I am preparing a 10minute demo for a press conference where I will be showing FileMaker to journalists who have never seen it and have no idea what it is about.
After a short brainstorming on Twitter I have come to the following idea as a workflow to show how cool FileMaker is:
- Setup a database for some cool data (yet to be decided)
- Import data from Excel
- Set up web sharing
- Modify/Add data via Instant Web Publishing
- Use Find Mode (automatically switch between Form View for Find Mode and Table View for Browse Mode) to perform a complex find request across some cool data set
- Generate a dynamic report sporting subsummaries and charts
- Generate a PDF from the report
- Use dynamic search filter sporting script triggers to filter out recipients of the report from a contact list in external SQL source (MySQL database of web subscribers)
- Send out the generated PDF to the selected recipients by e-mail
This is just the first idea. I will appreciate any advices how to make this even more cool and appealing.
The audience will consist of people who write articles for IT focused magazines but have never seen FileMaker and have no idea what it is for. They only know MS Excel, some of them also know MS Access, but that’s all. A great chance to evangelize FileMaker in my country!
Your comments are greatly appreciated!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds pretty good. Showing your data in the web viewer (as a google map or something) might also be cool. I think that visual features tend to be more impressive to non-developers than stuff we find exciting (like script triggers). Good luck, H0nza! — Tom Fitch :: Portland, Oregon
Thanks, Tom, thinking how to add Web Viewer to the workflow…
This #FileMaker demo is scheduled to Nov 26, so there is still time for new ideas. If you have some, I will appreciate you to share…
Unfortunately, the press conference was cancelled. However, I was able to test the workflow (just a little bit modified) in a personal demo and it really turned out to be a really great way to engage someone who has never seen FileMaker before.Especially the Find Mode is unbeatable!