In addition to the more typical external authentication methods, FileMaker supports client authentication using OAuth accounts from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. In this instance, I needed to set up a FileMaker Cloud server to use a company’s directory accounts, which were hosted at Azure. In order to set this up I hit a couple of minor complications, which I’m going to cover here.
Continue reading “Azure AD (Active Directory) Authentication with FileMaker”
Recently, I needed to revert a database file hosted on a FileMaker Cloud 16 server. Due to a problem I was having with the Download function however I had to take a different route from the usual method.
Continue reading “Working with FileMaker Cloud Backups Using SSH”
I needed to set up some monitoring for FileMaker Server that made moderately heavy use of the XML interface for Custom Web Publishing (CWP). The server was mostly working well, but was due for a rebuild, or at the least, an upgrade, but the client wanted to squeeze out one more season before we did this.
Continue reading “Monitoring FileMaker’s CWP Connectivity”
Typically, you buy an SSL certificate for a server from a SSL vendor. However, some companies may decide that they want to issue their own SSL certificates. Often this is because the domain is only used internally, and most vendors don’t easily allow (if at all) the signing of server certificates for non-public domains. Additionally, issuing your own certificates can remove complications caused by the certificate verification process used by most vendors, and there are no fees needed for each certificate.
Continue reading “Creating Your Own SSL Certificates For FileMaker”
We are pleased to release bBox version 0.88. bBox is a free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to easily use code libraries and macOS-based functions from Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, AppleScript, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite. Included is a demo file that has over 180 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.
We are pleased to release bBox version 0.86. bBox is a free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to easily use code libraries and macOS-based functions from Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, AppleScript, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite. Included is a demo file that has over 180 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.
Apple’s macOS Server 5.x has a rather different Apache configuration compared to the core macOS setup or those used in previous versions of Server. In particular, an instance of Apache is used as a proxy to any ‘backend’ copies of Apache. Here’s how to work around this…
Continue reading “Removing port 80 and 443 conflict with macOS Server 5”
Since FileMaker Server version 13, FMS has used its own Apache configuration files on macOS instead of just adding includes to the OS configuration files. Because of this, the technique I mentioned here no longer works for newer systems. This new arrangement has reduced issues for FileMaker Server’s web connectivity.
If you purchased your FileMaker Cloud server with user connection licenses, you may well wonder “Where do I get the client software to connect to my server?”.
A fair chance you’ll initially land on the screen below. This seems relevant, but there’s still no indication here how you can download the FileMaker Pro clients you have licenses for.
Continue reading “FileMaker Client installers with FileMaker Cloud”
Here we’ll list the steps you’ll need to enable authentication using Amazon accounts with FileMaker Cloud.
If you’ll be having more than a few different people logging in to the Admin Console of your FileMaker Cloud server, it’s generally good practive to avoid having everyone use the same credentials. By enablling an additional authentication mechanism, you can easily add or remove administrative access to a server, and user’s get to use their own own credentials.
Continue reading “Use Amazon OpenID authentication with FileMaker Cloud”
If you’ve installed the FileMaker Pro client using a “For Teams” license, or as part of your FileMaker Cloud server usage, you may see a new dialog in FileMaker Pro.
In version 15, FileMaker has introduced a a new user-based licensing model. With FileMaker for Teams and FileMaker Cloud, a license allows use of Server and Client software based on the number of subscribed users.
Continue reading “What’s this "Sign in to FileMaker Server" dialog?”
We’ll discuss how you can use a one or three year reserved instance for your FileMaker Cloud instance. This can shave 30% or more off your AWS instance charges.
Determine Usage
When you spin up any new AWS based VM you will by default be using an hourly instance. This can be perfect for short-term usage or where your usage may fluctuate frequently.
Continue reading “Using an AWS Reserved Instance with FileMaker Cloud”
If you had started a FileMaker Cloud deployment, but lost access, accidentally closed the page, or had some other issue that caused the process to stop, you may be able to restart your deployment easily by going to the AWS Marketplace and checking your history.
Continue reading “Restart interrupted FileMaker Cloud deployment”
Although setting up your AWS account and creating a new FileMaker Cloud instance is a fairly easy process, it does have dozens of steps, and a few places where you could easily take a wrong turn. On this post we’ll go through each step in the configuration of your Amazon AWS account and requesting your first server.
Continue reading “Step-by-step for FileMaker Cloud”
We are pleased to release another update to bBox, v0.84 of our free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to other programs, code libraries, and OS X functions including Python, Ruby, AppleScript, Perl, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite.
Continue reading “Version 0.84 of bBox for FileMaker Now Available”
SSL certificates are a very common way to secure client/server network connections, and the FileMaker platform has made use of them for many years. Starting with version 15 however, FileMaker introduced a number of security changes, in handling SSL and certificates, on both the server and the clients. But where do they come into play, and how might this affect your deployments?
We are pleased to release another update to bBox, v0.83 of our free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to other programs, code libraries, or OS X functions (Python, Ruby, AppleScript, Perl, Bash/sh, XPath, SQLite).
If you’ve developed solutions with FileMaker for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly created files using FileMaker’s native Excel exports. Although quite useful, this feature gives almost no control over the formatting, and definitely no way to set formulas, charts, or even text formatting.
Continue reading “Excel formatting and charts from FileMaker using XlsxWriter”
We are pleased to release another update to bBox, v0.82 of our free FileMaker utility plug-in.
Xhtml2pdf is a cross-platform Python module that allows easy conversion of HTML or XML to PDF files. Its dependencies, ReportLab & Pisa, also have a host of very useful functions, including programmatically creating or modifying PDF content & creating barcodes.
