Music Monitor is a system with several parts. When you hear that there is an update, you may be unclear about what is being updated. This article is here to help explain it.

The Music Monitor product is a database system. To open it as a music administrator, you need the FileMaker Pro software installed on your computer, in the same way that you need the Microsoft Excel software to open an Excel spreadsheet file.

To share access to the file among multiple users, you also need FileMaker Server to be installed on a server.

Each of these three items needs to be kept up to date, but you don't have to do all of them yourself.

Update Performed By: The Music Monitor team

This update gives you the new features that we have developed since your last update. You don't need to do anything at your end, except for those schools that host your own file who need to give us access to carry out the update.

Currently, all users have an update once per year, in line with your annual renewal. On our roadmap is a quicker and easier update process for customers whose file is hosted on our server, allowing us to update your system more often and giving you access to the new features sooner after they're developed. We will announce when we achieve this.

Update Performed By: You, if you use FileMaker Pro for your access to Music Monitor.

If your computer gives you an alert telling you that a new version of FileMaker is available, that relates to the FileMaker Pro software that music administrators use to open the Music Monitor system.

That software is made by Claris. Your Music Monitor subscription includes the necessary licence to download, install, use, and update this software. From version 21 onward, the application's inbuilt updater is suitable to manage all updates to this software. To update from an older version, you will need to uninstall and reinstall.

New features in the Music Monitor system take advantage of technology that is made available in new versions of FileMaker. Users who continue to use an older version of FileMaker Pro may find that some of the newest features aren't available, or even that some pre-existing features don't work entirely as expected. If incompatibility between Music Monitor and a recent version of FileMaker causes significant loss of functionality, we view this as a bug and will implement a fix, but we don't guarantee backwards compatibility for all versions of FileMaker.

You must also consider compatibility between FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server - see below.

Update Performed By: Whoever manages your server

The system that manages shared access to your Music Monitor system is FileMaker Server and it needs to be kept up to date as well.

FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server are compatible if their version numbers differ by no more than 1. So FileMaker Pro v21 is compatible with FileMaker Server 20 - 22, and vice versa.

If we host your file, we will manage the updates of this server, always ensuring it runs a recent and stable version of FileMaker server, so recent versions of FileMaker Pro will always be compatible with your server version. We will advise you to update your FileMaker Pro installation to a minimum version number when we are planning a server upgrade.

If you are self-hosting, you need to manage the server updates with awareness of the version of FileMaker Pro that end users have installed to ensure they remain compatible.

This error can come up when trying to add your Music Monitor file location as a Favourite after installing a new copy of FileMaker Pro. It means your application has failed to find a FileMaker Server application at the host address you used.

If we have emailed you the Host's Internet Address you need to enter, the email system will sometimes recognise the text as a web address and add "http://www." on the front. The address you need to enter should not have this on the front, so remove it if it has.

If that does not resolve the issue, then it is usually either:

This can mean one of two things.

This may be due to a typing error.

Note also, that occasionally a Music Monitor system update involves replacing the core file that holds all the usernames and passwords. We don't have access to copy your existing passwords and put them back into your new file, so we will issue everyone a temporary password when that happens. We will let your IT and music administration team know if your update has involved that change, and what temporary password you should use.

HTTPS Tunneling allows web access to your file with minimal compromise in security, so many schools will opt for it. If you have installed a new copy of FileMaker Pro, you may need to switch on HTTPS Tunneling on your copy of the application.