Back in 2014 we wrote our most popular article to date about integrating FileMaker with the online email service Mandrill. Recently, Mandrill have announced that they are ceasing their free service and are turning it into a Mailchimp add-on service that will cost a fee.

In this article we detail how you can switch to using SparkPost, a free mail service that is the preferred alternative to Mandrill (even Mandrill themselves recommend it!) We provide a demo file and information on how you can easily make the switch, along with some important things you need to know along the way.

Four years ago we wrote an article about how you can refresh portals and relationships without the need to flush the entire cache. The technique involved using a Cartesian Join. Now, over four years later FileMaker 14 has given us a supported way to do this with the Refresh Portal script step.  In this article we demonstrate how the step can be used by comparing it to the example given in our first article on the subject. We also cover some situations where cartesian join may still be the preferred method of refresh.