouped in one “web” area, but now are dispersed to the relevant “connection”, “log”, and “plug-in” areas.

Mostly the changes are logical and intuitive, though at first you may be clicking through tabs trying to find that one setting you know must be around here somewhere. More than once in our testing, we’ve thought a feature or bit of information is gone, only to discover it later, or to realize we had to use the command line or Admin API. To help guide your journey, I’ll provide a cheat sheet for some common settings, but it is not meant to be a comprehensive list. For a side-by-side catalog of changes, I recommend “FileMaker Server 17: Admin Console, Admin CLI, and Admin API“, a white paper by Wim Decorte and Steven Blackwell, available on the FileMaker Community site.

One of the big changes:  access to the console is now the URL (or IP address) followed by “admin-console” on port 80, the standard world wide web port.  For years FileMaker developers have been using Localhost or 127.0.0.1, when inside the network, or the URL (or IP address) followed by with 16000 or 16001. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Read the whole post for comprehensive look.

cURL and Connecting to the WWW

Salvatore Colangelo presented to the Atlanta FileMaker Users Group in October on the ways to connect FileMaker to the world using cURL.  Colangelo, along with Nic Orr, are well known for blazing the connectivity trail over the years.  Check out this video when you have some time (and be ready to take notes):

Kudos to David Nahodyl of Blue Feather Group for  sharing this video on his website. And be sure to check out David’s other blog posts (particularly the one on setting up Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates on FMS).

Go Outside

If you are like me, you spend way too much time in front of a screen (TV included).  I found this article to be a helpful guide to Digital Detox:

Digital detoxes are a set period of time where you stop using technology like smartphones and computers. This doesn’t mean giving up your phone forever – it might just be one day a week where you disconnect from the online world and focus on being fully present in your life.

I have not been successful in getting away for a full day, but I have increased the amount of time I do without any access, usually while exercising and doing other outdoor activities.  I highly recommend it.


Learning never exhausts the mind.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

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