A new development tool for Mac users?

I’m in the middle of some retrospective development that reverses selected payments received against invoices to meet a client’s requirements. This is tricky as it involves client, orders, invoices, transactions and cash allocation tables, which I needed to map out visually before embarking on any script work.

For this I’d normally use Concepts on my iPad Pro, or One Note, which is how we share our development notes on current projects using our Microsoft 365 accounts. However, once the work has been completed, I won’t need to do any further editing on the diagram so thought I’d try Freeform that was released for macOS and IOS in December. This has turned out to be very handy, although I could have replicated the work using OneNote.

My initial screenshots of excerpts from the scripts were carried out on my MacBook Pro, as were some ovals highlighting areas to focus on. Then, on the iPad I could jot down notes and scribbles with my Apple Pencil. If configured to do so within iCloud, each device is updated as editing takes place.

Finally, I exported this as a PDF (standard feature), which I’ve attached as an example.

There are a few criticisms: it is very easy to move an object when navigating around the board particularly in iPadOS, although an easy to reach ‘undo’ button reverts this and, as yet, I’ve not managed to do any selecting or moving with the pencil, as it only appears to edit. I haven’t looked for a setting to see if this can be configured and currently have to use my finger for this.

I’ll definitely be using this again and wondered whether anyone else is doing so, and if so, can add any useful tips here?
Payment procedure Example.pdf (1.5 MB)

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Very interesting and helpful information. Thank you for sharing, @AndyHibbs!

Do you use the new ‘transaction’ in these routines?

Hi @Torsten

We haven't gone near transactions as yet. Although a new valued asset, going backwards is less of an issue for us than going forwards. With our design ethos of using as few calculation fields, summary fields, table occurrences, etc. and put the business intelligence in scripts, the missing OnRecordExit (or OnRecordUnload) script trigger remains the missing weapon that would complete our armoury.

However, the main reason for not going near transactions is that FileMaker 19.6 requires us to update our MailIt (and Scribe) plugins. The latest version of MailIt is also needed for our transition to OAuth2 email authentication, as Microsoft and Google disable basic authentication for 3rd party apps. We've between 170 and 200 users on our FileMaker streaming servers and a dozen FileMaker Servers on our cloud infrastructure, hence we're working through them. The rapid release of FM Server 19.6.2 also made us a bit wary of jumping from v19.5.4 too quickly.

Kind regards
Andy

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