FileMaker Server Release Notes

Version 20.3.1

New features and enhancements

• To improve performance, the database engine now caches relationships to evaluate dependencies.

• The user login process that checks whether an account is enabled has now been cached to optimize login performance.

• Secure connection tunneling can now be enabled over port 443 instead of port 5003 for FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server for Linux. HTTPS tunneling can be enabled in the following location:

  • Admin Console: Configuration > FileMaker Clients > HTTPS Tunneling.

  Note:

  • HTTPS tunneling may only be enabled for FileMaker Server for Linux installed on Ubuntu 22.

• OmniOrb has been updated to version 4.3.0.

• FileMaker Server includes optimized memory allocation for relationship changes.

• The Claris FileMaker developer tool (FMDeveloperTool) is a new command-line tool that provides most of the functionalities of Tools > Developer Utilities in FileMaker Pro along with various options for saving an FMP12 file. Functions include:

  • Enabling and removing file encryption

  • Removing admin access

  • Saving a copy (compressed, self-contained) or making a clone

  • Saving a copy as XML

  • Recovering a damaged file

  • Consistency checking a file

  • Enabling Kiosk mode

  FMDeveloperTool is available as a download from Updates and release notes > Developer tools and is included in the FileMaker Server installation in the following default locations:

  • Windows: C:\Program Files\FileMaker\FileMaker Server\Database Server\FMDeveloperTool

  • macOS: /Library/FileMaker Server/Database Server/bin/FMDeveloperTool

  • Linux: /opt/FileMaker/FileMaker Server/Database Server/bin/FMDeveloperTool

Addressed issues

• macOS: The FileMaker Server fmserverd process intermittently quit unexpectedly.

• Windows: Silent installations failed with error 1920 on clean installations.

• Windows: Connecting remotely to Admin Console sometimes resulted in losing connection with a 502 error reported in the browser console for GET adminroleprivileges.

• When using an OAuth 2.0 provider to send email, the email wasn't sent, and an error was returned saying the access token couldn't be generated. This happened when FileMaker Pro tried to send email or when FileMaker Server tried to send email notifications.

• When signed in to Admin Console using an administrator role, FileMaker Server sent websocket packets containing all configured administrator roles and their passwords to front end websites.

• Ubuntu: The FileMaker Server fmserverd process intermittently quit unexpectedly.

• Ubuntu: Saving container data as a PDF caused system memory to be used but not released.

• FileMaker WebDirect: Users could not connect due to a 504 gateway timeout error.

• FileMaker WebDirect: Layout parts intermittently displayed incorrectly when entering Find mode from List View after records were sorted.

• FileMaker WebDirect: In some cases, the CSS for a layout did not completely load, resulting in layout objects not rendering and/or functioning as expected.

• FileMaker Server databases stopped responding or closed unexpectedly when errors appeared in temporary database files.

Version 20.2.1

New features and enhancements

• The FileMaker Admin API and FileMaker Server Admin Console now use the server's local time zone instead of UTC.

Addressed issues

• Incorrect credentials were passed to external data sources when the Perform Script on Server script step was run.

• Multiple FileMaker WebDirect issues were addressed:

  • Layouts froze and the blue loading circle appeared intermittently.

  • Keys were incorrectly and continuously repeated during field data entry.

  • Entered text disappeared after being typed before record commit.

  • Changes did not revert after editing data in a summary field.

Version 20.1.2

Addressed issues

• Attempting to access FileMaker Server Admin Console while Restrict Access was enabled resulted in an unintended connection error.

• Summary fields displayed as empty when they existed on ESS tables and the summary fields were supplemental fields.

• FileMaker script changes were not immediately available to FileMaker Data API clients until the FileMaker Data API session ended.

• Imported administrator role privileges were disabled after importing FileMaker Server 16 settings if the settings were exported after restarting the FileMaker Server 16 service or admin server.

• FileMaker WebDirect: In List View, uncommitted characters in a record failed to commit correctly when the record was scrolled out of view and a commit-triggering action was performed.

• A memory leak in the web publishing engine caused unusually high memory usage and noticeably impacted performance.

• FileMaker WebDirect: Buttons and button bars sometimes failed to revert their hover styles when users moused out from them by scrolling quickly in List View.

• FileMaker WebDirect: Occasional "Communication problem" error occurred in FileMaker WebDirect, accompanied by the message "Invalid JSON from server: 1|X".

• Windows: Performance counters for non-English FileMaker Server installations were missing in the Performance Monitor.

Version 20.1.1

New features and enhancements

Functions

• The ReadQRCode function is now available to use on FileMaker Server on Windows and Ubuntu.

• macOS: The GetLiveText function is now supported in a script run on the server.

Scripts

• The Execute FileMaker Data API script step now supports the dateformats parameter.

• The Docker install script file now supports Ubuntu 22.04 (both amd64 and arm64 architecture versions).

• Scripts run on FileMaker Server now support the Set Error Logging script step.

• The Save as PDF script step is now supported for FileMaker Data API.

• FileMaker Server now creates the scriptEvent.log log file to store script events instead of in the Event.log file. The scriptEvent.log file is visible in Log Viewer and is available as a download in Admin Console. Previous behavior of storing script events in Event.log can be restored using the fmsadmin command line.

Java

• Vaadin has been updated to version 8.18.0. Java has been updated to use version 17.

• Ubuntu: The Java 17 JDK is now installed instead of the JRE to support Java garbage collection.

• In the Admin Console > Connectors > Web Publishing tab under Web Publishing Engine, you can now run the Java garbage collection to free some memory used for web publishing on the Primary Machine. Running garbage collection is also supported as a scheduled script able to be run from both Primary and Secondary machines.

• If a Java version other than Java 17 is installed, you will see a message indicating this and advising to correct it in the following locations:

  • Primary Machine: Admin Console > Connectors > Web Publishing tab under Web Publishing Engine

  • Secondary Machine: Deployment Assistant > Connectors > Web Publishing tab

  If Java is installed in the FileMaker Server > Web Publishing folder you will be prompted to install Java Development Kit 17 (JDK 17) when enabling the Primary Machine's Web Publishing Engine, or when using the "Install JDK" button in the Secondary Machine's Deployment Assistant.

  If Java was installed outside of the FileMaker Server > Web Publishing folder along with the JAVA_HOME variable configured please see the Knowledge Base for further instructions.

Backups

• FileMaker Server Admin Console now provides notifications when consistency checks fail on database backups.

• When the backup is aborted due to an error or by a user, the backup folder is preserved with the prefix "Canceled-" and is limited by the "Number of Backups to Keep" in the backup schedules tab. Reverting to the previous behavior of keeping all backups in "Canceled-" prefixed folders is supported in Admin Console and from the command-line. The following fmsadmin command-line command reverts to the previous behavior:

  fmsadmin set serverprefs KeepCancelledBackups=true

  If canceled backups are retained, the oldest canceled backups are now removed automatically when disk space is low.

OData

• SchemaVersion is now included in the $metadata response. The $schemaversion query option can now be used to determine whether the schema has changed, since a request for a non-current schema version will be rejected.

• OData now supports the PUT/POST/PATCH/DELETE $ref operations and also supports aliases.

xDBC (ODBC / JDBC)

• xDBC connections now use SHA256 instead of MD5 for X509_sign.

• The ODBC drivers now support OpenSSL 3.0.8.

Package updates

• Windows and macOS: OpenSSL has now been updated to version 3.0.8.

• Tomcat has been updated to version 9.0.69.

Preview

• FileMaker Server can now restart automatically after processes quit unexpectedly. This Quick Server Restart reduces the risk of data integrity issues and can be enabled using the fmsadmin command line and FileMaker Admin API.

• Ubuntu: In the Admin Console > Administration > External Authentication tab > Directory Service Settings section, you can now configure Microsoft Active Directory.

General

• Windows: Thumbnails can now be immediately created for PDF files in container fields.

• Windows: The FileMaker Server configuration is now saved when uninstalling, and users can choose to load the previous configuration when prompted during the next installation. A new variable setting, Load Previous Configuration, which preemptively chooses to load the previous configuration, has been added to Assisted Install.txt.

• Ubuntu: In the Admin Console > Connectors > Web Publishing tab, you can now enter a URL for an Nginx load balancer.

• The maximum number of hosted database files per FileMaker Server instance is increased from 125 to 256.

• New client connections are now blocked for databases in the process of being closed.

• In the Admin Console > Notifications pane, email can now be sent using OAuth 2.0 with Microsoft 365 Business or Google Workspace subscriptions. Sending mail with FileMaker WebDirect is also supported using OAuth 2.0.

• FileMaker Server can now be installed on the arm64 architecture version of Ubuntu 22.04, allowing FileMaker Server to be run in Linux VMs and containers on Apple Silicon hardware.

Addressed issues

Installation

• macOS: Empty httpsRoot folders were not removed after an uninstall.

• Windows: The Admin Console desktop shortcut and the sample database were incorrectly removed when performing a repair installation from the Programs and Features control panel.

• The link to the installer log did not appear in the logs folder.

• Installations took longer than expected when a large number of database backup files, remote container files, or hosted files were present from a previous installation.

FileMaker WebDirect

• You were able to enter an inactive FileMaker Account to Sign in with Apple when the Hide My Email option was selected.

• OAuth sign-ins were not possible when accessing a FileMaker WebDirect Custom Homepage and the Filter Databases option was enabled.

• Summary parts would occasionally not display when sorting records and when there were no Body parts on the layout.

• List View objects did not refresh when there were no records in a found set.

• In List View, the Footer part occasionally would not be displayed during the initial layout load if a Navigation part existed.

• A cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability is resolved.

• Interactive container fields failed to load container data when connecting to FileMaker WebDirect through an Nginx load balancer.

FileMaker Admin API

• Using FileMaker Admin API to run a backup schedule with the cloneOnly option failed to return an error when the backup folder path was set as a customized backup path.

• Users were unable to authenticate using FileMaker Admin API when the FileMaker Server license was expired.

• FileMaker Admin API could not simultaneously disable the first additional database folder path and the second additional database folder path or the first additional remote container folder path and the second additional remote container folder path in the same request.

FileMaker Data API

• Table names were missing from responses to FileMaker Data API layout names requests.

• FileMaker Data API returned the incorrect foundCount and returnedCount values for portals when the initial row setting in the portal was greater than the number of the records in portal.

• FileMaker Data API returned incorrect metadata about layouts with repeating fields.

OData

• Some OData query options returned errors if table names or field names contained Japanese characters.

• OData: Line feeds in fields were not returned as "\n" and caused JSON parsing errors.

Commandline

• When resetting a PIN using the fmsadmin resetpw command, using a PIN number starting with zero incorrectly displayed the following error: "PIN must contain four decimal digits only."

• Using the fmsadmin command to restart a process where the process name is misspelled resulted in the server quitting unexpectedly. For example: fmsadmin restart srrver.

Performance

• Heavily using the Set Session Identifier script step to change session names caused the fmshelper process memory to increase unnecessarily.

• FileMaker Server occasionally stopped responding while under heavy load and performing a backup.

Ubuntu

• The GetContainerAttribute function returned a different date format than expected when performed on the server.

• Some trailing characters in fields were not exported when creating CSV files with FileMaker Server.

• Records failed to import from CSV files containing Shift JIS encoded data.

• Fonts rendered differently in PDF output from FileMaker Server on Ubuntu when compared to output on Windows or macOS.

General

• When a schedule failed, the timestamp for the Last Run value incorrectly reflected the last time the schedule completed successfully instead of the last time the schedule failed.

• Summary field content was missing when hosted file data sources were set from the content of a global variable.

• Serial numbers were incorrectly incremented during a reverted transaction and then serial numbers ceased to increment for normal record creation.

• Script triggers such as OnRecordCommit were not executed when called while a script transaction was running.

• Scheduled FileMaker scripts failed to run when a FileMaker scripts folder and a FileMaker script used the same name.

• Indexes created during transactions failed to include deleted records, even if the transactions were reverted.

• Failed email notification attempts were not logged in the Event.log file.

• Adding a secondary machine to a primary machine using an Administrator Role account incorrectly returned the message "Successfully connected" even though the machines were not connected.