FileMaker Connectivity: Linking FileMaker to Websites Globally

March 25, 2024
William Miller

Thanks to CLARIS CONNECT, your FileMaker app can now share data with MANY other services

Business Use Cases for FileMaker Connectivity

Business automation is our north star guiding us at HighPower. We want to automate your business as much as possible. We want to take the tedium out of work, and make it enjoyable by removing the day-to-day drudgery with easy automation services.

That’s why we call our e-newsletter “Automate Your Business”. We believe that FileMaker Pro, combined with our smart website services can make your life easier. There is a better way to run your business, and we will help you to find it.

Here’s another tool for business automation–brought to you by the same company that created FileMaker: Claris. “Claris Connect” integrates and links your FileMaker application with many other web services around the world.

Claris Connect can help your FileMaker application connect with services like:

  • QuickBooks
  • Mailchimp
  • AWS
  • Asana
  • Docusign
  • DropBox
  • Google (most services)
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Slack
  • Shopify
  • Stripe
  • Trello
  • Twilio
  • WooCommerce
  • WordPress
  • Zoom
  • and now, OpenAI !

Here’s some examples…
Quickbooks to FM connection is something almost everyone needs. You want to be able to push/pull invoicing information to/from QuickBooks. Until now, it’s been tricky, as the QuickBooks API is difficult to program. But Claris Connect has made this much easier.

Linking Mailchimp to your FileMaker CRM can vastly improve the timely automation and updates for all of your clients. We do this ourselves at HighPower. Every time someone subscribes on a Mailchimp form, we get a notification in our company Slack channel. But the automation doesn’t stop there. We have also linked Mailchimp directly to our internal FileMaker company app. When a new name is added to Mailchimp, a link is sent to our FileMaker CRM, and a record is created with the name and email address. We don’t have to do anything, and our list grows automatically.

And everything we’ve said about linking FileMaker to Quickbooks and Mailchimp would apply for Shopify, Stripe, and WooCommerce.

Another cool new feature of FileMaker is the ability to link directly to OpenAI, and send prompts and receive answers.

Claris Connect Key Functions

Claris has a number of pre-built connectors which will share data from FileMaker with the various services listed above (and many more). But you can also build your own connectors, or we can build them for you.

Here is how the Claris Connect to FileMaker process works. You will be building a “flow”. These are the steps in a flow:

  1. Select an app
    Choose one from the prebuilt app. There are a lot to choose from, as most of the major web services offer a connection.
  2. Choose an action for that app
    Actions can be things like, ‘notify’, ‘create’, ‘delete’, ‘edit’, etc.
  3. Connect it to an account
    Enter the credentials for your account, such as QuickBooks. This is what authorizes Claris Connect to grab the data and send it to FileMaker.
  4. Configure the action
    There are a number of additional actions you can take as well. Each service has various configurations which you can set up.

And flows can be combined with any number of steps, accounts, and configurations. You can create complex workflows.

HighPower can help

We have a number of developers who are certified in Claris Connect. They can help build your dataflows.

These days there’s no reason your FileMaker file has to be huddled alone and disconnected from the rest of the world. You’re able to venture out and link to the many various web services which a business needs for success. FileMaker has made so much progress since its beginnings 40 years ago. It has continued to grow and improve in its capacity to share and send data around the world, all the time maintaining strong security options for the business owner.