The Claris Platform is changing

The Claris Platform is changing. The newest additions to the Claris Platform (Claris Connect in 2019, and Claris Studio in 2022) have enhanced the FileMaker developer’s tool set and provided new ways for us to interact with data. FileMaker, the tried and true database product, is here to stay, as it serves a very important function and is often holding the core data essential to a business. In this post, and video, we demonstrate and show you exactly how these products connect and the ways you can move data from within Claris Studio to FileMaker.

Please see the recently posted YouTube video of this content from the most recent Claris Beyond Meetup.

Why would I want to utilize the Claris Platform in this way?

Claris Studio and the Claris Platform are exciting new technologies that enable us to create web forms quickly and easily while still providing the power of Claris FileMaker to automate workflows, integrate disparate applications, and create easy-to-use, world-class user interface designs.

For the time being, you may not be ready to fully migrate your FileMaker solution to the new Claris Platform. No problem. Claris Connect gives you exactly the tool you need to utilize Claris Studio for creating web forms and getting the data into your FileMaker Server based solution.

Please note, the terminology of FileMaker Pro / Claris Pro and FileMaker Server / Claris Server can be a little confusing. I’m careful in this post to use these product names appropriately.

In the future we will have a connector for Claris Studio in Claris Connect and at that point you won’t need Claris Server for this particular integration.

Creating a web form in Claris Studio

I created a simple publicly accessible web form in Claris Studio for this demonstration, based on the sample registration form in Claris Studio. It took me under ten minutes to customize and publish.

I created a new field called ‘Migrated’ for later use and did not show that on my form. I chose to make the ‘Project Description’ field mandatory, but I did not use any of the more sophisticated data entry aids or conditional visibility.

Claris Server, Ubuntu Linux, and your Custom Apps

For this integration, I used an on-premise installation of Claris Server that I have installed on an Ubuntu Linux server. I set up this server some time back for testing and educational purposes. We are hosting a couple of Claris solutions there, and I used one of those solutions for this example. Claris has recently released a white paper on installing Ubuntu Linux and Claris Server, which walks you through the process step-by-step.

I opened the relationship graph in my Claris Pro file and added my Landscape Quotes data as a shadow table on my graph. This action was quick and easy as I was already logged in to both Claris Studio and Claris Pro with the same Claris ID.

Creating my Claris Connect flow

The last step to get the data from my web form into my FileMaker solution was to create my flow in Claris Connect. 

Step 1: The Trigger – the flow is triggered automatically by Connect every day at 2:00am

Step 2: Action – Find all records in the Claris Server file where the value of the field called ‘Migrated’ is not ‘1’

Step 3-5: Action – A loop through the found records. For each found record in Claris Server, a corresponding record is created in my target table in FileMaker Server. The record in Claris Server has its ‘Migrated’ field value set to ‘1’ so that it won’t be imported again in the future.

Final notes

With the flow in place in Claris Connect, any new forms filled out by customers will flow into my FileMaker solution each night at 2:00am. I could easily change that frequency to whatever I wanted.

Two points that caused me a bit of time to resolve were as follows:

1. You must configure your account in Claris Platform to be accessible via Claris Connect, otherwise you will get authentication failures with your Claris Connect flow. See below for where you enter the extended access password in the lower left side of the Claris Platform dashboard.
   
2. I confirmed with Claris that there is a small bug in the way modified field names show in Claris Pro or Claris Connect. You can see in the screenshot above that my ‘Migrated’ field shows as ‘Number5’ in Connect and Claris Pro. This bug is expected to be fixed in a soon-to-be-released Claris Platform update.

Conclusion

A simple Claris Connect flow allows you to utilize Claris Studio’s capabilities for creating custom web forms to acquire data and push it into your FileMaker Server based solution. We’ve implemented a variety of approaches for creating web forms, including FM Betterforms, JotForm, and WebDirect. For the right scenario, you can’t beat the speed and ease of implementation of Claris Studio.

If you’d like additional help with learning Claris Studio or incorporating its features into your solution, send us a message below or schedule a free consultation and we’d be glad to gather more details so we can provide a time and cost estimate.