FileMaker Pro 10: Intermediate Course

Hi. My name is John Mark Osborne and I want to tell you a little bit about myself so you know an expert is teaching you how to use FileMaker Pro. I want you to feel confident the techniques taught in this tutorial will really help you be a successful FileMaker developer. So let's take a look at some slides. I've been developing and training exclusively with FileMaker Pro for the past 18 years. Currently, I'm certified for FileMaker 7, 8 and 9. Every test that FileMaker Incorporated has put out to certify developers, I've taken and passed. At the recording of this tutorial, there was no FileMaker 10 certification exam but when it becomes available, I'll take it and hopefully will pass it. I started out my FileMaker career working in Claris technical support. Claris is the company who represented FileMaker before FileMaker Incorporated. That's when Claris owned MacDraw, MacPaint, ClarisWorks, a few products you may have heard of. But when they wanted to focus in just on the FileMaker product line, they changed their name from Claris to FileMaker Incorporated. I worked in Claris technical support for five years and become the technical lead for FileMaker Pro. As a technical lead, I helped out with the development team with technical support issues and acted as an escalation path for other phone representatives when they couldn't answer a question. A long time ago I started a website because I wanted to share my knowledge of FileMaker with other people. I also wanted to learn HTML as well, so I made a website and started offering free FileMaker tips, just downloadable files that showed you how to do things in FileMaker. Now, this day, there are hundreds of them; almost a thousand free tips, tricks, articles and techniques that you can download. I get over 35,000 hits per day and if you visit DatabasePros.com, you can go to the resources area and download some of these tips for yourself. When I left Claris, I started a company with a friend and we wrote a book called Scriptology. It became extremely popular. So popular that it's become a handbook for developers. In fact, even though it's ten years old, people still ask me if they can get a copy. It was based on FileMaker 3, 4, 5 and 6 so it's really not something you want now because FileMaker 7 changed everything so much. But it's something I wrote a long time ago and wanted to share with you. It covered scripting and calculations at an intermediate to advanced level exclusively. So that's my forte, is scripting and calculations and we'll concentrate a lot in these tutorials on scripting and calculations. In 1999 I won one of the first excellence awards from FileMaker Incorporated. It's a prestigious award that's not handed out to very many people and I got that for offering outstanding technical resources. I'm also an authorized trainer. FileMaker Incorporated has authorized 16 trainers in North America to teach their professional training courses, which are now called the FileMaker Training Series. So I've been authorized to teach Series 1, 2 and 3 and now the fourth, with the name changed to FileMaker Training Series, I'm also authorized to teach that. In fact, I was one of the original four authorized trainers. They've added a bunch since then and just developed a program so that everybody in the United States can take this type of training that really teaches you how to be a developer; even if you're working in-house at your company, it's really a great training to take because it'll teach you all the techniques that developers use to make a successful FileMaker solution. I also am the chairperson and presenter at the MacWorld FileMaker PowerTools Conference. I've done this for the past 11 years. It's a two-day FileMaker Pro only conference at the MacWorld Expo. So if you go to MacWorld, you can consider signing up for this and learn more about FileMaker. I'm also the technical editor for FileMaker Advisor Magazine, the only print magazine available. I'm the editor for the Popular Tips column but I'm also a technical editor assisting with the topic selection, editing and future directions of the magazine. And last but not least, I'm a platinum level FBA member. FBA is the FileMaker Business Alliance. It's what developers sign up to be an official developer with FileMaker Incorporated and you go through examples of your products and fill out all kinds of paperwork and there's a couple thousand of these FBA members worldwide. I'm one of 25 of the highest level which is called platinum level, helping FileMaker Incorporated with their most important customers. So there's a little information about me. Hopefully I've convinced you I have the skills to make you an outstanding FileMaker developer.  

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