Overview of Claris Studio

What is Claris Studio?

Claris Studio is a cloud-based development environment to create rich web experiences with multiple views of your data. The same data you have in Claris Studio is directly available for your FileMaker Pro apps to read and write, giving you a path to easily extend your FileMaker Pro apps to the web. Claris Studio broadens your reach with its ability to publish views of your data to both named users and anonymous users (no sign-in required), and to mobile devices around the world more easily with its responsive views than with a FileMaker Pro app's fixed layouts. With this approach, you get the best of both worlds: complex, highly customized FileMaker Pro apps for internal users in your organization as well as web-based, responsive, and highly scalable Claris Studio experiences that need to be delivered through a web browser to a large number of external users.

How is Claris Studio organized?

Everything in Claris Studio happens within the context of your team. A team consists of its users, their resources (the data and the views used to work with that data), and how the resources are organized and shared with users in hubs.

Team
- Users
- Resources
  - Data
  - Views
- Hubs

Users

In Claris Studio, there are two fundamental types of users:

Named users are those invited to your team and who must sign-in to use views in Claris Studio.
Anonymous users are anyone you've given a view's public sharing link to. They don't sign in.

Named users can have two roles:

Team managers: Can add users to the team, promote members to managers, create and modify views and hubs, and edit data in all views.
Team members: Can view and edit data in views shared with them, but can't create or modify the design of a view.

See About user roles.

In concept, named users in Claris Studio are like accounts in FileMaker. Anonymous users are like guests. But keep in mind that accounts you create in a FileMaker Pro file and the users in a Claris Studio team have nothing to do with each other.

Roles for named users are similar to privilege sets in FileMaker in a limited way, but they don't control what data each user can access (that's the job of hubs). FileMaker privilege sets give you much more fine-grained control over what users can do.

Data

In Claris Studio, data is stored in tables. A table is a named collection of data pertaining to a subject, such as customers or tasks, that consists of a record for each item with discrete data in separate fields (for example, name, address, phone). Think of fields as table columns and records as table rows. A Claris Studio team can have many tables whose data can be used in one or more views.

Claris Studio tables are accessible to your FileMaker Pro apps in much the same way external SQL sources (ESSs) are. In FileMaker Pro, you can add your team's Claris Studio data source to the file, then add a table occurrence for each Claris Studio table you want to use in FileMaker Pro. See Working with a Claris Studio data source in FileMaker Pro Help.

Views

A view is the way to present and work with your data. Each view is associated with a single table at the time you create the view. And you can make multiple views that access data from the same table.

The predefined view types have a primary, baked-in function that requires minimal setup to use—for example, spreadsheet, form, kanban, list-detail, and so on. They’re based on a single table, but can reference data from other tables via drop-down fields whose option values come from another table. Just add fields, arrange objects, set properties, and they’re ready to use.

Certain types of views (currently form, list-detail, and dashboard views) let you add and configure objects that display data and provide users with tools to work with the data. For example:

field objects for individual fields to display and edit data in
spreadsheet objects to show multiple records from a table
chart and summary objects to graphically present insights into your data
buttons you can program to go to another view, add a record, perform a Claris Studio formula, and more

Views are akin to layouts in FileMaker; you place field and other types of objects on them to present data. In FileMaker layouts, you can place objects anywhere and achieve a highly customized look-and-feel, but it can take a while. On the other hand, Claris Studio trades some of that flexibility for views with a clean, modern, responsive look-and-feel that you can still make your own and in a fraction of the time.

Views don't have parts as in FileMaker layouts, but some view types have headers that are like layout header parts.

Views and FileMaker layouts are each associated with a single table.

Hubs

The main page in Claris Studio is Hubs. Think of a hub as an app in Claris Studio—a collection of views and data for a specific purpose and for a specific group of people to use. Team managers create them, add views to them, and decide who to share them with. And since the same view can be added to multiple hubs, you can make the same data available in different ways for different users.

Sharing with team members

To share with specific team members, add views and members to the same hub. When team members sign in, they can see only the hubs that a team manager has added them to.

Sharing with the public

To share a view with anyone you give the sharing link to (no sign-in necessary), turn on public sharing in that view and copy the sharing link. Then paste the link into an email or post it wherever your users will see it. For any type of view other than a form, you can control whether users can only see the data or can edit it as well.

Special hubs

In addition to any hubs team managers create, there are always two special hubs:

Publicly Shared Views: When you publicly share a view, the view is added to the Publicly Shared Views hub. From here, you can copy the sharing link or disable the link.
Archived: For views that are in no other hubs, and therefore are no longer shared with any members or are no longer publicly shared. When you archive a view, this is where it goes. From here, you can delete a view.

In concept, a hub is similar to a FileMaker Pro app. But in Claris Studio hubs, you can easily group views and data in different ways, with some of the same views in multiple hubs, to quickly provide just the right content for each use case. The fact that you can mix and match for different purposes and users in this way makes a hub different from most apps as the center for a specific activity.

Formulas

The Claris Studio calculation and automation engine is driven by strongly-typed, declarative, spreadsheet-like formulas that make common programming tasks easy. These single-line formulas are used throughout Claris Studio. For example:

To define a calculation field's value
To determine whether to show or hide an object in a view
To filter the records shown in a spreadsheet object
To determine whether a field object is read-only

And in many more places.

Whenever the dependencies in a formula change (for example, field references or context variables used in the formula), the formula is recalculated, similar to how a spreadsheet does.

Formulas in Claris Studio are similar to those in FileMaker in some ways (expressions combine to return a value, usually with no side effects outside the formula), but different in others (many of the operators are like those in spreadsheets, and table and field references use dot notation rather than double-colon notation). Most of the differences (like dot notation and autocomplete in the formula editor) make formulas even easier to create in Claris Studio.

Many of the function names are the same, but where they differ, they're more like common spreadsheet function names.

Tables and fields

A table contains one or more records, each with multiple fields that have consistent names across the records. You can reference a table by its name (or for the current table, you can use the thisTable shortcut for the formula editor to automatically fill in its name). Then using dot notation, you can reference a field in that table:

Employees.'First Name'

Notice that field names (and table names as well) that contain spaces are referenced with single quotes around them.

Views and objects

Many types of views contain objects that a formula can reference. You can reference a view by its name (or for the current view, you can use the thisView shortcut for the formula editor to automatically fill in its name). Then using dot notation, you can reference an object in that view:

'Employee List'.spreadsheet

Notice that view names (and object names as well) that contain spaces are referenced with single quotes around them.

Dot notation for field and object references

Though Claris Studio formulas are a lot like those in spreadsheet applications, its dot notation gives you a much easier way to drill down into data structures. For example, when a formula needs to include a field value, you enter the table name (or if it's the current table, use the shortcut thisTable), then a dot (.). The formula editor then shows you a list of all the fields in that table. Continue typing until the field name you want is selected, then press Enter to accept it—all without your fingers leaving the keyboard.

Field references

For example, to enter the First Name field in the current table named Employees, just type the shortcut:

thisTable

Then press Enter. The shortcut is replaced by the full table name:

Employees

Then press . to see the list of fields in that table. Continue typing until the field you want is selected:

Employees.fir

Then press Enter to get the full field name (including any necessary single quotes around names that include spaces). The result is:

Employees.'First Name'

Object references

The process is similar when a formula needs to refer to an object. Start with the shortcut for the current view or subview (named Employee List):

thisView

Then press Enter to replace the shortcut with the view name:

'Employee List'

Press . to see the list of objects in this view. Continue typing until the object name you want is selected

'Employee List'.spre

Then press Enter:

'Employee List'.spreadsheet

From here you can press . again to see what's available to reference for that object. For a spreadsheet object, you can access

columns
recordCount
selectedRow

Then even some of these properties have their own properties you can access—for example, for columns, you can then choose from a list of the columns in that spreadsheet object.

Operators

Some of the operators in Claris Studio formulas are the same as those in FileMaker Pro, but some are different, making them more like what you find in spreadsheet applications. For example, mathematical operators like + and - are the same, but logical operators like AND and OR in FileMaker Pro are && and || in Claris Studio formulas. For a complete list of operators, see Primer for Claris Studio calculations.

Functions

Claris Studio provides a library of functions to use in your formulas. Many of them are very similar or the same as in familiar spreadsheet applications. As you type, autocomplete offers matching function names. When you press Enter for the selected one, a description of the function and its parameters is displayed in the formula editor. For a list of the functions along with the FileMaker Pro functions that are similar, see Primer for Claris Studio calculations.

Variables

In other programming languages, you're probably accustomed to performing a calculation and storing the result in a variable. However, Claris Studio's spreadsheet-like formulas are automatically recalculated as its inputs change, so you may not find as much need for variables. This approach makes it easier to create, understand, and maintain your Claris Studio views.

But in some cases, you'll need to use variables to establish a context in which another formula is calculated. These formulas can be calculated when, for example, a user clicks a button (something that doesn't exist in a spreadsheet). Within the formula for the button action, you can set a view context variable (available only within the view where it was set) or a global context variable (available in any view in the current Claris Studio session). Use the SETVIEWCONTEXT or SETGLOBALCONTEXT function to set the variable. For example:

SETVIEWCONTEXT ({buttonState: true})

The single parameter of the function is a JSON object in which you can set one or more key-value pairs.

Then in another formula, you can access the variable using the context keyword. For example:

context.buttonState

A global and a view context variable can have the same name, but the view context variable takes precedence.

Context variables are similar to FileMaker variables, except they are set using a function and you specify them as a key-value pair. Global context variables are similar to global variables in FileMaker, in that they are accessible from any view in the user's current Claris Studio session.

View context variables are limited to the view they were set in, but FileMaker doesn't have variables limited to a layout (FileMaker local variables are limited to a script).

Error handling

For syntax errors, the formula editor lets you know about them as you type, underlining problem areas in red, which you can hover over to see an error message.

For runtime errors, an error message is presented on screen for users.

To check whether a formula returns an error at runtime, you can use the ISERROR function. Then you can choose to return a different value or error message from the one the formula would otherwise. For example:

IF( ISERROR(1/Spreadsheet.Number), "Too bad. Try again.", 1/Spreadsheet.Number)

returns its own message (the second parameter) if there's an error; otherwise, it returns the result of the division.

Claris Studio's formula editor warns you of syntax errors as you type but doesn't block you from saving your formula. In FileMaker Pro, the Specify Calculation dialogs warn you only when you try to save a formula, and prevents saving until the error is fixed.

The ISERROR function is similar to FileMaker Pro's EvaluationError function for checking whether a formula returns an error.