BrilliantHub Starter is an unlocked and editable business management starter solution that you can use to begin building a custom solution using Claris FileMaker.

For the do-it-yourself developer, BrilliantHub Starter is a great foundation, allowing you build your own custom solution to use as your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tool.

BrilliantHub Starter is built on a solid foundation using developer best practices honed over the last 30+ years of building FileMaker solutions. Taking full advantage of new features available in the latest versions of FileMaker, it’s powerful yet easy to modify. Every development choice was made to meet the goals of providing the best starter solution available today. For example:

  • Plainly named tables, fields and scripts.
  • Relationship graph built using the best practice anchor-buoy method.
  • Card windows are used for the contact selector.
  • Script parameter passing utilizes native JSON functions.
  • Well organized themes and styles via BrilliantTheme
  • Set up for BrilliantFlows and BrilliantConnect, making integrations easier.

You can use BrilliantHub Starter as-is and customize it yourself, or you can work with us to customize it for you. If you want to add complex functionality or integrations, you can upgrade to BrilliantHub Pro in the future, while still retaining all your data. With more than 10,000 hours invested in its development (~$2 million in R&D), BrilliantHub Pro is a great solution for businesses and organizations of all sizes.

If you decide you do want to upgrade to Pro in the future, fields and tables are named in a similar way in both Starter and Pro, helping to create a smooth upgrade.

BrilliantHub Starter’s UI design is elegant, modern, and easy to use. Buttons are easily discoverable in blue for navigation and grey buttons are used for everything else. Themes and styles are identical to those in BrilliantHub Pro, so that even layout elements can be moved to a future BrilliantHub Pro solution if desired.

Key modules and features of BrilliantHub Starter include:

  • Dashboard
  • Contacts
  • Invoices
  • Products
  • Calendar
  • Preferences

The data model is designed for simplicity and flexibility. Some examples:

  • Accounts, Employees, Clients, People, and other common tables are combined into a single Contacts table so that components can be reused and applied consistently throughout the solution.
  • If you add a module for sending messages via Slack, any Contact in the database can utilize it without building an integration for each separate entity.
  • For simplicity, estimates are handled via an invoice in Quote status rather than requiring 2 additional tables and many additional layouts.
  • When building BrilliantHub, one of our goals was to “let FileMaker be FileMaker.” We’ve not attempted to reinvent the things that come built in — where FileMaker provides a built-in toolbar, we allow access to it.

We have not included complex InsertFromUrl (aka cURL) calls and API integration technologies in BrilliantHub Starter because they are not required when you pair the app with BrilliantConnect or BrilliantFlows. JSON and cURL commands can be complex and don’t insulate you from the constantly changing APIs of web services. Using BrilliantConnect allows you to connect to the web services using straight-forward FileMaker script steps.

We have several types of industries actively using BrilliantHub, and have customized BrilliantHub for each of them, including: Manufacturing, Creative Services, Service Industries, and Art Galleries, to name a few. Having already customized BrilliantHub for these industries means we have a strong head start in understanding the types of customizations and features you’ll need.

For someone new to FileMaker, we believe that BrilliantHub Starter is a great place to start. It’s simple, clean, organized, and understandable, helping you to be successful. And, unlike other solutions, it has a clear and efficient upgrade path to BrilliantHub Pro, our enterprise FileMaker business solution.

BrilliantHub Starter currently being redeveloped and redesigned

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