Creating databases from templates

Once you become familiar with the FileMaker application and how it's set up, there's a couple different ways that you can start creating databases. Of course, you can create them by scratch, which we will be talking about for the remainder of this title, but there are also a couple different ways to get a quicker start. You will notice when you first open the FileMaker application that you have got some options over here on the left that allow you to either Create a New Database and start from scratch or Convert Existing Files or use that's called a Starter Solution. You can select the Use a Starter Solution from the Quick Start screen or when you are already in FileMaker you can go under the File menu and choose New From Starter Solution. FileMaker updated its Starter Solution viewer window in FileMaker 12, and it lists all the different Starter Solutions that are available to you, and you will see that they are also grouped logically in sort of business units, for instance, of the 16 here are the ones that are General, ones that are related to People & Assets, and so on. But if you're looking at All Solutions, you can scroll through these and they're pretty self-explanatory for the most part. You'll see, for example, if you choose the Contacts option and then hit Choose, it's going to ask you where you would like to save this. We will hit Save, and now it opens up the Starter Solution.

So the first thing you will notice is that there's really not much development that's necessary, the layouts are already created. If you take a peek into the Database you will see that there's a contact Table and a series of Fields. So a lot of this stuff is already programmed for you, there are some routines and Scripts already built-in. And it's ready to start creating new data. You can hit New Record and instantly start working with the Database. But more importantly you should know that in addition to being able to add your own data to the Database, you can also go into Layout mode and manipulate the database, change some of the fields and the way things look and really customize it for exactly how you need it go look. So you don't have to just settle on the way that they're built already for you, the idea is you can tell by their name is that these are intended to get you started. And the Starter Solutions are also a great way for you to see how different functionality works. Like, for example, here is something that's called Web Viewer, and it displays the addresses that are listed in these fields. And this is a great way for you to see how these Web Viewers actually work. But also you'll see that there are some layouts that are pre-built. You will notice that in each of the Starter Solutions they've got iPad and iPhone layouts already created. Each of these layouts conform to Apple's touch screen guidelines, so making things like buttons and some of the touch areas larger so that they'll be ready to be viewed on any device without any modification whatsoever. So in addition to being able to work with the data or add your own data you'll also be able to view this information on the various different Apple devices. One thing I should mention about Starter Solutions is that if you happen to be using a 30-day trial version of FileMaker, keep in mind that that's just a 30-day trial for the application. The Databases that you create or the Starter Solutions that you create and modify, they don't have a 30-day limit on them.

So feel free to go ahead and poke through all the different Starter Solutions in the Starter Solution Viewer and see if there's maybe something that's already built in here, and that'll let you get started as quickly as possible. Starter Solutions are a great way to get familiar with FileMaker without having to do any programming. So I encourage you to go ahead and take a look at a couple of different ones, download them, and play around and see which one suits you best.