FileMaker Inc. has updated their support articles with a lot of Lion compatibility information. FileMaker 11 was given a qualified green light, but known issues may be deal breakers for some users. The 2 things not supported in FileMaker 11 under Lion right now are (1) The Excel xls format is not supported and (2) Lion’s resume feature doesn’t work. Two other issues noted were: “Within the Inspector, number fields are unable to set a fixed number of decimals to 0 or a negative value” and “When formatting dates, the year may show incorrect dates with Asian character”. An Update for FileMaker Pro 11 is scheduled for August 2011.

FileMaker Server also got a qualified green light from FileMaker Inc. today. However, the big feature not supported right now under Lion is web publishing. An update for FileMaker Server is scheduled for October.

FileMaker Inc. has a table showing older versions of filemaker and issues they know of.

Think about whether you can tolerate those issues before proceeding. My Studio Manager customers should not be upgrading this early in Lion’s life cycle. Let other’s be the guinea pigs.

OS X Lion is due shortly and FileMaker user’s need to know what to expect before upgrading. FileMaker 8 or lower will not run at all on Lion. Only FileMaker 11 will be certified and supported. A small upgrade to FileMaker 11 that will support Lion is in the works.

Here’s what FileMaker says about Lion as of July 8:

FileMaker is excited about the powerful features in OS X Lion and iOS 5. We are committed to be compatible with the latest Apple operating systems and the shipping versions of FileMaker products will be updated to support OS X Lion and iOS 5.

Bottom line:

FileMaker 11 needs a minor update for Lion which is not yet available (as of July 16 2011).

FileMaker 8 will not run at all on Lion. It was developed as a PowerPC app. It is not a Universal App so requires Rosetta which is not supported in Lion. This means any version of FileMaker prior to version 8.5 will not run under Lion.

You need FileMaker 11 to run Lion. We may learn in the trenches that the bugs you will encounter running a lower version of FileMaker are tolerable, but we don’t know that yet and FileMaker Inc. does not have the resources to make sure that FileMaker 10 or less will run well on Lion.

I’ll update this post as more is revealed.

We are extremely happy that FileMaker has released FileMaker Go for iPhone and iPad. How great is that?

But, we are sorry to say that because of the way iPhone works, we can’t recommend or support use of FileMaker Go with current versions of Studio Manager. Don’t stop reading, though, there’s more to this story.

You could access Studio Manager from an iPhone or iPad running FileMaker Go with just a couple tweaks, but you risk getting into trouble and having a frustrating experience.

For one thing, FileMaker Go doesn’t support Preview and the iPhone and iPad don’t yet support printing. All reporting for iPhone and iPad will have to be re-done in a way that doesn’t require a Preview. Right now, all reports in Studio Manager require previews or printing. So, if we support 5 or 10 reports from the iPhone or iPad, they will be new reports that work even though previewing is not possible. FileMaker 11 allows subheads and subtotals to appear without a preview. Previous versions don’t.

The absolute deal-breaker issue is that when you use an iPhone or iPad, hitting the Home button shuts down an app abruptly which means a script can stop before it is done. If you are running a script that happens to move data from point a to point b or even creates a new timesheet, it could be interrupted mid-script leaving loose ends and incomplete information. We are available to address this now on your behalf with your current version of Studio Manager, but it’s going to take some careful research to make sure we’ve nabbed all the scripts that would be troublesome on an iPhone or iPad.

The secondary issue is that Studio Manager layouts are built and optimized for a Mac that uses a cursor. There is a consensus and we agree with it that you should make your layouts touch-friendly if they are going to run on a touch-based device like the iPhone or iPad.

Because of these two issues, we think the way to go is to create some little layouts for the iPhone and some for the iPad. We’ve already got an itty bitty iPhone layout for login and another for task and time updating running in our lab. Some good and thorough thinking will be needed to decide what functionality will run well and will be essential on the iPhone and iPad. We will either make iPhone and iPad versions of important scripts or modify the scripts to do different things depending on the type of device that’s being used.

We plan to do three things to support FileMaker Go. First, we expect that the next major release of Studio Manager will include at least a modicum of features that can be used well with iPhone and iPad. Second, we plan to publish our work so that you can as easily as possible add compatibility to an earlier version of Studio Manager. Third, we’ll offer customization services and consulting to our customers so that they can make changes they want in their current version of Studio Manager.

We think FileMaker Go will be the very best way to access Studio Manager for people who are occasional or temporary users, have an iPhone or iPad, and don’t need absolutely full access to Studio Manager features. Better than web access. It is fun to use. It’s handy.  At $20 for iPhone and $40 for iPad, it is the cheap, thin and mobile client we’ve been waiting for.

Please comment on this post if you have some ideas. If you have a top priority, let us know. We need your input!

I have been trying to do some importing with fairly large interrelated files using FileMaker Pro 10.3 and Snow Leopard in single-user mode. I’ve had several crashes in about a 1/2 hour of efforts. Will now be switching to a machine with Leopard installed and re-do the work. Be forewarned that unspecified problems with FileMaker Pro 10 and Snow Leopard may occur. I’m sure we’ll get clarification soon. I will post an update once I know more. Meanwhile I would recommend against running this combo for the time being.

Update Sep 6 noon PDT: The problem may not be with FileMaker 10. The problem I experienced may be due to one or more of my Filemaker plugins that need updates. I will get all my current plugins up to date and then test again. 360Works updated all of their plugins for Snow Leopard on August 28.

Update Sep 8 11am PDT: Removed all extensions in the FileMaker applications folder. Haven’t tested extensively, but I’ve had a couple crashes of FileMaker since then. Maybe I have a specific other conflict with FileMaker. But what? Next project is to try running FileMaker as the only running app and do a few things and see how that goes.

Resource: Camp Software has good blog post summarizing known issues dated Aug 28.

You have a few more days left to get at least 10% off. See news item below when sale was announced December 23rd. Please call or email me your last minute questions.

Pre-SM 9.1 customers who want to run FileMaker 10 will need two tweaks that will take a total of 30 minutes. We need to do a 2 minute fix for you unless you have full access and can make the change yourself. We will publish the 15 minute fix. It is minor – it is just an adjustment in our resize window script to account for the fact that in FileMaker 10 the status area on the left went away.

FileMaker 10 Early Birds. Yes, FileMaker 10 is really cool. It will allow lots of new things both immediately for end-users and for developers like us. However, I usually recommend you wait at least a week or two or three or four before you replace your existing FileMaker Server installation with a new version. Why not let someone else find a bug that might apply to you?

Customers still running Studio Manager 3 or 4 are running out of Weeks this year. The quick solution is to go to the Weeks file and create new records for additional weeks. It will take just a few minutes to add another year.

We’ve created a couple of FileMaker files you can download and import New_Weeks_7 (SM7-9) or New_Weeks_5 (SM1-4). Just open your old Weeks file and import the New Weeks file with matching field names.