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‘Ace of Charts’ Workshop

The Art and Science of adding dynamic data visualization (charts, graphs and indicators) to your FileMaker Pro solutions

Best for...
  • In-house developers* responding to management's requests
  • Independent developers* wishing to provide additional functionality
  • Anyone* who currently exports to any other application for charting

    *attendees should be comfortable with editing FileMaker Pro layouts, creating calculation formulas, and relating table occurrences

Course Length & Price

1 day (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.); $495
Note that enrollment is limited by class size, so register early to reserve your seat.

“It was a great investment and use of my time. Having some FileMaker experience using charts allowed me to follow along easily and has greatly expanded my knowledge and usability. I picked up some tricks and am working on a dashboard layout that will show various performance indicators. The short story is [your class] was a great value and I'll be watching for more in the future.” —Dan Gardner

Schedule of Upcoming Classes

Classroom training is currently on hiatus. Please call us at 800.946.5433 about on-site custom training.

Classroom Locations

For location details, please view our directions page.

Course Description

‘Ace of Charts’ is an eye-opening examination of the means and mechanisms for adding attractive, useful charts & graphs to existing FileMaker solutions. Learn to make embedded dynamic graphs that update on-demand or automatically. You'll leave this class with an understanding of the four distinctly different techniques for implementing charting in FileMaker Pro, along with working example files for each that you can adapt for your own solutions. If you are exporting data from FileMaker to another application just to produce a graph, then this is the class for you!

Course Content

Following are the specific topics covered in this class:

Approaches to Charting in FileMaker

Four different methods for constructing charts in FileMaker are covered, to provide deployment options appropriate for any organization.

  • The built-in chart layout object introduced in FileMaker Pro 11
  • The Web Viewer and HTML/Flash/CSS/JavaScript (FusionCharts, FusionMaps, Maani, Google Charts API)
  • Plug-ins and container fields (xmCHART from x2max, 360Works Chart)
  • FileMaker non-chart indicator methods (merge variables, conditional formatting, repeating fields) that still have a place in providing visual information and feedback

    The capabilities and pros & cons of each approach will be explained and demonstrated.
Charting Fundamentals
  • Why charts—types of needs addressed with charts:
    • - Ranking
    • - Correlation
    • - Deviation/Variance
    • - Time Series
    • - Portion of Whole
    • - Categorical Comparison
    • - Period-to-period Comparison
  • Choosing the right chart type for the data
  • Chart Parts & Usage
  • Common Charting Mistakes
Preparing FileMaker for Chart Integration
  • Normalizing Data
  • Creating Groups & Summaries
  • Cross-tab Reporting
  • Just Enough Statistics to Be Dangerous
  • Building for Reusability
  • Data Separation Options
  • Building in User Preferences
Implementation Methods
Best Practices
  • Charting to Identify Exceptions
  • Charting to Discover Trends
  • Design Patterns for Optimum User Experience
  • Repurposing Charts—Printing vs. Single-User Screen vs. Presentation Screen

Instructor

Lee Lukehart is a veteran FileMaker trainer and has earned every developer certification that FileMaker has offered (for versions 18/17/16/15/14/13/12/11/10/9/8/7). He authored the popular white paper on FileMaker Pro Charting and the TechNet webinar on advanced charting techniques. His students appreciate his attentive manner and patience in the classroom, and they say his responsive training style makes learning new skills fast and fun.

And on a good day he can make a trend line with only 1 data point. ;-)