Claris EngageU: Reporting from the frontline of FileMaker’s future

Claris EngageU is one of the big annual FileMaker events, second only to the Claris Engage which is held in America. More than 200 top FileMaker developers from dozens of countries fly in for the event, along with Claris CEO Ryan McCann and the top Claris talents who actually build FileMaker and understand it better than anyone else on the planet (even us).

We were there to hear the latest on FileMaker’s future and to judge for ourselves what sort of messages the senior decision-makers were sending out. Here’s our take: this platform is only going to get stronger and more powerful.

Frankly there’s a lot to be reassured about. FileMaker is not only profitable but growing its customer base. Both Claris and its parent company, Apple, are strongly focused on the platform’s future and view it as a valuable business asset. This is no legacy platform. Despite a plethora of ‘low code’ rivals, FileMaker has a series of advantages that no other competitor can match. It is a mature, stable platform, it has longevity, and above all it is owned by Apple. For all these reasons it is a very secure choice of software system to build your business around.

The senior Claris team is doing all the right things. They’re working closely with Apple to leverage its position, listening carefully to the developer community, and innovating, adding features, and continually enhancing the platform’s stability and security.

The FileMaker AI leap forward

We attended many sessions over EngageU’s two days but the ones on AI stood out. It’s now possible to add an initial AI solution to a FileMaker system in a matter of hours. Up until very recently this was much more difficult to achieve. We now have access to an ever-evolving database of more than 1 million AI models, all of which use standard API technology to talk to FileMaker systems.

These AI models do all kinds of clever tasks, such as email sentiment analysis (assessing whether emails are positive or negative), reading handwriting or interpreting images. There’s a catch, of course. It’s still not necessarily easy to find a solution to your specific needs. There may be an AI model that does the right thing, but it may be trained on data that’s irrelevant to your business. But it’s certainly far more possible to set up an AI solution than it was till very recently.

FileMaker solutions that work 

Many of the technical sessions at EngageU were run by Claris partners like us – developers who have created their own solutions over the years, just as we have done. Claris’s senior management has emphasised the importance of Claris Partners to their vision of the platform’s future, and it certainly feels like a real partnership.

In their presentations, Claris partners were generous enough to share how they’ve handled particular problems. It’s fascinating to compare notes. Although much of what they say is familiar to us, there are some invaluable nuggets of information which we’ve brought home with us.

Making the right decisions 

We’ve come away confident that Claris is making smart business decisions with its flagship platform. They know they have a fantastic asset and they want it to keep on laying golden eggs. For those of us who use FileMaker every day, this is enormously encouraging. We’ve also come home with new ideas and tools which we can’t wait to put into practice.

As Rhys Smith, our Head of Client Management, puts it:

‘We can’t wait to put into practice some of the tips and tricks we learnt in the sessions. The really great thing about an event like this is that it reminds you what an awesome tool FileMaker is, and it gives you new impetus to use FileMaker to create new solutions for our clients.’

Now we are looking forward to the next big FileMaker conference in Austin, Texas, Claris Engage 2025, in the spring. We’ll report back on our findings.