Emily,
I was formerly a data conversion specialist with Gallery Systems, and worked on a number of conversions, including several where the source data was in FileMaker Pro. FileMaker Pro can be either an amazingly simple or incredibly complex conversion, depending upon how your tables were setup.
Here are some things that can help you have a successful conversion:
FileMaker is a platform for building custom databases - so your conversion specialist won't be able to use existing system knowledge. You will need to bring as much knowledge about the database structure to the table as possible. Sometimes, that means finding a superb recordset and taking screenshots of those records in the forms that you use, so that the conversion specialist can understand how fields are contextualized together.
Pay attention to fields that are free-text in your FileMaker db, but will become drop-down lists or another authority in TMS (or Embark). For instance, if you have a free text field for "Artist Name", you may want to try standardizing the names "Claude Monet", "Claude Oscar Monet", "Claude-Oscar Monet" into a single form - while all of these are correct, unaddressed they will result in three constituent records instead of one.
Dates are another area that can cause problems. If someone entered "11-2-5201" instead of "11-25-2016" for an accession date, these can prevent your data from being ingested into SQL Server. These are often typographic errors, and easy to fix.
If you are using repeating fields or diacritics, pay careful attention to these during the conversion. FileMaker handles these fields differently, and while they shouldn't be a major problem, they need to be handled appropriately.
If you have any direct questions, or ever want to chat, feel free to contact me off list. ~Chad
