Contacts: FileMaker Pro 12 Starter Solution

Contacts is one of the built-in FileMaker Pro 12 Starter Solutions. It's one of the 16 pre-made templates that's available for you to start using for your database requirements. It's fully unlocked so you can view and modify the database tables, relationships, layouts, and scripts.

It includes fields to track Names, Titles, Contact Numbers, and Home and Work Addresses. The Web Viewer functionality shows you the Google Map view for the home or work address without opening a separate web browser. Buttons beside the Website and Address fields open your browser to display the website or Google Map directly. A button at the top right corner of the database window sends the information in the record straight to your email program.

The list view contains a couple of more options:

• a drop down list to sort the assets by Contact Name, Company, Job Title, Group, Work City, or Work State.
• buttons to Import and Export records to and from Excel, a text file, or other formats supported by FileMaker Pro 12.
• a label report where you can print contact details to sticker labels.
• a Printable View report showing the current records found in a printer-friendly view.

Label Report on the left, Printable View on the right.

Aside from the professionally designed templates that look great on the desktop version of FileMaker Pro 12 (for Macintosh or Windows), additional layouts for FileMaker Go 12 for iOS and built-in scripts in the Starter Solution automatically show the best layout based on your mobile device (either iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch). Here's what the iPad layout looks like:

Large controls and extra space make it easier to hit buttons and records. Click for a larger view.

The record detail is optimized for both portrait and landscape mode of the iPad. The GPS arrow beside the Address 1 field can look up your location and put that in the Address fields automatically, a cool feature of FileMaker Go 12.

You can work with this starter solution in your iOS device in several ways:

• You can sync it with your iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch using iTunes.
• You can email the file to your iOS device and open it with FileMaker Go 12.
• You can enable FileMaker Network Sharing in FileMaker Pro 12, and open the file remotely using FileMaker Go 12.

To access this Starter Solution, open FileMaker Pro 12 and click File > New From Starter Solution. This works even with the trial version of FileMaker Pro 12. Enjoy!