“Start collecting now because we’re gonna build in some rarity on these things.”

Joe Ranne, Portage Bay, about the Claris Engage 2024 trading cards from Proof + Geist

Thank You, Clay, for Your Time!

During the Claris Engage conference in February, Clay Maeckel, Chief Software Architect at Claris, graciously shared some of his time with us as a guest on our podcast, for Episode 13 the FileMaker DevCast. 

In the first part of the podcast, our citizen developer host, Dan Smiley, and Clay discuss a variety of areas, including:

• Clay’s history with Apple and Claris, fittingly told from the Apple campus at Austin, Texas
• The process behind adding new features to FileMaker
• Claris Studio capabilities and its forward path
• The intersection of AI and database development and how artificial intelligence is reshaping the landscape of data management and automation in FileMaker
• Claris Connect’s role in streamlining workflows and fostering seamless integration across various platforms and services

“The most exciting area – I think there’s a lot more we can do between FileMaker and Claris Connect. People don’t put everything in one database anymore. Information is distributed between multiple locations nowadays. Our goal is to be able to talk to anything. Insert from URL, the script step that we’ve had for a long time … now it’s one of the core script sets that everyone uses because you can talk to any microservice out there. And if you talk to any microservice out there you can almost do anything with it.

Clay Maeckel, Claris

You can listen to all of our episodes on Podbean or Apple Podcasts. 

Claris Engage Recap – Takeaways, Insights, and Favorite Moments

For the latter part of the episode, the Portage Bay team gathered post-conference to share takeaways, insights, and favorite moments from Claris Engage. Listen to the podcast to hear some of the highlights we expressed, and more:

• Keynote slide displaying the new Claris Studio, Claris Connect, and Claris FileMaker icons next to each other, as the Claris platform.
• FileMaker Server Admin – release of a connector for being able to add automated workflow for server management
• Server micro improvements, such as catching memory leaks before they occur
• Seeing flows that people are creating around using Claris Connect with AWS and S3.
• Cool tools with Claris Studio, to fill some of our web app needs.
• Studio options with charting and data visualization, public views in Studio.

• Claris Connect custom connectors – a great ability to use them modularly with a lot of different applications
• Web integration sessions – web architecture and workflows that mingle with FileMaker.
• Comparison of WebDirect and FM BetterForms, which makes it easier to get started since a lot of components are already built.
• FileMaker AI features – being able to talk with your database using LLMs.
• Ronnie Rios demo. With vector embedding for documents, your solution can answer questions relevant to the documents even if the specific information isn’t there. 

• Session on FMPerception and FMComparison – with FMPerception you can actually copy things from the DDR into another solution.
• Pipelines for FM Comparison, to manage versioning. 
• FMLayoutLens – a 3D view of layouts, to help make sense of hidden complexities.
• Kate’s presentation about workflow automation – comparing FileMaker, Claris Connect, and Microsoft Power Automate.
• An OAuth code builder to facilitate the process of doing an OAuth integration
• Heather McCue’s presentation about UI/UX and requirements gathering.

• Jeremy Brown’s web viewer deep dive
• TileMaker – tactile KanBan board for productivity
• WITfm booth visitors, especially international visitors and men who stopped by to see how they can better support the women who work alongside them. Canada, US, France, Italy, and Japan represented!
• Todd Weller’s session – an in-depth view of all of the new functions since version 20.

Photo Gallery from Claris Engage 2024

Ready to Learn More About FileMaker’s Capabilities?

Contact us through one of the methods below. We’re your FileMaker experts and would love to discuss your project or idea further and get you on the schedule for transformation and improvement. We specialize in high-quality cross-platform database solutions and web applications which are scalable, adaptable, and reliable.