Filemaker pro and Business Catalyst

[sugar_crazy]

I would like to know if there is a way to integrate Filemaker Pro functions into BC. I am looking to be able to update a file in Filemaker pro that will automatically update a progress bar in a secure zone on a BC website. Is there a way to do this through API's?

[DOBE-J5YKLB]

I am working on a similar solution but don't have any answers yet. I just can point you in the direction of BCGurus and Karim who is working with the topic BC and FileMaker Pro integration as well. As I am aware he only uses FM as a better Excel to convert lists, recalculate CRM entries and export them back in BC. He is not doing any API call's like you would like to do.

I am interested in that as well as FileMaker is very limited if it comes to Web. The internal Web Publishing is a joke, the PHP integration is not well documented and there is no way to make a working enterprise APP out of FileMaker dues it's many restrictions. Tough saying that I am a huge FileMaker fan due it's simplicity. To use a professional CRM / e-commerce solution and combine it with a powerful and user friendly database like FileMaker seems to be a logical step for companies who do not want to use open source products.

Please let's work together and keep each other posted. There is a LinkedIn Group dealing with BC and also some FileMaker Devs seem to be active in there as well.

[TheBCMan]

Late to the party but I've worked with filemaker pro in the past and the BC API extensively.

Filemaker pro is well filemaker pro, it's meant for little commercial ventures or organizing your CD collections, anything business with over 20,000 records I would use or get something else (like BC). Even MS acesss is better, although harder to use, filemaker is also prone to database corruption so you need to backup.

For automation, filemaker pro has ODBC connect-ability so you can directly access the data stored within it, piping data in or out or to the BC API if you wanted. Since filemaker pro is a self contained local app (and if I were building something) I would build a little local tool app you could launch and import / export the data for you based on your business rules or what you were trying to automate, this could be automated if you wanted to do something like that.

If you or anyone is interested, it's relatively straight forward working with ODBC since it's base is SQL to get to the data. Just need the business logic on what you want to achieve.

[dddexadgat]

Hello,

I would like to know if there is in anyway I could get data filled up from BC forms and serve those data to filemaker?

[TheBCMan]

Filemaker is a flat file database on a local machine it could not be automated, you would have to export and import the data. As my 3 year old post states you could use ODBC (assuming you are using Windows) to make it a little easier, perhaps a 2-3 step approach. You would have to develop it (or get someone) to develop an out of box solution.