Apple Maps Integration with the Claris FileMaker Platform

Every few years I like to generate a map of Databuzz customers to get visual sense of where they are located around the world. It’s been while since I last did this and blogged about it – the most recent one was in 2018 when I generated a map of our fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) customers after Xero had passed the 1 million subscriber mark (they now have 3.945 million subscribers and are on track to break the 4 million subscriber mark in 2024).

Databuzz has released a number of new FileMaker integration products since 2018 and I was curious to see how many countries our customers were located in now. Back in 2017 fmSMS was our most popular product and our last map showed we had customers in Australia, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North America and Europe.

Previously I’ve used the Google Maps API to geocode the customer addresses and create a map with multiple markers showing their location. This process is all automated using FileMaker scripts so it usually only takes a few minutes.

Over the past couple of years I’ve worked on a number of Apple Maps integrations using Apple’s MapKit JS and was also lucky enough to be invited to do a presentation on Apple Maps Integration at the recent EngageU European Claris FileMaker conference in Antwerp, Belgium. The video of my presentation has just become available on YouTube.

I’ve been wanting to write an article on integrating Apple Maps and MapKit JS with the FileMaker Platform so I decided to switch to using Apple Maps for this exercise.

Comparing Google Maps and MapKit JS

It’s hard to do a like-for-like comparison of the Google Maps API and MapKit JS as their billing models and included usage are different. Like the Google Maps API Apple’s MapKit JS allows you to geocode addresses, which is the process of converting an address into the latitude and longitude coordinates required for generating the markers for the map. To get started with MapKit JS you’ll need an Apple Developer Program membership (99 USD per membership year or your local equivalent). This allows you to generate 250,000 map views and 25,000 service calls (used for geocoding) per day which is usually enough for most FileMaker integrations. Both APIs use JavaScript as the programming language so knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript certainly helps.

Here’s a slide from my EngageU presentation comparing MapKit JS and Google Maps at a high level:

Google Maps does require a credit card to be stored in your billing account but your usage might remain in the free monthly tier so you won’t incur any billable charges. MapKit JS requires a paid Apple Developer Program membership regardless of how many maps your generate each year.

I’m not going to go into the steps to generate the credentials required to start generating maps using MapKit JS – these are covered on the Apple Developer website here – but they include:

  • create a Maps ID
  • create a Maps Private Key
  • generate a JWT (JSON Web Token) – make a note of the expiry date
  • generate an access token required for geocoding

The JWT and access token can all be generated using native FileMaker script steps and functions so you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. You can then use the FileMaker Web Viewer to start generating maps using MapKit JS – here’s some examples:

Single Address

This shows a single address at the centre of the map without any markers and uses the Coordinate Span parameter to indicate the desired zoom level of the map:

Single Address With Marker

Like Google Maps MapKit JS can show markers at the location of the geocode – the default is a red balloon with a white pin icon inside the balloon. This shows a map of a single address with the red marker and a Title below the marker that was passed in as a parameter from a FileMaker field:

The colour of the marker can also be changed by passing in a parameter – here’s the same map with a purple marker:

You can also change the default white pin icon to another graphic using unicode characters. Here’s a map of Bondi Beach with a yellow colour marker and a surfer icon generated from the 1F3C4 unicode characters:

Single Address With Marker and Callout

In addition to displaying a marker with a title and customising the appearance of the marker you can also add a callout to the marker which acts like a FileMaker Pro popover when you click on the marker:

In the example shown above I’m showing a callout that displays data from the record that has been clicked on so you can dynamically control the content of the callout. We’ve also built integrations where the callout contains links – for example a company’s website or a link back to the FileMaker record to view more details etc.

Multiple Addresses/Markers

As well as mapping single addresses you can map multiple addresses/geocodes. After importing my customer addresses and running a FileMaker script to geocode them using the MapKit API I created a map with a marker for each customer:

We now have customers in 38 unique countries and most of the states in the USA! Here’s the same customer map showing a white balloon with the country flag:

Directions Between 2 Locations

In addition to mapping a single address or a found set of addresses you can also use MapKit JS to generate directions between 2 locations. Here’s a map showing the walking route between 2 addresses:

If you would like to discuss integrating Apple Maps using MapKit JS with your FileMaker solution please get in touch to arrange a free consultation and discuss your requirements.

Let’s Reconnect at Reconnect.Brisbane 2024

The Reconnect Claris FileMaker Developer conference is happening again in 2024. After the success of Reconnect.Sydney last year we’re excited to announce that Reconnect.Brisbane is now confirmed for 5 – 6 September 2024 at the Marriott Hotel in Brisbane.

The same group of Claris Partners that organised Reconnect.Sydney have been busy over the past few months working with Claris to finalise the dates and venue for Reconnect.Brisbane.

A fantastic social event has also been confirmed for the Thursday night at Customs House overlooking the Brisbane river and the Story Bridge. Claris are also returning as the premier sponsor of the event and this year we will have a speaker from Claris in the USA in-person.

We’re in the early stages of planning the content and are hoping to attract some speakers from Europe and the USA.

Tickets are on sale now – get in early to take advantage of the early bird specials:

https://reconnect.fm/

Reconnect.Brisbane will be the only official Claris FileMaker Developer conference in the APAC region in 2024 so don’t miss out as tickets are limited. This is not just an event for the APAC region – we’d love to see attendees from all over the world. Spring temperatures in Brisbane are 15 – 25°C (59 – 77°F) so if you’re looking for an excuse to escape the northern hemisphere winter, visit Australia and learn about the Claris platform we have the perfect event for you.

We will be adding more content to the website over the coming weeks, including hotel discount details and updates about the confirmed speakers. If you are interested sponsoring Reconnect.Brisbane we have a sponsors page on the website with further details of the available sponsorship packages available.

Upcoming Changes to WooCommerce

WooCommerce have announced a number of upcoming changes to their platform and we wanted to let our customers know about any potential impact on our fmEcommerce Link (WooCommerce Edition) solution.

Firstly WooCommerce put out an announcement last year about their deprecated Legacy REST API and that this was being removed from WooCommerce as of version WooCommerce 9.0, scheduled to be released in June 2024. This has NO impact on the fmEcommerce Link (WooCommerce Edition) solution as we have never used the Legacy REST API and have only ever used the newer REST API released with WooCommerce 2.6 that is based on the WordPress JSON API. You can ignore any notifications about the removal of the Legacy REST API as far as fmEcommerce Link integration is concerned.

Secondly you might have come across news about High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS), WooCommerce’s new database storage for orders to allow effortless scaling for large and high growth stores. Previously known as “Custom Order Tables” HPOS is a solution that provides an easy-to-understand and solid database structure – specifically designed for eCommerce needs. HPOS replaces the default WordPress post-based storage of orders and used dedicated custom database tables for data like orders and order addresses instead. This way is more efficient for handling large volumes of orders and eventually improving overall performance.

HPOS is enabled by default for new installations from WooCommerce 8.2 onward. You will need to ensure that all your WordPress extensions are compatible with HPOS before you upgrade to HPOS. We are waiting confirmation from WooCommerce about the impact of HPOS and their REST API which is used by fmEcommerce Link and will update this blog post once that is received.

We will also be testing fmEcommerce Link (WooCommerce Edition) with an HPOS enabled store shortly to confirm everything works as expected. You can stay up-to-date by subscribing to our newsletter or this blog.

You can read more information about HPOS at the following links:

Databuzz 2023 End of Year Xmas Sale – 20% Off All Licenses

The Databuzz End of Year Xmas Sale is now on. We only have one sale each year and for the next 2 weeks you can save 20% on all Product Licenses including:

Use the coupon XMAS2023 at checkout on any purchase and the 20% discount will be applied to your order. The sale runs until the end of the day on December 31, 2023 (Australian Eastern Daylight Time). Click here to start shopping.

Free trial versions are available for all of our products. You can also get 20% off our custom integration services if you need assistance with integrating one of our products into your existing Claris FileMaker solution.

All our prices are in Australian dollars – if you’re purchasing from outside of Australia you’ll also get to take advantage of the low Australian dollar.

EngageU 2023 Recap

The 2nd edition of the EngageU European Claris FileMaker conference was held earlier this month in Antwerp, Belgium. The conference attracted over 200 participants from 22 countries all around the world (including 2 from Australia!) and was expertly organised by ClickWorks and Square Moon.

This was my first European FileMaker event that I’ve attended in-person and it definitely won’t be my last. The conference kicked off with a Claris Partner Meeting followed by a brewery tour and dinner at De Koninck where I got to sample a variety of different Belgium beers. The next two days were filled with sessions and discussions in the KCC Congress Centre which was a great venue (and short walk from the hotel). One of the highlights was the conference dinner which was held at the historical Marble Hall next to the famous Antwerp Zoo.

I was grateful to be invited to present two sessions at EngageU 2023:

  1. Webhooks: in this session I explained what webhooks are and why you should use them, and gave an overview of the options for deploying webhooks including commercial solutions like Claris Connect or build it yourself using other programming languages like PHP and JavaScript. I also did a few live demos using Stripe and Twilio showing how you can implement webhooks to receive automatic notifications of new payments from Stripe and incoming SMS messages from Twilio.
  2. Apple Maps Integration: this session covered using Apple’s MapKit JS to display maps in your FileMaker solution using the FileMaker Web Viewer and Apple Maps. I demonstrated how to create simple maps of an address using MapKit JS and how to plot multiple markers on a map and customise the appearance of the markers. The video of my presentation is now available on YouTube.

Thanks to everyone that came to my sessions. All sessions at EngageU were recorded and will be available on YouTube once they have been edited. If you have any questions about these please get in touch. I’m looking forward to finding out where EngageU 2024 will be and starting my planning for the long trip back to Europe again.

Databuzz releases Multi Companies Version of fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition)

Sydney, Australia – 31 October 2023 – Databuzz today announced a new version of fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) which supports connecting to multiple QuickBooks Online company files. 

fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) is a Claris FileMaker solution that integrates with the QuickBooks Online accounting platform and is now available in two versions:

  • fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Single Company: this version, released in March 2023, supports connecting to a single QuickBooks Online company file
  • fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Multiple Companies: this version, released in October 2023, supports connecting to multiple QuickBooks Online company files. It includes a Companies table which stores the details and authentication tokens for each Company you need to connect to. Customers, Vendors, Invoices, Bills etc are all related to a Company record so it knows which QuickBooks Online company to upload to and download from

fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Multiple Companies allows you to upload and download data between FileMaker and QuickBooks Online, the cloud based financial management software for small businesses. fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Multiple Companies removes double data entry and human errors saving your company significant time, money and hassle by automating the exchange of data between FileMaker and QuickBooks Online.

fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Multiple Companies is completely unlocked allowing you to integrate it into your FileMaker solution. You can copy and paste examples showing you how to authenticate with the QuickBooks Online API and upload Customers, Vendors, Invoices, Bills, Payments, Purchase Orders, Bills and more at the click of a button. 

fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Multiple Companies features include:

fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Multiple Companies includes examples for the following QuickBooks Online API endpoints:

  • Company Info: authenticate with multiple QuickBooks Online companies and download company information
  • Customers: download and upload Customers
  • Vendors: download and upload Vendors (Suppliers)
  • Invoices: download and upload Invoices
  • Estimates: download and upload Estimates (Quotes)
  • Bills: download and upload Bills
  • Purchase Orders: download and upload Purchase Orders
  • Items: download and upload Items (Products)
  • Customer Payments: download and upload Payments against an Invoice
  • Bill Payments: download and upload Payments against a Bill
  • Credit Memos: download and upload Credit Memos
  • Purchases (Expenses): download and upload Purchases (Expenses)
  • Journal Entries: download and upload Journal Entries
  • Attachments: download and upload attachments for Invoices, Estimates, Bills, Purchase Orders, Customers and Vendors
  • Notes: download and upload notes for Invoices, Estimates, Bills, Purchase Orders, Customers and Vendors
  • Download Account Codes, Tax Rates, Tax Codes, Classes, Departments, Customer Types, Payment Methods, Terms and Preferences

Availability, Pricing, and Compatibility

fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Multiple Companies is available in a number of licenses: Company, Product (Vertical Solution) and Developer. It is available now from the Databuzz website at https://www.databuzz.com.au/fmaccounting-link-quickbooks-online-edition/. Company Licenses start at AUD $995.00. fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Multiple Companies requires FileMaker Pro v16 or later.

Media/Customer Contact:

Andrew Duncan

Phone: +61 418 468 103

sales@databuzz.com.au

About Databuzz: Databuzz is a long-standing Claris Partner. We have been developing and deploying FileMaker solutions for clients in Australia and internationally since 1999. Our clients are individuals, small-medium businesses, government agencies and multi-national corporations. Databuzz was founded by Andrew Duncan, a Claris FileMaker Certified Developer. For more information please visit our website at https://www.databuzz.com.au.

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FileMaker is a trademark of FileMaker, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Claris Beyond FileMaker QuickBooks Online Presentation

Last month I presented at the Claris Beyond Meetup group on integrating FileMaker with the QuickBooks Online accounting platform using our fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) solution. fmAccounting Link helps eliminate double data entry which saves you time and money by connecting your Claris FileMaker solution with QuickBooks Online using the QuickBooks Online API.

fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) can help you get up and running with a FileMaker QuickBooks Online integration quickly without having to spend hours reading API docs and running tests. I demonstrated how you can upload Customers, Vendors, Invoices, Purchase Orders and more at the click of a button as well as receive automatic notifications of changes to Invoices, Payments, etc using Claris Connect Webhooks.

The recording is now available and you can watch it below or directly on YouTube:

A Beginner’s Guide to the FileMaker OData API

Last week at the Reconnect.Sydney 2023 Claris FileMaker developer conference I gave a presentation on getting started with the FileMaker OData API titled A Beginner’s Guide to the FileMaker OData API.

Thanks to everyone who attended my session and laughing at my jokes and hitting me up with some great questions.

If you would like to get a copy of my slides you can download a copy of my slide deck here.

There were a couple of questions/issues that were raised at the end of the Q&A period that I ran out of time to answer properly. Here’s some comments about those issues:

  • there was a question about requesting cross joins of data from unrelated tables. I didn’t include a demo of this as my session was aimed at beginners getting going with OData, but you can get more information about this in the Claris FileMaker OData API Guide. The OData documentation on URL Conventions includes a section on Addressing the cross join of entity sets which goes into more detail.
  • I demonstrated the behaviour when you attempt to edit/update a record using the primary key as the identifier and if no matching record is found a new record is created. This is documented in the OData spec as Upsert an Entity: “An upsert occurs when the client sends an update request to a valid URL that identifies a single entity that does not exist. In this case the service MUST handle the request as a create entity request or fail the request altogether.” It looks like the behaviour has changed from the first release of the OData API for FileMaker Server for Linux.

Leave a comment below if you have any questions about my presentation or OData generally.

Reconnect Sydney 2023 Recap

For the first time in more than three years the Claris FileMaker developer community in the APAC region gathered in-person again for the Reconnect.Sydney 2023 conference last week. Around 100 developers from Australia and New Zealand came together to learn and network for two days, catching up with old friends and making new ones.We even had conference swag and professionally printed name badges!

As a speaker, sponsor and one of the organisers it was a busy two days. Reconnect.Sydney was organised by FileMaker developers for FileMaker developers and organising conferences is definitely not part of our day jobs. There were a few nerves in the days leading up to the conference but once the opening keynote was underway it felt very familiar like FileMaker DevCons of yore. There was a definite buzz in the air and the quality of the sessions were excellent. I really enjoyed the ‘Mobile Tyre Shop – COO perspective’ session by Jamie Cartwright (and Databuzz customer!). Hopefully this will be a future Claris testimonial and Claris need have a video of this on their home page.

Huge thanks to all the other organisers for helping to make this such a great conference:

We were also very lucky to have ten sponsors who all helped make the conference a huge success. Special thanks to our principal sponsor Claris:

I’m looking forward to the next instalment of Reconnect.fm in Brisbane in September 2024. If you would like to be notified about future Reconnect events please sign up for the mailing list here. I’ve uploaded the slides from my ‘A Beginner’s Guide to the FileMaker OData API’ presentation with an update on some of the questions that I couldn’t answer on the day.

My next stop on the road to Claris Engage 2024 is the EngageU conference in Antwerp, Belgium from November 12–14, 2023 where I’ll be presenting two sessions.

fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) Now Supports Webhooks

We’ve just released a free update to fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition), our FileMaker solution that integrates with the QuickBooks Online Accounting platform, to support QuickBooks Online Webhooks. We now support webhooks using either Claris Connect or our supplied PHP file. Claris Connect now includes a free tier which includes up to 500 flow steps each month – if you haven’t used Claris Connect before now is a great time to try it out and take advantage of the free tier.

Webhooks allow you to subscribe to automatically receive notifications from QuickBooks Online when certain events happen. We’ve included support for the following QuickBooks Online event triggers:

  • Customers: create and update
  • Invoices: create and update
  • Payments: create and update

You can easily add support for additional event triggers by following the pattern we have used in our FileMaker scripts.

Once you have setup Webhooks for your required event triggers the fmAccounting Link file will automatically update when one of the events is triggered. For example if a new Payment is created in QuickBooks Online fmAccounting Link will be notified and also created a new Payment record linked to an Invoice, automatically updating the amount owing.

Webhooks save you from having to continually poll QuickBooks Online to check for new records that you wish to download into the fmAccounting Link file.

You can get more information and instructions for setting up webhooks on our support site here. We have a video showing the Create Payment event trigger webhook in action below (or watch directly on YouTube here)

The full list of changes are listed in the version history notes here. Existing customers can download this version from the link on your original order email or your Databuzz account if you created an account with us with your order.