An Overview Of Some Of The Key New Features In Claris FileMaker 2024
Just over a year has rolled by since the launch of Claris FileMaker 2023 and so it's time to welcome this year's update to the FileMaker platform, unsurprisingly named Claris FileMaker 2024. Let's check out some of the key new features that we've honed in on with this release.
Version Number
Claris FileMaker 2024 is the marketing name for this release. As we've explained before, this is great for knowing how old the major version is that you are running. Know that if you use the function Get ( ApplicationVersion ) you will be returned, for example, 21.0.1.
Product Icon Updates
Last year's release introduced a completely new icon for FileMaker. This year, we get a color change from blue to green. This brings the FileMaker logo in line with the other product offerings in the Claris suite - Connect and Studio. As ever, the logo will be found across the product.
FileMaker Server
We'll break down our exploration into two parts and start off with some of the key new features in FileMaker Server 2024:
Technical Specifications
Installation of FileMaker Server 2024 requires one of the following operating systems, which are similar to FileMaker 2023 except for macOS:
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Windows Server 2019 or 2022
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macOS Ventura 13 and higher
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Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server
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Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Server on AMD64
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Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Server on ARM64
It should also be noted that the FileMaker Pro/Go client must be 19.4.2 or higher to connect to FileMaker Server 2024.
Admin Console
The FileMaker Server Admin Console is the hub of the server functions where admins will do the bulk of their maintenance. There are a few updates in this area:
- Persistent Cache Auto Restart - tied in with the Persistent Cache functionality from the 2023 version, this will automatically attempt to restart the database server if it quits unexpectedly. I think we'd say use this with caution... You can find it under Configuration > General Settings > Startup Settings. On the persistent cache front, log entries of uncommited transactions are now made to the Event.log file when performing a recovery on start up.
- Introduced in 2023 as a command line feature, the Script Log to Event Log functionality that writes script events to the Event.log instead of the scriptEvent.log is promoted to the Admin Console and can be found under Logs > Log Settings.
- Speaking of logs, the Top Call Statistics and Server Statistics logs are now enabled by default.
- And yet more on the logging front, the Log Viewer under Logs > Log Viewer has a handy new Collapse Side Bar button in order to view the logs at full window width. It does a nice job of making the logs a little easier to consume. When at full width, an Expand Side Bar button does the reverse to bring it back into view.
- The Backups and Schedules areas have reunited, at least to a degree. The Backup Schedules (where you set the time, frequency and so forth of backups) have moved to the what was the Script and Verify Schedules under the Configuration section - this has been renamed to Schedules and so is now the place where you can set up all your schedules for backups, FileMaker scripts, system scripts and so on. This is great for being able to see any conflicts or avoiding the server doing multiple things at the same time. New features for Schedules include double-click to edit, expand columns, sort and search schedules, duplicate or run multiple schedules at once, and all schedules are shown by default instead of just the first ten. And on the Dashboard, the Last Backup value will display the backup from any schedule that ran.
- Talking of backups, there's a new naming convention for backup folders, which will include the status of the backup by appending it, such as _InProgress or _Canceled, and canceled backups will count towards the preservation limit for a schedule so bear this in mind if you find yourself canceling a bunch of backups.
Let's Encrypt SSL Certificates
If you're running Linux or macOS servers, break out the champagne... Finally, on these two platforms, we have native support for the free, widely used and respected Let's Encrypt SSL certificates. There's a lot to this, including firewall settings, installing the Let's Encrypt Certbot package, various configuration options, and understanding that these certificates are only valid for 90 days and must be renewed periodically. We became very familiar with Let's Encrypt during our extensive Keycloak series of blog posts and we use it for NodeRed servers that we run. Fortunately, Claris have provided extensive documentation and a system script in the Schedules section of the Admin Console. After installing FileMaker Server 2024, head to FileMaker Server/Tools/Lets_Encrypt and you'll find instructions and script templates to get this working.
WebDirect
Multiple updates to WebDirect have been rolled out, including:
- CSS caching optimization during layout resizing.
- The Set Error Logging script step is now supported.
- Touch keyboards in mobile browsers are now supported, which is excellent news for user experience: ASCII, URL, Email and Number Keypad are available.
- "pulldowntorefreshenabled" is a new parameter buried in the jwpc_prefs.xml file, which when set to yes will allow the layout to refresh when the screen is dragged down and prevent the refresh if set to no. The default behavior is yes.
- Multiple bug fixes have also been included in this release.
Other Updates
Other notable updates include XML library changes, OmniOrb update to 4.3.2, NodeJS update to 18.19.1, Tomcat update to 10.1.16, libcurl update to 8.4.0, OpenSSL update to 3.0.11, changes to custom OAuth features, and if you're a big fan of the Admin API then there's a bunch of fun stuff for you to play around with in this release.
FileMaker Pro
As always with a major release, FileMaker Pro gets some updates too:
Technical Specifications
Similar to the server product, installation of FileMaker Pro requires one of the following operating systems:
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Windows 10 or 11
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macOS Ventura 13 and higher
And again, note that when connecting to a server with FileMaker Pro 2024, that server must be running FileMaker Server 19.4.2 or higher.
Artifical Intelligence
Let's tackle the big one first... And it is a big one. AI - Artificial Intelligence. The buzz word in the tech industry after the explosion of ChatGPT. While FileMaker Pro has been able to utilize AI through the use of Insert From URL for years, FileMaker Pro 2024 brings AI functions to the platform in a native way. This is a huge topic and not one we can cover in any depth in this article, but check out the community for in depth discussion and tutorials on the AI features in this release - the Claris Community AI page is here. There are new script steps and calculation functions to support the AI features, logging abilities and a whole lot more. Semantic search is something we're looking forward to exploring more, enabling users to use natural language to get the answers they seek from their FileMaker data.
A word of caution before we move on, be sure you know if you are sending data to any AI you're interacting with, and lean on the side of not doing that...
Execute Data API Supports Write Operations
The Execute Data API script step has been explored by us a couple of times and is perhaps worth another visit as in this release it is now possible to perform write operations with this script step, using action parameters of create, update, delete or duplicate. As with the Execute SQL function, this script step can perform reads when out of context of the table being queried. That, in combination with the JSON formatted results of the script step, has been hugely useful, especially when it comes to gathering data for APIs. The ability to write to/edit a record when out of context is a very welcome addition to this already powerful script step.
On a similar topic, error notifications have been improved when using this script step, with the appropriate Data API errors being returned by the functions Get ( LastError ), Get ( LastErrorDetail ) and Get ( LastErrorLocation ).
Perform Script On Server With Callback - Enhanced
This script step joined the Pro product in the last major release but gets some improvements in 2024. The callback script can now be set using a calculation, so depending on the result of the PSOS originally called, you can trigger a different script to run on the client that called the PSOS. Additionally, you can now specify if the callback script should halt, exit, resume or pause any script that may be running on the client at the time the callback is made by setting the State parameter.
JSON Function Updates
There are a couple of JSON function updates in this release to further improve creation and manipulation of JSON data. The first is a new function JSONMakeArray which does exactly what it says on the tin... Setting up the function like this:
JSONMakeArray ( "1;2;3" ; ";" ; JSONNumber )
Results in this:
[1,2,3]
And if you're a fan of JSON arrays, you can now create and reference elements in an array using "[+]" and "[:]" - check out the documentation for examples on these.
Open Quickly
The Open Quickly dialog box now searches across all manner of items, including scripts, layouts and recent files and is now opened with Command-K on macOS or Ctrl-K on Windows - note that this is a change to previous behavior. Do be aware that if you use this to find scripts and you have the rights to edit the selected script, it will open that script for you - very useful. However, if you do not have the rights to edit that script, it will run the script... That could be a problem...
Other
As with FileMaker Server, there are plenty of bug fixes and library updates included in this release of FileMaker Pro 2024, along with WebRTC support for web viewers, some dark mode improvements to the relationship graph, support for the --aws-sigv4 cURL option (although notably not on Ubuntu 20), and more...
Conclusion
As ever with these larger releases, Claris continues its development momentum, fixing bugs, providing better development tools and keeping up with the tech of today. Go to the Claris website here to check out more about this new release and if you'd like to download a free trial version of FileMaker Pro 2024, click here.
If you need general help with your FileMaker app, or want to save money on your licensing of Claris products, contact us and we'll be glad to assist.
