FileMaker Cloud considerations

Keep in mind the following considerations when setting up FileMaker Cloud.

FileMaker clients

  • FileMaker Cloud Admin Console always shows time in UTC. If you want to use the local time zone, you must include the calculation (the difference between UTC and your time zone) in FileMaker Pro scripts.

  • FileMaker Cloud does not support automatic login to a FileMaker Pro file using a specific account and password. If you upload a file and then change the file options in FileMaker Pro to specify an account and password, the file will not subsequently open in FileMaker Cloud.

  • FileMaker Cloud does not support custom FileMaker WebDirect homepages hosted on the FileMaker WebDirect web server. Custom FileMaker WebDirect homepages can be hosted on an external website, but the list of databases cannot be displayed dynamically.

  • FileMaker Cloud does not support uploading a FileMaker Pro runtime solution.

  • FileMaker Cloud installs the following Linux fonts: Liberation, Baekmuk Batang (Korean), Takao Fonts (Japanese), and WenQuanYi Zen Hei (wqy-zenhei) (Chinese).

Administration

  • FileMaker Cloud version upgrade and FileMaker Data Storage upgrade processes will take a few minutes. No clients can connect to FileMaker Cloud during this downtime. You should notify users to save their work and disconnect all users before initiating these processes.

  • Before you initiate an instance upgrade, you should inform any users who might be signed in and ask them to save their changes and to wait for the process to complete.

  • Your FileMaker Cloud instance is restarted once a day for auto maintenance. You should inform users about the auto maintenance schedule and advise them to save their changes and wait for the process to complete. See Setting the auto maintenance schedule.

  • By default, FileMaker Pro uses secure storage to encrypt container data that is stored externally. FileMaker Cloud uses FileMaker Data Storage for container data that's configured to be stored externally. For files hosted by FileMaker Cloud, you can't transfer data with secure storage to embedded container data. For information about secure storage, see Setting up container fields to store data externally.

  • In FileMaker Cloud, the FileMaker Script Engine (FMSE) can only access the Data/Documents and temp folders. The FMSE is blocked from accessing a localhost port.

Data sources

  • The fmsadmin command line interface (CLI) commands are not supported in FileMaker Cloud. If you use the Perform Script on Server script step with an fmsadmin command in your script, you might see FileMaker error code 812, "Exceeded host's capacity."

  • You cannot establish an ODBC connection if the source name contains extended ASCII characters.

  • When you configure an ODBC source with the Microsoft SQL Server driver and a non-default port, you must append the port number to the server IP address (for example: 52.37.11.97,1999).