September 2016 FMPUG – Dashboard Design in FileMaker 15

Video

Unfortunately, our AV team this month (Chris Cain) blew it, and forgot to record!

To try and summarize a really in-depth session:

We had a great turnout this month, with participants joining us from across North America, many of whom had joined us before, although we had some new “faces”. We enjoyed just spending a bit of time at the beginning just chatting about what we’d all been up to with FileMaker since we last met, catching up and getting to know one another better. It’s nice how, in spite of meeting online and being spread out geographically, our meetings feel like meeting up with friends rather than just attending a webinar!

For our main topic, Scott Nevitt and Eric Miller of DocuWrx demonstrated some very robust techniques for creating dashboards in FileMaker that summarize a wealth of information in a very small space. Using examples from DocuWrx’s flagship product, Kosmas, they demonstrated, among other things:

-ExecuteSQL, and conscientious update intervals, in improve performance

-specific interface decisions and how they affect the desktop, iOS and webDirect platforms

-Using popovers with common iconography to clearly indicate where more information is available, that doesn’t have to always be in the foreground

-The use of context to limit views to a user’s current role and focus

-Consistent conventions to make a complex interface manageable for users and developers alike

Next month, we’ll be triple-checking that record button, instead of just double-checking, which apparently isn’t enough!