New and Updated AI Functions

Claris continues to enhance their AI toolbox, adding a slew of new script steps and functions to allow for more flexibility and ease of access that AI models have to offer. While we will be giving a brief overview of all the new artificial intelligence features (because there is so much ground to cover), we will also be going into much more detail on these items in another blog post, so please stay tuned!

(Please note that these features all require an account with an AI platform like OpenAI or a custom AI space to function.)

Generate Response From Model

Generate Response From Model is a new script step that allows you to send prompts to one of Claris’s predetermined AI services (OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere ) or your very own custom-defined one. At the base level, this script step enables you to communicate with your standard chatbot. It also allows for saving and sending chat history, granting the AI service more context to your conversation. Additionally for the more adventurous, this function also supports agentic operations, which allows your AI to perform branching actions. All said and done, this script step dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for developers to implement standard AI functions into your FileMaker system.

Perform Find by Natural Language

This new script step translates a written prompt of text into a FileMaker-readable find request by leveraging AI tools. A prompt such as “give me all a list of items that cost over $10”, will be translated into a find request of “>10” inside the “cost” field, and then proceed to perform the find. This works by sending the schema of the fields on the current layout to the AI service, which does its best job of trying to set up the right query for the right fields.  

Perform SQL Query by Natural Language

People who have been playing around with AI tools in FileMaker might already be familiar with the idea of having AI write SQL calls to perform queries. Because SQL is a much more standardized notation of querying data, it is much easier for AI services to write an accurate SQL statement than, say, a FileMaker find request. The idea behind this new script step is essentially a way of simplifying this process, allowing an AI service to translate a prompt into an SQL statement and giving you the option to perform the SQL call outright! This gives developers and users alike the ability to perform FileMaker functions with natural language without the complicated setup previously needed for it to be implemented.

MacOS UI Facelift

Moving away from the new AI features, the macOS version of the Claris FileMaker Pro app got a facelift! (Sorry, Windows users!) You will notice that the main landing screen is different, as well as many of the other icons available in the status toolbar and inspector. We recommend looking around and familiarizing yourself with the new UI. Do you like the new refreshed feel?

Collapsable Script Steps

To gain some parity with some contemporary IDEs, Claris has introduced collapsible script steps in the script workspace! This means that script steps that come in pairs (namely: If/End If, Loop/End Loop, and Open Transaction/Commit Transaction) can be collapsed and expanded with little green arrows next to the script step number in the script workspace. This allows for a lot more glanceability in code, removing the need to screen through steps that you know are not relevant to what you are currently working on in the script workspace.

GetTextFromPDF()

This new function allows users to pass a .pdf file in a container field to extract the text from within the document. This allows for easier searching of container fields for specific keywords, or even expands the possibility of mass offloading text from .pdf files to an AI service to scrape for specific information.

GetRecordIDsFromFoundSet() and GoToListOfRecords

This is a combination of a new function and a new script step that complement one another very well. The GetRecordIDsFromFoundSet() function, like its name implies, gives you a list of all internal record IDs from the found set as if generated from the Get (RecordID) function. The GoToListOfRecords script step, however, lets you pass one or more internal Record IDs and a layout, and will navigate to that layout with a found set of those matching records. This will make it a lot easier to programmatically pass around found sets, and to navigate to them.

GetFieldsOnLayout()

The new GetFieldsOnLayout() function allows you to specify a layout name and returns all the fields placed on that layout in JSON format. This allows developers to programmatically see if a field is on a layout or not, which some processes could possibly rely on.

Antlr4 Upgrade

This Claris FileMaker version is also lumped together with an Antlr (Another Tool for Language Recognition) upgrade, taking it to Antlr4. With this upgrade to Antlr4, some SQL parsing abilities as well as OData and ODBC/JDBC sharing features may be affected, so if you use any of these features, please check to see if everything is still working as expected after the upgrade. However, you also gain access to the SQL functions INTERVAL and FETCH NEXT in this newest update, as well as the ability to rename tables using SQL calls.

More Features

• The custom functions menu now has folders to help with organization.

• The new JSONParse() function greatly increases JSON efficiency.

• You can now add and remove objects to groups individually.

• There is now a place to add comments to tables in the Manage Database dialog.

• Claris Studio can now display FileMaker data hosted on a FileMaker 2025 server.

• The Manage Database dialog will now display what data type a calculation field is set to (e.g. Number, Text, Date, etc)

• New system tables: FileMaker_ValueLists and FileMaker_ValueList_X, where X is a value list name, which you can target with SQL.

Conclusion

With the addition of all these new tools and features to the FileMaker platform, one can only imagine the enhancements you can make to your FileMaker solution. If you are interested in learning more or implementing any of these new features from the Claris FileMaker Pro 2025 update, please contact us to start a conversation!