1. 1 Potato, 2 Potato, 3 Potato, 4…

    December 15, 2011 by Marshall

    Food. It makes a man do some crazy things. Like sit in line at the drive through. A large, franchised burger establishment to be exact. The whole time knowing that you are about to put things in your body that, if left on a shelf, will outlive you. Generally, not so healthy. Specifically, three Whopper Jrs. They are only a dollar a piece, so if you do the math, they cost 1.25 years of your life. For a dollar. It doesn’t get any better. Sign me up. I’m in line, aren’t I? So there I was, in line at the [...]

  2. Losing My Religion

    December 3, 2011 by Marshall

    I read somewhere once that Losing My Religion by R.E.M. was the number one song to make men cry. I have to admit, I haven’t listened to the words so I don’t know if it is the lyrics that tear into men’s souls. It could be the mandolin. You just don’t get enough songs with a good mandolin in them. Cow bell, yes. Mandolin, no. Mandolin’s are a little haunting. With little to no research on the subject, I want to believe that the lyrics talk about a man who was in a routine that provided him happiness. A routine [...]

  3. Interested in learning more about FileMaker Go? Join us for a free webinar.

    October 18, 2011 by Karen

    FileMaker Go promises the power of FileMaker Pro in a smaller package, with the flexibility a mobile device requires. But with a new platform comes new methods, techniques and expectations for development. Leveraging the power of FileMaker Go is not just about understanding general core development skills, but understanding the benefits and limitations of the mobile platform. Are you curious how you can use FileMaker Go as a development platform in your organization? Join Anvil Dataworks and the FM Academy for a free webinar: 5 Important Techniques for Building a Solution in FileMaker Go Thursday, November 10 Noon to 1:00 [...]

  4. Creating Dashboards with FileMaker

    September 28, 2011 by Sameer

    First, I would like to thank everyone who attended the first ever FileMaker Academy Webinar, How to Create Dashboards in FileMaker. This blog is intended merely to summarize the webinar and to act as a reference to the development strategies that were discussed during the presentation. Dashboards, or Management Information Systems, are designed to give employees information pertaining to their companies unique business process. Think of a car dashboard, and how it displays information about the status of the car (e.g. Speed, Odometer, Gas, Engine Heat).  Items known as “Widgets” display information about a particular category, and the combination of [...]

  5. Create Dashboards with FileMaker Pro for Improved Business Performance

    August 31, 2011 by Karen

    Business analytics is one of the hottest topics in management today. Analytics, made visual with graphical dashboards, can provide a wealth of real-time information as to how a business is operating in simple-to-understand formats. Dashboards are windows into a company’s data, helping managers make decisions minute by minute!  We at Anvil Dataworks and Corporate Network Services believe in the power of dashboards to keep track of our work and impact productivity (what gets watched gets done!). If you want to learn how you can use FileMaker Pro to improve business operations by creating information dashboards for your management team, attend [...]

  6. Dive into Your Enterprise Data this Summer

    June 20, 2011 by Karen

    We’re in the middle of summer and we bet all you want to do is dive into a cool, clear pool.  We at Anvil Dataworks cannot provide exactly that for you, but we can provide you with the opportunity to dive into your data—your enterprise data—and make it work better with your FileMaker systems. Join us for a free webinar on July 13 at 2:00 PM EST, and learn how you can pull data out of your MSSQL, MySQL, and Oracle databases, load it into your FileMaker database, manipulate it, and push it out to share with others. Use SQL [...]

  7. Join Anvil Dataworks for Webinar about Integrating FileMaker and QuickBooks on May 18

    May 17, 2011 by Karen

    Most small businesses depend on Intuit’s QuickBooks to manage company finances. If you are using FileMaker Pro as well, there could be a lot of data overlap between the two solutions, resulting in double entries, double queries, the risk of entering bad data, or failure to update records in both systems. With this webinar, you’ll learn how to save time, energy, and data integrity by integrating QuickBooks data into your FileMaker databases, thus eliminating double entry of contacts, employees, invoices or sales transactions. With the systems integrated your workflows can be streamlined, giving your staff the information they need while [...]

  8. Join Anvil at the DC FileMaker User Group Meeting Tomorrow

    May 3, 2011 by Karen

    Join us tomorrow at noon in the FileMaker DC office for an informative DC FileMaker User Group session!  The topic is “Creating and Testing Usable Solutions,” presented by Heather Winkle, of FileMaker Inc. This session will cover the basics needed to create usable solutions in FileMaker Pro. We’ll review the concepts of user-centered design from start to finish: gathering user requirements, creating and testing design prototypes, analyzing test results, and incorporating the results into the design. By the end of this session, attendees will have the knowledge and tools necessary to incorporate the best practices of user-centered design into their [...]

  9. Price Is Not Everything When Choosing a FileMaker Developer for Your Custom Solution

    March 10, 2011 by Karen

    We at Anvil Dataworks have had the pleasure of working will all kinds of businesses and all kinds of solutions.  In our experience, most buyers of custom FileMaker development are looking for a solution based on value and return on investment.  But sometimes, buyers can get caught up in the hourly rate cost and make poor vendor choice decisions based on price alone.  Here’s what happened to two of our customers.  We want to share these lessons so you don’t make similar mistakes when choosing a FileMaker developer for your next project. The first client is an association based in [...]

  10. Anvil is hosting a suite at PauseOnError

    January 24, 2011 by Chuck

    We at Anvil have become huge fans of the PauseOnError, the FileMaker unconference and we decided to pitch in and host one of the suites / meeting rooms at this year’s POE in New York. If you haven’t been to Pause, I highly recommend trying to make it to one as the session format is really more of a guided open discussion and the topics are more widely varied than what you might find at the FileMaker developers conference. At PauseOnError this year, Marshall is leading a round table on growth strategies for FileMaker / bringing new FM users in [...]