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Make Gains with a Professional Third-Party Software Evaluation

Photo of three smiley faces on yellow paper - one said, one neutral, one happy. With the happy face highlighted by a magnifying glass.
If you already use  FileMaker Pro and the Claris platform for managing your custom database and workflow automation, you are aware of the key role it plays in making your processes more efficient and your firm more profitable.  To ensure it operates at peak performance, however, a professional third-party evaluation can be invaluable. This article discusses the process we use for this kind of evaluation, which will hopefully shed some light on this valuable endeavor. Read more
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FileMaker DevCast: Five Thousand Downloads and Now on Spotify

Logos of Spotify and the FileMaker DevCast
BIG NEWS! The FileMaker DevCast has reached 5,000 downloads! And guess what? Every episode of the DevCast is now available on Spotify, in addition to being on PodBean and Apple Podcasts. Read more
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Easy213, a Custom FileMaker WebDirect App for Disaster Response

Photo of two people assisting during a disaster response - wearing high visibility orange and yellow vests, labeled with their areas of Logistics and Supply.
Portage Bay has been working in the NIMS arena for over a decade, helping various clients with FileMaker applications for managing emergency response, primarily in spill situations. It's an interesting field, and I’m often learning new things that apply to other areas of our business. A couple of years ago, at the urging of one of our clients versed in the Incident Command System (ICS), we decided to write our own app for use during emergency responses, specifically to improve the resource ordering process. Read more
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Our Recent Experience Building a FileMaker Web Application with FileMaker Cloud

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Our latest venture involved building a web application for students to submit data through a form, pushing this data to a FileMaker solution for storage and analysis. This blog post chronicles our journey from the initial hosting strategy to navigating the unforeseen challenges presented by FileMaker Cloud: in particular, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Data API authentication, and shares the valuable insights we gained.This blog post chronicles our journey from the initial hosting strategy to navigating the unforeseen challenges presented by FileMaker Cloud: in particular, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Data API authentication, and shares the valuable insights we gained. Read more
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FM BetterForms: Creating a Modern Web Application with Your FileMaker Data

Logo for FM BetterForms, used for creating FileMaker web apps
We have been using FM BetterForms for several years to readily create modern, fully web standards-compliant applications for our clients. After attending the recent Claris Engage conference in Austin, Texas, our team has a new-found enthusiasm for building even more applications with BetterForms! Read more
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FileMaker vs Airtable – Our 2024 Perspective

Logos of Claris FileMaker and Airtable, with a versus icon in between them
We first posted a review of FileMaker vs Airtable a little over four years ago. We’re circling back around to take another look and have updated this article accordingly. While Airtable has lots of strengths and works well in many circumstances, we remain confident that FileMaker takes the lead with its flexibility and broad range of customization possibilities. Read more
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