Web Portal Wizard – Web Reporting for FileMaker – Review

Web Portal Wizard makes web based reports from FileMaker databases easy.

Theres’s a newly released product called the Web Portal Wizard, and it is a powerful, easy way to safely share data from FileMaker to a web browser (these are called Web Reports).

Watch the almost nine minute video at the end of this post to get a taste of what it can do. And know that the claims are not exaggerated. I spent one hour working with it, and at the end had a basic web page that securely shared data over SSL from FileMaker, including adding, modifying, and deleting data, along with the ability to print, save as a PDF or Excel, and to export data.

Check it out – I did this in about an hour:

https://youtu.be/ZMUcLlsX6ao

The Web Portal Wizard is Easy to Set Up

The Web Portal Wizard is two different databases. The first one is called the Web Portal Wizard, and the other is the Resources file.

The Web Portal Wizard walks the user through the process of connecting to a FileMaker 18 (or greater) server. There are very well made instructional videos, as well

The FileMaker server must meet two requirements in order to be used:

  • The server must have a properly installed SSL Certificate
  • The FileMaker Data API must be enabled (this is literally toggling a button in FMS Admin)

Luckily, I had an AWS server with both attributes. And I had a very basic Account/Contact database installed there with, of all things, a basic Better Forms web interface. I reviewed FM Better Forms almost two years ago, and it is a fantastic solution for a (fairly) easy, extremely powerful way to integrate FileMaker to the web (note: FileMaker Pro Gurus develops web solutions using FM Better Forms for clients).

The purpose of this post is not to compare these two products. That will have to wait for a (possible) future post. Both products do their job very well and both take advantage of FileMaker’s Custom Web Publishing interface, which allows connections without buying licenses for each user.

  • FM Better Forms is a powerful, highly scalable web front end driven by a FileMaker database: all of the business logic takes place in FileMaker with a fully modern and responsive web interface.
  • Web Portal Wizard is a very easy and powerful way to share FileMaker data via a web browser to clients. It does not allow the user to trigger scripts remotely or incorporate other logic. Web Portal Wizard’s strength is its fast setup and easy modification., combined with powerful output options: PDF, Excel, and printing.

Pricing

Web Portal Wizard sells for $74.99. That includes an unlimited number of web user and an unlimited number of web reports. You’ll need your own FileMaker servers, but it’s pretty easy to do.

Add monthly hosting for $7, which includes an unlimited number of web user and an unlimited number of web reports.

Add 5 hours of support (total of $824.99) to get things going (highly recommended for those not comfortable integrating with the web).

Recommendation: Buy

It’s too good a product not to buy and is very reasonably priced. I just purchased it.

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