Bento

What a nice surprise FileMaker delivered on Tuesday! Of course Bento is only a preview release but after a couple days of use I'm very happy with it. Over the course of the past couple years I've developed a workflow based on Spotlight as a project manager that brings together related iCal tasks, email, contacts, and files. With Leopard this has only gotten better. The only hiccup has been my need to use FileMaker Pro for my invoices. I've created my own fancy invoice template/system with FileMaker Pro and it works very well. But it is a system outside of my workflow. I have to add clients, project jobs, and line items separately. The great thing about Bento is that it may allow me to bring everything under one unified workflow.

First, let me say that Bento is a Leopard only product because it simply would not be possible without the new features of Leopard. With Bento FileMaker has adopted the very slick interface that has become common with many of today's Apple and third party Mac applications: iTunes, iCal, Delicious Library, NetNewsWire, and many others. This is definitely not FileMaker Pro! This is what I would expect from the iWork team, a database to sit alongside of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. It is a perfect compliment to iWork and given the quality of this preview release I would not hesitate to recommend it.

In my couple of days with Bento I've tweaked the "Project" library (in Bento a database or table is referred to as a Library) and the Time Billing Library so that I can use them in conjunction with iCal tasks to track projects and billing. Because the system is using data from iCal and Address Book there's no duplication. Not only that, but I can modify iCal and Address Book data from within Bento. Even better, I can enhance the usefulness of this data by adding new fields in Bento.

As an example, iCal tasks do not include a field for job hours but when I track a task for a paid project I need to track the hours. I normally add this into the task notes field in iCal. When it comes time to create an invoice I gather up my iCal tasks and the lists of hours within the notes fields and transfer them to line items in my FMP invoice database. It works but it is not ideal. With Bento iCal task and event data, as long as the preference is set, is easily viewable within the provided form layout. I've added a field for job hours and this data resides in Bento but is associated with that particular iCal task data. By doing this I can now display and modify my iCal tasks, along with the duration of the task in my Project and Time Billing Libraries.

To put it simply Bento uses the Apple apps and data as a foundation and allows me to build new functionality around them. This is a preview release and there is plenty of room for improvement. As it is now I cannot add any graphic objects such as my logo to the invoice I have set up. Text formatting is a bit limited and the layout is a bit clunky requiring spacer boxes and only allowing one line of text per text box. I'd much prefer a layout engine like the iWork apps that are much more free form. Still, this is an excellent start.

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