Do people need online business application designers
We create an online designer of accounting and reporting systems, which allows you to create a web application without programming. In addition to our product, there are dozens of designers on the market, both from small and medium-sized companies ( Zoho Creator , QuickBase , Caspio , Zengine ), and from giants ( Oracle Application Express , Microsoft PowerApps ).
In this article I want to share thoughts about the problems of online designers of business applications in the Russian market and their possible solutions.
About Database and Business Application Designers
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When the company's business processes and the accompanying accounting and reporting forms change frequently, it is difficult to choose a finished product or service to automate its activities. In the finished product may not be the necessary forms, or have to constantly order improvements from the developers.
It is often easier for business to build the whole process independently than to adapt to a ready-made system. In this case, it is desirable that the process be built, launched into use and debugged by the business users themselves, without programmers.
Mainly due to the simplicity, flexibility and lack of need for programming (but with the availability of VBA), in the 90s and 2000s, millions of accounting and reporting applications were created using Excel and Access. Accounting system can begin with a small application of 3 tables and a pair of forms. In the case of demand by the business, it begins to acquire new functionality. And if it suddenly turns out that the chosen platform does not allow to realize the necessary option, you have to redo everything on another platform / language / CMS.
So Excel and Access are still used, but they are not suitable when you need to add multi-user rights access and a web interface to the accounting system.
Due to the fact that web technologies have reached the required level, now we can observe a boom in the development of online database designers and business applications that allow us to automate our tasks without programming. Consumers of such products can be organizations that have a need for automation, or system integrators who can increase business profitability by creating systems for their counterparties without expensive programmers.
Problem 1: the balance of simplicity and functionality
With seemingly obvious advantages of designers over boxed products and customized development in the context of frequent changes in business processes, dozens of such designers are not popular in Russia. Perhaps the reason is insufficient lighting of products, but it seems to us that it is rather in the product: now the designers are either complex and super-functional, or simple, but not flexible enough.
Problem 2: difficult transition from already used solution to the designer
Users who are accustomed to Excel and Access already know the structure of their tables, know the necessary formulas, they don’t want to manually name the fields and configure roles in the system. The transition from the usual and simple tools to the designers often does not imply the ability to import existing tables and logic into a new tool. Coupled with the complexity of the interface, this problem often becomes blocking.
What a perfect solution might look like.
It seems that the ideal in terms of functionality, the designer of business applications should have:
This functionality allows you to create accounting systems of almost any complexity. How to make such a constructor simple for the user?
As an option - using multistage interfaces when creating and configuring an application:
- First stage: the user can see 2-3 basic parameters;
- Second stage: the user opens all the advanced settings;
- The third step: the opportunity to write your code, if there is no necessary functionality.
Example of stepwise work with table fields:
This approach allows us not to scare away newbies, satisfy inquiries of advanced business analysts, and not lose a client if he needs something that is not in our designer.
I would be happy to discuss in the comments the prospects of designers of business applications.
By the way, you can see our service here: getreport.pro
In this article I want to share thoughts about the problems of online designers of business applications in the Russian market and their possible solutions.
About Database and Business Application Designers
')
When the company's business processes and the accompanying accounting and reporting forms change frequently, it is difficult to choose a finished product or service to automate its activities. In the finished product may not be the necessary forms, or have to constantly order improvements from the developers.
It is often easier for business to build the whole process independently than to adapt to a ready-made system. In this case, it is desirable that the process be built, launched into use and debugged by the business users themselves, without programmers.
Mainly due to the simplicity, flexibility and lack of need for programming (but with the availability of VBA), in the 90s and 2000s, millions of accounting and reporting applications were created using Excel and Access. Accounting system can begin with a small application of 3 tables and a pair of forms. In the case of demand by the business, it begins to acquire new functionality. And if it suddenly turns out that the chosen platform does not allow to realize the necessary option, you have to redo everything on another platform / language / CMS.
So Excel and Access are still used, but they are not suitable when you need to add multi-user rights access and a web interface to the accounting system.
Due to the fact that web technologies have reached the required level, now we can observe a boom in the development of online database designers and business applications that allow us to automate our tasks without programming. Consumers of such products can be organizations that have a need for automation, or system integrators who can increase business profitability by creating systems for their counterparties without expensive programmers.
Problem 1: the balance of simplicity and functionality
With seemingly obvious advantages of designers over boxed products and customized development in the context of frequent changes in business processes, dozens of such designers are not popular in Russia. Perhaps the reason is insufficient lighting of products, but it seems to us that it is rather in the product: now the designers are either complex and super-functional, or simple, but not flexible enough.
Problem 2: difficult transition from already used solution to the designer
Users who are accustomed to Excel and Access already know the structure of their tables, know the necessary formulas, they don’t want to manually name the fields and configure roles in the system. The transition from the usual and simple tools to the designers often does not imply the ability to import existing tables and logic into a new tool. Coupled with the complexity of the interface, this problem often becomes blocking.
What a perfect solution might look like.
It seems that the ideal in terms of functionality, the designer of business applications should have:
- Maximum functionality of accounting forms and tables. In this case, all typical interfaces and accounting forms should be generated automatically - without programming.
- Super flexible system of rights. Permissions for editing and viewing should be given to columns and rows up to a cell in the table.
- The designer of the data filling process. For each record in the database, it should be possible to assign its own filling process.
- The ability to add arbitrary behavior and appearance to any place in the system. You need to be able to add server-side and client-side JavaScript to any element of the system, you can write libraries in C # / Java, there is a REST API.
- Ability to load into the web application old table data with preservation of its structure.
This functionality allows you to create accounting systems of almost any complexity. How to make such a constructor simple for the user?
As an option - using multistage interfaces when creating and configuring an application:
- First stage: the user can see 2-3 basic parameters;
- Second stage: the user opens all the advanced settings;
- The third step: the opportunity to write your code, if there is no necessary functionality.
Example of stepwise work with table fields:
- The first step: the user sets the field name, field type and the sign of the uniqueness of values.
- The second step: the user opens the settings for displaying the field in the table and the edit form, the ability to set the required field depending on the recording status, grouping fields, setting transitions to other tables when clicking on the value in the field.
- The third step: the ability to independently on JavaScript to describe the algorithm for the display and behavior of the field.
This approach allows us not to scare away newbies, satisfy inquiries of advanced business analysts, and not lose a client if he needs something that is not in our designer.
I would be happy to discuss in the comments the prospects of designers of business applications.
By the way, you can see our service here: getreport.pro
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/320652/
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