Happy new year 2015

We wish everyone a happy new year 2015.

See you in Las Vegas for the FileMaker Developer Conference, in Austin for the Xojo Developer Conference, the .fmp[x]Berlin 2015 and at probably a dozen local meetings!

For us it's year to celebrate our 15th year of business

Upcoming change of VAT rules in European Union

From 2015 on some things change in VAT rules. The VAT collected is now the VAT of the country of client and no longer the VAT of the seller's country.

One of the good things is that companies like Apple now need to bill us with German VAT instead of Luxembourg or Ireland VAT. They have a different percentage so it was cheaper for Apple to sell from Luxembourg, but we had to do a lot of paper work to reclaim the VAT for our business.

Now from 2015 Apple and also MBS need to charge VAT for EU customers based on their country. But as our company wants to keep things simply and not report VAT for 28 countries, we simply delegate this to Share-it and Apple for our sales to private customers.

So if you are located in the European Union (but not in Germany) and you want to order something from us and you have no VAT ID, we will send you to Share-It. We will no longer process those orders ourself via bank transfer or Paypal.

One week till year's end

The year 2014 will end in about a week. Do you need some more licenses?

• You can order licenses for 2015 and have delivery plus payment in 2014.
• You can get ChartDirector and DynaPDF Starter license as part of OmegaBundle
• And of course you can order updates for several years in advance for all your MBS products.
• As all licenses are per developer, you should check if you got a new developer in your team this year and adjust licenses to match team size.

Especially if you run on a budget and you want to spend some money in 2014, you can buy updates for several years.

Merry Christmas

Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année

Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo


Sebastian, Michael, Monika & Christian Schmitz

Storing encrypted container data externally and on a different place

Normally if you use FileMaker's feature with encrypted containers, the files are stored right next to the database file. Especially on a server this can limit storage options. Hosting 10 databases on the internal server disk limits you to the size of that disk. All your FM databases use only the space on this disk.

Now you can break the limit and move your encrypted container files to another disk. But how? Well, we use symbolic directory links. That's a feature built into operation systems for decades and supported at very low level. So the key thing is that next to your database file FileMaker puts the RC_Data_FMS file. This is the directory where remote containers store their data. And inside you find a folder for each of your databases using remote containers. And this folder can be replaced with a symbolic link.

So follow this steps:

1. Be sure you know how to use Terminal and/or command line on Windows. You may want to consult system admin.
2. Make sure nobody uses the database currently.
3. Make backup of everything in case you break something.
4. Copy the folder inside RC_Data_FMS to an other location, e.g. network share or external hard disk.
5. Rename the old data folder.
6. on Mac:
   1. Open Terminal.
   2. Use cd command to move into the RC_Data_FMS folder
   3. Use the ln command with the -s option to make a new symbolic link. So enter "ln -s" followed by path to dest path followed by name of new link. All separated with spaces. e.g. in my case: ln -s /Volumes/Ablage1/Test/FMServer_Sample FMServer_Sample
7. on Windows:
   1. Open command line as admin
   2. Use cd command to move into the RC_Data_FMS folder
   3. Use the mklink command with the /D option to make a new symbolic link. So enter "mklink /D" followed by name of the new folder and followed by name to dest path. All separated with spaces. e.g. in my case: mklink /D FMServer_Sample "\\vmware-host\Shared Folders\Test\FMServer_Sample"
8. open database and put something in a container. You should see FileMaker add a file to the new location.
9. Test and see if incremental backup and other server features still work well.

Now there is one issue you may see and that is folder permissions. FileMaker Server (the app) must be allowed to read & write to the folder you specify. On Windows this was easier as permissions were right for me right away. For Mac it's much trickier as normally mounting a network share is mounted for the current user only, not for everyone.

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 4.5pr4

New in this prerelease of the 4.5 plugins:

• Changed plugin to load QTkit Framework dynamically so we can be accepted for the Mac App Store.
• Fixed an issue where FileMaker would block after Registration of plugin.
• Added code to detect Windows 8.1. Due to Windows 8.1 reporting itself as 8.0, we have to do special things to check for 8.1.
• Added MovieView.PauseDelayed and QTMovie.StopDelayed functions to play video and stop later.
• Added QTMovie.ParseTime and QTMovie.FormatTime functions.
• Changed functions for global variables to store data in their native type (no longer converts everything to text).
• Added DynaPDF.RenderPDFFile function.
• Added parameter to DynaPDF.RenderPage function to write directly to file.
• Added FM.StopScriptIdle function to stop idle timer. Also idle timer is cancelled when you start new timer.
• Added error user notifications for Mac OS X to notice you about script errors.
• Added Trace.EnableErrorNotifications, Trace.DisableErrorNotifications and Trace.AreErrorNotificationsEnabled functions.
• Added List.BestMatch and QuickList.BestMatch function.
• Added MovieView.SetCurrentTime function.
• Disabled OpenSSL loading config files in CURL which can cause error message dialog on Windows.
• Changed PDFKit functions to accept also file paths where they used to accept only URL.
• Added offset parameter to RegEx.Execute function.
• Improved error messages from calendar functions if calendar/reminder/event could not be saved or deleted.

Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

Three weeks till year's end

The year 2014 will end in three weeks. Do you need some more licenses?

• You can order licenses for 2015 and have delivery plus payment in 2014.
• You can get ChartDirector and DynaPDF Starter license as part of OmegaBundle
• And of course you can order updates for several years in advance for all your MBS products.
• As all licenses are per developer, you should check if you got a new developer in your team this year and adjust licenses to match team size.

Especially if you run on a budget and you want to spend some money in 2014, you can buy updates for several years.

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 4.5pr3

New in this prerelease of the 4.5 plugins:

• Updated DynaPDF to version 3.0.37.106.
• Fixed bug with formatting date in SendMail functions.
• Fixed bug where default text encoding was not used when needed. (introduced bug in pr1)
• Tracing will now also log script starts.
• Added TAPI.Transfer function.
• Improved BCC handling in SendMail function.

Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

MBS featured in ISO FileMaker Magazine video

The FileMaker Magazine just released a video showing a couple of FileMaker tools and tricks.
I enjoyed watching it, learnt a few new shortcuts for FileMaker and got a different view on my syntax coloring feature:

filemakermagazine.com/videos/developer-tools-tips

Thanks Matt Petrowsky for sharing this video and we hope for more in the future!

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 4.5pr2

New in this prerelease of the 4.5 plugins:

• Added Menu.ItemAtIndex and Menu.Items functions.
• Fixed Menu.SelectedItem function for Windows.
• Changed Menu.AddItems to now make separators if you add a line with minus and added a parameter for tags.
• Fixed FM.ExecuteFileSQL function, broken in pr1.
• Rewrote parts of TAPI, so we now have TAPI IDs for the calls, so you can distinguish between different calls. You have to change your scripts!
• Added TAPI.SetCallStateScript, TAPI.GetCallStateScriptName, TAPI.GetCallStateScriptFileName, TAPI.SetNewCallScript, TAPI.GetNewCallScriptName and TAPI.GetNewCallScriptFileName and removed TAPI.SetCallScript, TAPI.GetCallScriptName, TAPI.GetCallScriptFileName. Now we pass call ID to parameter.
• Changed DLL loading on Windows to automatically try a 64 before the DLL extension when running on 64bit FileMaker (Server).
• Added Is64bit function.
• Changed ListDialog to show on Windows always one column with vertical scrolling.
• Added ListDialog.GetAllowEmptySelection and ListDialog.SetAllowEmptySelection functions.
• The listdialog on Windows now reacts on escape and return key
• The list in the listdialog on Windows now has a border line and the buttons are higher.
• Updated DynaPDF to version 3.0.37.105.
• Added checks to addressbook functions to report back if user denied addressbook access.
• Added BuildNumber function.
• Added SystemInfo.HostDNSName function.
• Upgraded Xcode to version 6.1
• Added more keys for TAPI.CallInfo function: Ref, Privilege, Origin, Reason, CallerIDAddressType, CalledIDAddressType, ConnectedIDAddressType, RedirectionAddressType and RedirectedAddressType.
• Fixed DynaPDF error reporting, so that IsError function also notices them.
• Fixed Zipfile.CreateFile bug (introduced in pr1)
• Improved DynaPDF.SetBBox to fix wrong boundary boxes automatically.
• Added TAPI.ListenOnAddress.
• Fixed bug in TAPI.CreateCall function.
• Added 30 new functions for DynaPDF to query, create and change annotations.
• The function to disable webviewer alerts now disables more alerts.

Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

.fmp[x]Berlin 2015 Location

The .fmp[x]Berlin 2015 conference is a big meeting of FileMaker developers from around the world in the center of Europe.

It's planned for 4 - 6 June 2015 in the Upstalsboom Hotel Friedrichshain, Berlin, Germany.

So mark the dates in the calendar and plan your trip to Berlin. Tickets are available mid January and the conference is in english. Last time I think there were 75 people coming.

QuickMenu function

Here is a nice custom function for showing a menu right away:

Let ( [
/* Create a menu */
menu = MBS( "Menu.CreateMenu" );
/* add items from our parameter */
m2 = MBS( "Menu.AddItems"; menu; Items );
/* show menu at mouse position */
m3 = MBS( "Menu.PopUp"; menu; "mouse"; 0; 0 );
/* query selected item */
selectedItem = MBS( "Menu.SelectedItem"; menu );
/* if something is selected, query its text */
result = If( Length(selectedItem )>0; MBS( "MenuItem.GetTitle"; selectedItem ); "");
/* Cleanup menu */
m5 = MBS( "Menu.Release"; menu; 1 )

];

/* return selection */
result )

You can just call it anywhere, pass a list of items and get back the selected item from the list. Feel free to copy and modify it. Like adding more options to it. For next plugin, we already added option for Menu.AddItems to create separators for lines containing only a minus.