Beezwax Software Engineering Apprenticeship – Celebrating 9+ years

Since 2017, Beezwax has sponsored software engineering apprenticeships. We wanted to share a little more history and info about this program.

We designed our apprenticeships to provide opportunity for graduates of college engineering programs and coding schools like Qwasar.io, 42 The Network or Apple Developer Academy to enhance their professional training in software development plus gain real-world consulting experience working on projects for our clients.

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Better, Faster Random Text for FileMaker

We often need large amounts of random text to simulate real-world data loads while building a FileMaker solution. I was looking to create a large chunks of unique data for testing — we’re talking at least millions of characters. Here, I’ll compare the performance of a few methods I tried.

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Why Fast-Growing Teams Outgrow Spreadsheets

In the early stages of building a team or company, spreadsheets are a gift. They’re simple, fast to set up, and familiar to just about everyone. Need to track spend, manage a process, or share information across a few people? Open a new tab in Google Sheets or Excel, and you’re off to the races.

But if your company is scaling quickly as it adds people, processes, and increasing pressure to move faster, spreadsheets can quietly become a liability.

At Beezwax, we’ve worked with hundreds of growing teams who hit the same problem. What started as a clever spreadsheet workaround slowly turned into a fragile, messy system that couldn’t keep up. In this post, we’ll break down why that happens and what comes next.

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See FileMaker analysis tools in action, including InspectorPro 9 — 2025 Claris Community Live

Special event featuring Beezwax’s Vincenzo Menanno and other Claris Partners

Gain deeper insight into how your Claris FileMaker solutions are structured and maintained. With the right developer tools, you can make changes confidently and have full visibility into the impact.

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Beezwax at Build Grow Learn 2025 – Claris Community Conference

Allison Bell Presents Transforming Time: Five Leadership Strategies to Maximize Impact and Model Sustainable Success

This month, September 8–10, we’re in Greenville, SC for Build.Grow.Learn 2025, a business leadership and growth conference designed for founders, entrepreneurs, and emerging executives. Beezwax is proud to support the event and share strategic insights that help businesses scale sustainably.

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Transforming Time: Strategic Framework for Leaders, Consultants, and Individuals

Time isn’t just a constraint—it’s a system. How we engage with time influences how we lead, how we deliver value to clients, and how we build lives that are sustainable and fulfilling.

This article outlines five time transformation strategies that help individuals, consultants, and leaders shift from reactive task management to intentional, purpose-driven action. Grounded in proven operational frameworks and shaped by real-world experience across personal and professional domains, these tools support better focus, sustainable execution, and long-term alignment.

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bBox 1.06 for FileMaker enhances support for macOS text windows and Python

We are pleased to announce the release of bBox version 1.06 for Claris® FileMaker®, which adds support for macOS text windows and many update enhancements, including to bBox’s support for integrating Python code with your FileMaker apps.

bBox is a free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to easily use code libraries. Supporting both macOS & Ubuntu Linux, it has functions to help you work with Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, AppleScript, Bash/Zsh/sh, XPath, and DuckDB. Also included is a demo file that has over 220 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.

If you’re interested in Python integration with FileMaker, also check out bzPython-FM, which uses bBox.

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Retool, FileMaker, Airtable? Picking the Right Stack for Internal Tools

When building internal tools, you’re faced with a tough question that many fast-moving teams don’t ask soon enough:

What’s the right platform stack for what we’re trying to build?

From prebuilt dashboards to low-code platforms to fully custom apps, there are more options for internal tooling than ever—each with its own trade-offs.

  • Retool®
  • Claris FileMaker®
  • Airtable®
  • Custom-built Web Apps
  • …and plenty more depending on the department and the problem.

So how do you choose?

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New power for your everyday tools in FileMaker 2025 – Claris Community Live

Special event featuring Vincenzo Menanno from Beezwax, with Claris product team

Watch this Claris Community Live event where Vincenzo Menanno from Beezwax will join the Claris product team to discuss the enhancements available with FileMaker 2025 (v22). Learn about streamlined app upgrades, secure server integrations, and a modernized UI, prioritizing user feedback for improved functionality, enabling powerful new features for implementing AI with FileMaker.

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Native JSON Parsing in FileMaker 2025: A Revolution in Speed

In FileMaker 2025 (v22) a powerful shift has happened that changes how we work with JSON in FileMaker. This shift, thanks to JSONParse, is a huge leap forward in JSON efficiency. For any developer who has fought performance bottlenecks when handling large JSON payloads, the speed improvements are like switching from a bicycle to a Formula One racing car.

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Records, Go Get ‘Em in Claris FileMaker 2025

As a FileMaker developer, I have powerful tools. But I have long wished for a highly-efficient mechanism for representing and reproducing any arbitrary set of records. Now, it’s here, with FileMaker 2025:

GetRecordIDsFromFoundSet – function
Go To List of Records – script step

This is fantastic. Something I have wished – for a long, long time!

Now let’s cover these new methods, with an example file (which you can also download – see below).

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Monthly Maintenance – Care and Feeding of Linux Servers

Maintaining the health and security of your Linux servers is more crucial than ever. With any server, you should be using real-time monitoring solutions, and performing backups every day (or more often, depending on data use). And, while you can rely on the OS to automatically install updates–especially on Windows and Mac–with Linux you benefit from a more “managed” approach to regular maintenance.

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