FileMaker 2025

FileMaker 2025 Arrives!

FileMaker 2025 was recently released, and we are pleased to say that there are a number of features that are quite user-oriented which I'd like to highlight.

(There are plenty of others talking about the developer oriented stuff too of course such a Soliant's very thorough piece on this new version.)

The following features are ones that we think that you as our clients will find interesting and hopefully result in either a better experience or discussions about how they can be used better in your business/organisation.

FileMaker 2025 = FileMaker v22.0

We will start with a quick side note. As with the last two releases of FileMaker, Claris has done a good job of confusing everybody with their release numbering. As much as this article is on FileMaker 2025, the technical version number is FileMaker v22, and that’s likely the numbering you will hear from your developer. It seems the marketing and tech departments at Claris can’t get together to decide on a less confusing path. For the remainder of this post, we will refer to things as v22, v21, etc.

Upgrade Now?

Next up, the question we get a lot when new versions are released: when should we upgrade? Our suggestion is that you hold off for a month or two, let the dust settle, and let them get any bugs ironed out. We typically see Claris release one or two point updates (e.g., FileMaker v22.0.1) in the first month or two post-release, taking into account anything that needs fixing.

Saying that, if you are one of those people who feels the urge, if you do upgrade FileMaker Pro to v22, you can still connect to FileMaker Server v21.0 but not older versions of FileMaker Server.

Keep in touch with your developer; they can give you guidance on when it’s right to upgrade.

Onto the features that might appeal or be of interest…

AI Capabilities

AI is the big news in this new release of FileMaker. There have been AI features in v20 and v21, but with v22 we are taking the next big leap. The three major improvements are:

• LLM integration — the ability to use AI language models (LLMs) directly in FileMaker scripts
• Vector search — this gives us the ability to search on “meaning” from both data and images.
• Natural Language Query — the ability to ask questions of your database in plain language

To help understand the value of these, here are some very simple use cases where you can imagine things in action in your own solution:

Extract meaning from PDFs.

Let’s say you have PDFs in your database, such as meeting notes, documentation, contracts, invoices, purchase orders, etc. We can now feed these to a language model, which in turn allows you to ask questions about the information and data in the PDFs.

Searching images by description

You spend a lot of time out in the field collecting data and taking photos via FileMaker Go on your iPhone or iPad. You may visit the same site 6-7 times over the space of a year, and you want to be able to search for all images taken over those 6-7 visits.

As with PDFs, FileMaker can now catalogue the “meaning” of those images—i.e., extract a description of the image. This means you can search through the images based on descriptions of what you’re looking for.

Automate customer support

One of your clients has a question; they send it to you via email, where it gets parsed into your FileMaker solution as a query. With the use of AI, we can identify that client and potentially answer that question without the need for human input.

For example, a client wants to know what stage their job is at. They email in, FileMaker picks this up, identifies the customer, looks into their job tracking area, identifies where the job is at, creates an email, and sends this back to the client. This is a very simplistic example, and there are likely to be ‘checks and balances’ along the way, but it demonstrates where you can get better efficiency.

Let's conclude our discussion about AI and FileMaker

Security around the use of AI is paramount both for yourselves, Digital Fusion, and FileMaker. With the current release of FileMaker, we now have more options from both the commercial providers such as OpenAI, Cohere, and Anthropic, but if they don’t suit, then we can use a local LLM on a server of your own so that data isn’t being shared out in any shape or form.

Enhancements

As much as AI is the hot topic, there are some other points that we think might be of interest:

FileMaker WebDirect — For those users of WebDirect, we are now pleased to say that Claris has somewhat resolved the issue of using the back button. Now when you click the back button, you will get a warning box that asks if you want to leave the site. This is a great addition, as we have been putting ‘workarounds’ into our solutions for the last few years.

New look on Mac — If you are a Mac user, you will notice that there is a new look when you upgrade to FileMaker Pro 22. For Windows users, don’t fret; this is really just a reshuffle of how a few things look. We are hoping they will include this same look for you shortly.

OData API — Everyone now should know what an API is and what it does, but for those that are still a little confused, it’s the ‘pipe’ that runs between two pieces of software to allow for sharing of data. Not all APIs are created equal; sometimes the ‘pipe’ is very thin and restricts the flow of data.

The good news is Claris is now moving ahead with the OData API being its preferred. This means we can connect to more pieces of software and do it better. Connected software/applications are the future, so we are excited by what's possible.

One side note: Claris will deprecate the Data API at some point (we expect it to be a few years off). This will mean that at some point we may need to get into your solution and do a bit of switching about, but we will be in touch if/when that happens.