FileMaker 2023 Is Here!

Yes, you read that right, Claris have released the next version of FileMaker and decided there will be no FileMaker 20 or 21 etc., and have headed straight to "FileMaker 2023".

Since the release of FileMaker 19 in 2020, Claris have made many very important improvements and released them in small doses as incremental “point” updates (19.4, 19.5 etc.)… So to help customers see that year-on-year the product moves forward quite substantially, they’ve decided to use this yearly based naming system. And it’s easy to see when you’re falling behind!

Confused yet? Don’t worry because what excites us most at Digital Fusion is that Claris are continuing the evolution and releases of the FileMaker platform that we use and love. Doubling down on this, we also get a cool new logo:

So What’s New In FileMaker 2023?

For end users there’s not a great deal of visible difference, and that’s not a bad thing in some ways because it means you will continue to work like you always have, without any major changes to disrupt your business operation.

Where it does get interesting, and in some cases relates to a better experience for you as an end user, is all the tweaks made in the “back end” of the platform. Here’re a few that’ve caught our eyes:

• Performance and Stability: One thing that can be said about Claris, they like to keep a stable platform, born from having been around for so long. At the same time they’ve also been steadily improving performance and this release builds on that with some more improvements in key bottleneck areas.

• 500 Bugs: Yes, Claris has “squashed” over 500 bugs since 19.0! That is an astounding number… we’ve encountered a few and are very glad to see them fixed, but who knew there were that many issues, even in an exceptionally well sorted platform like FileMaker.

• FileMaker WebDirect: A section of the FileMaker suite that doesn’t always get the attention, but now it’s been given some major lovin’ in this update: it’s now faster, easier on the server resources, and you can have to 1000 users!

• Linux Hosting: A few years back Claris added Linux servers as one of the options to host your solution. The big gain with Linux Servers is that they are cheaper and leaner to run than Microsoft Windows-based servers. We’re gradually migrating many of our clients across but there are a few technical challenges when you’ve already been set up the Microsoft way.

• Security: This is fundamental to any new release, and security is often number one on the list of things Claris FileMaker are working on. They have support for the newest security and authentication protocols shields your solutions from threats.

That’s really just the tip of the iceberg — you can’t even see some of the most important changes like improvements to how FileMaker manages it’s caches. Rest assured Claris are working very hard to keep FileMaker the best of the low-code, high-productivity platforms available.