FileMaker Pro 12: 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 about how to use FileMaker. I want you to feel confident that the skills taught in this tutorial will help you become a successful FileMaker developer. So let's take a look at some slides so you can learn a little bit about me. I've been developing and training exclusively with FileMaker Pro for 20 years, no other products, just FileMaker Pro. I'm certified with FileMaker 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 and the certification test is a test that's created by FileMaker Incorporated to test your skills as a developer. There is several hundred questions, it's very rigorous and there's only a couple of thousand people in the world who actually pass it. At the time of the recording there was no FileMaker 12 certification exam but there will be and I'll take it and hopefully I'll pass that. In the beginning of my career I started at Claris Technical Support, I worked there for 5 years. Now Claris is the company who owned FileMaker before FileMaker Incorporated. They're really the same company but Claris used to have a whole bunch of products like Mac Project, Mac Draw, Mac Paint and they got rid of those to focus in on the FileMaker product line. And during that 5 years I also became the Technical Lead for FileMaker Pro working with development team and all sorts of people to make a better product basically. I run a very successful website on the Internet, it's one of the most popular, there are hundreds of free tips, tricks, articles and techniques. Of course I offer my consulting and training services there as well. I get over 35,000 hits a day though mostly because people come for the free stuff. Again, there's tons of tips, tricks, articles, all kinds of stuff on there, all you have to do is type in databasepros.com. Early on in my career just after I left Claris I co-authored a popular book Scriptology. It covers just scripting and calculations at an intermediate to advanced level. Now it's pretty old and so it's over 10 years old so you probably don't want a copy of it but I want to point out this is how I was able to get to the top in my field. I wrote a book and people loved it and started you know using it and that's how I grew my business basically. In 1999, a long time ago again, I wanted to work from FileMaker Incorporated as one of the first people to win this award, Excellence Award and it's for Developing Outstanding Technical Resources. There have been many people since but I'm glad to have been one of the first people to have won this. I'm also an authorized trainer, there are 16 trainers in North America authorized to teach the professional training courses which are now called the FileMaker Training Series which is created by FileMaker Incorporated. So it's a very important training program that they've written to make sure that people can go to somewhere, to a resource that has, you know, the stuff in there that they need to learn to become a successful FileMaker programmer or developer. Now it's also good to know that I was one of the original four authorized trainers way back in the beginning when there were only a few of us, I was one of the original ones. I also is, I am a former Chairperson and Presenter for Macworld Power Tools. They don't do this FileMaker Power Tools conference anymore, basically because Apple pulled out and they became much smaller, so they decided to get rid of the FileMaker portion of it. It was a 2 day FileMaker Pro only conference, I wish I was still doing it, but that's the way things happen sometimes they come, sometimes they go. I'm also the former Technical Editor and Writer for the Tips Column in FileMaker Adviser Magazine. Basically as a Technical Editor, I just assisted in the topic selection and editing in a few directions but mostly what I did was write the Tips Section which was extremely popular, people used to open it up and go right to the back and just read that. Now the same thing happened here, they basically, Adviser Magazine's gone out of business. They still have a website but they don't print out a magazine anymore and so I decided since they weren't printing the magazine to discontinue my services with them. I'm also in an exclusive club, a platinum level FBA Member. Now the FBA is the FileMaker Business Alliance and there's thousands of people in the FileMaker Business Alliance but there's only approximately 50 platinum level and these are the FBA members that are helping FileMaker Incorporated with their most important customers. So hopefully I've proven to you that I have the skills and expertise to teach you FileMaker. I think it's very important that you learn from somebody who really knows and who has been doing this for a long time. So feel confident then when you go through these courses, I'm teaching you all of the details, all of the concepts, that you need to become a very successful FileMaker developer.  

Download WorkFiles