About Me
06/08/07 23:22
I've been using FileMaker Pro since version 3.0. It's
been very much a love-hate relationship with
FileMaker over the years. While looking for a
back-end software solution to get my web based
business up and running in 1995, I stumbled across a
program called SOHOmaster. It was sitting on a pile
of demo software in the office of my friend and then,
Software Product Manager at Insight. I picked up the
box and noticed it was some kind of order management
and CRM solution built on a FileMaker Pro runtime
engine. I installed the program and found it was
simple to use. Later in the year, I left my position
as the Product Manager of Hard Drives at Insight to
start www.AllegroMedical.com.
It was an exciting time to be involved with the web.
When I launched the site, we were the first online
medical equipment and home medical supply company.
The little software package worked well at first but soon showed signs of it's premature release. Tech support was helpful at first and sent me one or two updates to resolve nuisance issues. However, 2 months later their phone rang through to a disconnect message. The company was out of business. This was not good as the software had come with a 5 user license and we now had doubled in size to 10 employees, sharing the systems to keep our orders shipping. I was determined to find one of the developers and by going through the credits of the program managed to find the right one. I tracked down Geoff Coffey the now internationally acclaimed Orielly author of FileMaker Pro Missing Manual series. Geoff was more than happy to help me with my plight as he still felt the sting of showing up to work on a snowy December morning only to find the office doors chained shut, the company owners gone, and nobody to cut him his paycheck for the last 4 weeks of work.
Geoff chuckled as I mentioned how I thought I was screwed and would not be able to expand this software to allow more than 5 users. Although the solution shipped with a runtime engine, I had already upgraded to the full version of FileMaker 3.0 which promised the ability to customize more of the program. However, the system was password protected. Geoff was more than happy to fork over the solution admin password which I had keyed in before thanking Geoff and hanging up the phone.
With SOHOmaster wide open I began tweaking bits and pieces, adding to the solution and upgrading to newer versions of FileMaker along the way. If you are on this site, you have probably discovered much like I did, that the FileMaker gods living in the .fp_ become angered on occasion and require a significant sacrifice of your time, patience and evenings to set thing right in their realm.
The little software package worked well at first but soon showed signs of it's premature release. Tech support was helpful at first and sent me one or two updates to resolve nuisance issues. However, 2 months later their phone rang through to a disconnect message. The company was out of business. This was not good as the software had come with a 5 user license and we now had doubled in size to 10 employees, sharing the systems to keep our orders shipping. I was determined to find one of the developers and by going through the credits of the program managed to find the right one. I tracked down Geoff Coffey the now internationally acclaimed Orielly author of FileMaker Pro Missing Manual series. Geoff was more than happy to help me with my plight as he still felt the sting of showing up to work on a snowy December morning only to find the office doors chained shut, the company owners gone, and nobody to cut him his paycheck for the last 4 weeks of work.
Geoff chuckled as I mentioned how I thought I was screwed and would not be able to expand this software to allow more than 5 users. Although the solution shipped with a runtime engine, I had already upgraded to the full version of FileMaker 3.0 which promised the ability to customize more of the program. However, the system was password protected. Geoff was more than happy to fork over the solution admin password which I had keyed in before thanking Geoff and hanging up the phone.
With SOHOmaster wide open I began tweaking bits and pieces, adding to the solution and upgrading to newer versions of FileMaker along the way. If you are on this site, you have probably discovered much like I did, that the FileMaker gods living in the .fp_ become angered on occasion and require a significant sacrifice of your time, patience and evenings to set thing right in their realm.