FileMaker 19 and Siri Shortcuts Part 1: Working with Siri Shortcuts
With support for Siri Shortcuts, you can now have Siri run scripts in your FileMaker apps that are running on FileMaker Go 19.
In order to prepare the file to be accessible to Siri Shortcuts,
you'll need to make a couple of quick modifications first.
Starting with the 'Manage' , 'Security' dialog
you'll select 'Advanced Settings' and then go to 'Extended Privileges' the 'fmurlscript' extended privilege
The 'fmurlscript' extended privilege needs to be turned on for any privilege set
that has an account that is going to be used to access the file on the device.
So essentially this is going to be the privilege set and account that Siri will use to access your scripts.
So in this example, I have one account
that is assigned to the '[Full Access]' privilege set
and I will turn on the 'fmurlscript' for that account.
Next, I'll go under 'Script Workspace'
At this point, I'll have to determine which of the scripts I'm going to donate to Siri.
The process of making a script available to Siri is called a donation.
This process is very easy,
you see here I've got a 'HelloDevice' script
I'm going to select it
and I'm going to do a control click
or a right click on a mouse.
You'll see here that that gives me this option for 'Enable Shortcuts Donation'
And once I turn that on,
I see the icon next to the script name in the script list, and it's ready to go.
At this point, I just need to transfer this file to my device that's running FileMaker Go 19,
or hosted on FileMaker Server,
and log into the file using FileMaker Go 19.
After you've properly configured your FileMaker file, and then chosen the scripts that you want to donate to Siri
Now you can either transfer the file directly to your device, or host it on FileMaker Server
In either case, you'll want to open up that file in FileMaker Go 19.
I'm in a copy of FileMaker Go 19 right now and I've moved the assets 'Siri Device File' locally to my device.
So here I am accessing it
Now, couple of important things here...
Before you even set up a Siri Shortcut, you have to open the file in FileMaker Go 19
in order for it to be, quote on quote, 'seen' in Shortcuts.
The other part is, I have to set this up specifically on my device.
Now if you think about this, Siri Shortcuts is available on your device, or on any other device that's logged into the same Apple ID.
So while I set this shortcut up on this device,
if I want to access it on another phone or an iPad, I'm going to make sure that that device also has access to the same FileMaker file.
But as far as initially setting up the shortcut, I'm ready to go since I've opened up my file at least once on this device.
So I'll go back to my desktop,
I'll choose Siri Shortcuts,
I'll hit the + sign in the upper right hand corner
At this point, I'm going to name my shortcut
and then hit 'Done'.
And now I'll hit 'Add Action'
Select apps
Choose FileMaker Go
and select 'Run FileMaker Go Script'
Now I hit 'File' and I see a list of all the different apps that are on this device
that have at least one script donated to Siri
I'm going to choose 'AssetsSiriDevice'
and select 'script'
Now I see all the scripts that have been donated in that file
And I'm going to choose 'HelloDevice'
I'm going to add another step real quick here,
then I'm going to go back to scripting
and I'm gonna choose...
I'm gonna choose 'Get Device Details'
I'm gonna hold down this option...
and move it above the FileMaker Go one.
And the reason for that is because now I can select 'parameter' in FileMaker Go
and I see that the device name that I grabbed in the first step is now available to my script.
So I can pass the device name to my FileMaker Go app as a parameter that will be run inside the 'HelloDevice' script.
So now I hit 'Done'
and I hit 'Done' again
I see that my shortcut called 'FileMaker Device'
is inside 'My Shortcuts'.
So now we can test this out!
Hey Siri
Run FileMaker device
And now we see that Siri has communicated with the script that's running in 'AssetsSiriDevice'
It also grabbed the name of my device 'iPhone Demo'
and then passed that over to the script as a parameter