Claris FileMaker Maintenance Support Program

Yes, there is a three-month minimum commitment for all plans. This provides time for you to really feel the effect of the dedicated attention.

The Maintenance Support Program user count is based on the number of FileMaker Pro licenses listed on the most recent contract. To begin service under the MSP, we will need to have a copy of your most recent FileMaker Licensing contract. Adding or removing user licenses to a FileMaker contract will reflect on the following month’s MSP charge.

Yes, you can cancel your contract at any time - that is why we bill month-to-month. However, we're confident that you will find value in the program. Yes, you can change your plan tier from Basic to Priority or Platinum at any time.

We will determine if the request requires more than 2 (3 hours for Platinum) hours. We will gather additional information from you to confirm our assessment and then inform you that the request needs to go to the Custom Development department for a quote. The assigned Certified Senior Developer may require additional meeting(s) to fully understand your desired outcome to produce a quote. This time is considered Discovery and Planning and is billable at your discounted hourly rate. Depending on the scope of the request, discovery can take between 3 to 10 hours.

The Maintenance Support Program is a ticket-based system. If you want to meet with a developer, you can request that by submitting a ticket or calling our office and asking for the Maintenance Support coordinator.

The spirit of the Maintenance Support Program is for the small day-to-day fixes, adjustments, etc., to help maintain the functionality and usability of the solution. Breaking up development into 2-hour requests is not only inefficient, but it will require more effort to manage, and the result may not be what was desired since the full scope was not understood.

You will have a secure customer portal to submit, review, prioritize, and/or provide information to the dedicated MSP team to handle your requests. You will also receive email’s from the assigned developer as progress is made.

Every subscriber to the MSP is eligible for a free FileMaker Health Assessment. This service, valued at $2,500, includes looking at areas of stability, performance, security, adaptability, and maintenance. From there, we'll produce a written report with an easy-to-understand letter grade evaluation, along with making recommendations for areas that can be fixed, upgraded, streamlined, or otherwise improved. Most of the time, some fixes fall under the purview of the MSP department, and we can start working on them right away, at no additional cost.

Legacy solutions, built over time and in some cases by many different developers, have a lot of “technical debt” that makes it difficult to complete simple requests in 2 or fewer hours (3 hours for Platinum). Multi-file solutions are also problematic, as the seemingly simple changes require the developer to make them in some or all of the files, plus testing, which will take more than 2 hours of development.

This service is perfect for the in-house developer who needs some assistance with existing development needs, to learn about best practices, and how to overcome development challenges, so you can move forward with development.

Based on what is discovered and recommended in the Health Assessment, we will, over the course of several weeks or months, slowly remove the unstored calculations, errors, warnings, tables with more than 200 fields, tables with over the maximum records, and unreferenced items. We will do our best to clean up the relationship graph, layouts, and script organization for developers to work more efficiently.

The benefits for you include:

• Efficiency: Well-organized information enables developers to work faster and more seamlessly within the solution, ultimately saving you time and effort.
• Performance Improvement: The cleanup may enhance overall performance and user experience. With fewer elements to load, process, or reference, your solution can operate more smoothly.

For complex solutions, or for those Priority & Platinum clients that are submitting a lot of tickets, we will assign a developer who knows the most about your solution and workflow. The mid-level developer will determine what they need to do versus what a junior developer can complete.