Org Charts in FileMaker Pro

I recently saw an article about creating Org Charts from FileMaker in OmniGraffle. OmniGraffle is a great program, but it is Mac-only and costs money. I thought to myself: “Myself, I says, I could probably figure out how to do this for free!” So I proceeded to spend way too long (six hours or more) making this work, using the Google Chart API Javascript library to generate a decent looking Org Chart right in FileMaker Pro. 

Then to make it more useful, I figured out how to use FileMaker 16’s fmpurl script capabilites to do call backs into FileMaker Pro.

Download Demo 

The Org Chart View

This is what the Org Chart looks like in a Web Viewer inside FileMaker. Note that the Employee’s Role is a clickable link.

fmpurl Call Back to Look Up an Employee’s Record

Using the fmpurl technology, clicking on a link in the Web Viewer allows us to do a call back into FileMaker and look up the Employee’s record. It is displayed here in a FileMaker Card window.

Employee List View

This screen is where you can do data entry on the corporation’s employees.

Adding a New Employee

Setting up the HTML Template in Settings

If you have a standard web page design to conform with, you can edit this HTML template. It is important to not change two items in this Global field, the <<DATAGOESHERE>> and <<ORGNAMEGOESHERE>> are merge variables that get replaced by data from the tables.

Save as HTML file

On the Org Chart layout is a button for exporting the employee Org Chart to an HTML page. This routine clears the FileMaker fmpurl call backs and simply formats the Employee Roll as colored text.

Email or Save a PDF version of the Org Chart

Email a PDF version of Org Chart

You may have to adapt the Print Setup dialog to get the PDF for your organization to fit. Note that the document is cut off a bit in this view.

Security Settings – Allow fmpurlscripts To Run in the Appropriate Privilege Sets

In order to run the fmpurl scripts in your database, you need to turn on the fmpurlscript Extended Privileges for the various Privilege Sets that will be using this technique.