Learning Claris FileMaker

A Filemaker-based CRM system is a powerful tool for managing relationships with customers, coordinating with fellow team members, and ultimately, helping to grow your business.

Because it’s fully customizable, a FileMaker-based solution can include a variety of business tools, including:

Contact management, with customer history and current status
Project management, which includes organizing, prioritizing, and assigning tasks on both a team and individual level
Reporting tools for planning, tracking, and evaluating growth and sales

But it’s possible to get even more from your FileMaker-based system.

How?

By using CRM integrations to allow your software to connect with the apps you use the most, you can simplify your workflows, gain instant access to information seamlessly and efficiently, and automate your processes.

Daylite vs. FileMaker®-based CRMs — Which is the Better CRM?

With so many high-quality CRMs on the market, choosing the one that’s the best fit for your business can be difficult.

In this post, we (Scarpetta group) ’ll be taking a look at two types: Daylite by Market Circle and FileMaker-based CRMs.

Each offers a range of capabilities and the ability to scale for growth.

But there are important differences.

Choosing a CRM is a vital decision that will impact your company’s success.

You are the expert on the unique needs of your business, so doing a careful examination of the most important features you’ll need is time well spent.

Now let’s take a closer look at Daylite and FileMaker-based CRMs.

The Food Safety Division of the Georgia Department of Agriculture’s mission is to enforce food safety regulations by conducting inspections of both retailers and manufacturers.

They also conduct outreach activities for the industry and the community to promote goodwill.

The organization has a robust training program to ensure their 90 inspectors are fully equipped to …

FileMaker is an easy-to-use and flexible platform for creating a CRM solution that’s customizable and cost effective for small businesses.

It allows you to bring the many different components of the sales and customer service processes together under one roof. FileMaker gives businesses improved access to data and a more efficient workflow.

Business owners and their staff can spend less time on administrative tasks, freeing up additional resources for business development, sales growth, and keeping clients happy.

For small businesses, effectively managing the sales cycle can be a challenge.

Small businesses are typically operating with limited staff and resources.

They don’t have the luxury of full sales and customer service departments.

But because sales and client relationships are the lifeblood of small businesses, it’s essential to manage these relationships effectively.

FileMaker as a CRM gives your company an edge over competitors and ensures the long-term health of your business.

When it comes to choosing a CRM solution for your business, FileMaker is a platform that offers some unique advantages that set it apart from out-of-the-box CRMs.

Today we’ll take a look at eight ways FileMaker provides the strongest value for small businesses looking to upgrade their CRM software or launch one for the first time.

Read more on the blog post ...

How to Create a Master/Detail View in FileMaker 17

One of FileMaker 17’s new features is the built-in ability to create a Master/Detail view.  

A Master/Detail view uses a portal to display the Master List and some detail fields of the selected portal record for a  full view of the data.

In the past, app developers would have created Self-Joins, Portal Filters, etc. in order to accomplish this.

Read the details and explore the sample database ...

You’ve decided you’re ready to invest in a custom development project – your very own software – for your business.

But, how do you navigate this new world you’re stepping off in?

It can be challenging to learn how and when to communicate as a customer, but here are some quick tips to help you navigate through your project.

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FileMaker 16 was just announced this morning and I’m excited to show you a couple of things it can do.

You may remember a couple of posts: FileMaker User Interface Design – Time for a change and Contextual Mode Shifting – It’s a Thing! – Technique which showed us how to have a cleaner design in “Browse Mode” making important information stand out and protecting data but “Edit Mode” allowed fields to be enterable.

Now previous to FileMaker 16 we used global fields for Edit Mode so when the edit icon was clicked the main field values would to global fields.

Clicking “Save” after making changes would copy from the globals back to the main, or clicking “Cancel” would clear the globals out.

This method has been working but we wanted to try something new and the JSON functions in FileMaker 16 have allowed us to do that.

Read more on Scarpetta group's blog

Dynamic Portal Search with FileMaker

FileMaker Go Makes It Simple to Use Mobile Devices to Connect to Your Data

Once we’ve created your custom FileMaker-based application, FileMaker Go allows you to easily share access with your team on the go.

Team members have full use of all functionality on their smartphones and tablets in an easy-to-use interface that’s fully responsive.

A CRM is an important tool that can help you streamline your processes and boost profitability.

A good CRM is flexible enough to adapt to whatever you need it to do: track which leads are converting to customers, automate tasks, learn which activities are driving sales, deliver better customer service, etc.

All in an intuitive way that makes the most of automation.

Deciding which CRM to choose can be daunting, because each platform has a variety of capabilities and a spectrum of usability.

In this post, we’ll look at three of the most popular CRM platforms: Salesforce, Hubspot, and FileMaker-based, to help you decide which is best for your business.

Why Use FileMaker® Instead of an Out-of-the-Box CRM Solution

If you’re looking for a CRM solution to improve your company’s processes and productivity, you’re spoiled for choice.

Capterra, a site that reviews software, lists over 400 products under the CRM category.

And Gartner reported that in 2017, worldwide customer relationship management (CRM) software revenue overtook the previous leader, database management systems (DBMSs), making CRM the largest of all software markets.

So many choices can lead to frustration.

Not all CRMs will have all the features you need, many are expensive to maintain, and most are not fully customizable without a hefty investment in custom programming.

How do you know which one is right for your business?

Rather than trying to find the needle in the haystack only to discover that it lacks an essential feature that you need down the road, consider using FileMaker to create a custom CRM solution that’s specifically designed for your company and its operations. Here’s why the FileMaker platform is ideal for CRMs for many organizations.

New Technique for Data Modeling in the FileMaker Relationship Graph - Anchor Buoy "Bridge" Simply the relationship graph and increase productivity.

Automatically Create Directories in a File Path in FileMaker 17

FileMaker 17 has a new feature which allows you to automatically create directories in a file path if they don’t exist!

Read more on The Scarpetta group blog post

Google – Auto Complete using JSON in FIleMaker 16

I am excited to share with you some of the new features now that FileMaker 16 has officially been released.  

In this post I thought I would start out simple and show the JSON parsing function coupled with a simple API call which allows for simpler data entry when it comes to entering in an address.

Many of you have probably visited websites where you can start entering in an address and a list of predicted addresses appear.  

The more text you enter in the provided field the closer you get to the address you are looking for.  

This is the same technique you can use when implementing the Google Places AutoComplete API.

Address Auto Complete

Address Auto-Complete allows a user to type in an address, the auto-complete function will then return a list of possible matching addresses.

If the user sees a matching address they can click on it and populate the info into the appropriate fields.

Read how and download the file on Scarpetta group post ...