Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.
Designing admin UIs is a part of the app development process that’s quite easy to overlook. In fact, in many cases, it’s a bit of an afterthought. This is a big mistake. Providing sleek, efficient user experiences for your app’s admin functions is just as important as it is with any other functionality. Today, we’re drilling into some concrete strategies that you can use to craft effective, professional app screens for your admin users.
Ronan McQuillan
Sep 29, 2023
For a lot of businesses, finding a suitable Microsoft Access alternative for their needs is becoming pretty urgent. See, Access has been rumored to be reaching its end-of-life for a few years now - although Microsoft hasn’t unveiled any formal plans for a retirement party. Even so, in 2023, Access feels like a bit of a product of a bygone era. Not to be outwardly critical, but in the age of cloud computing, low-code development, DBaaS tools, and even AI, it’s tough for legacy platforms to keep up with the needs of modern businesses.
Ronan McQuillan
Sep 29, 2023
Transactional databases are some of the most foundational and ubiquitous tools around. In fact, for countless IT teams, this is the default model for data storage. But, in recent years, the size, scale, and complexity of businesses’ data assets have exploded. In turn, it’s become more important than ever to choose the right data management tools for specific applications and use cases. This means that we need to have a realistic, clear grasp of the respective pros, cons, and core tenets of different models - including transactional systems.
Ronan McQuillan
Sep 29, 2023
Building PoC for software development projects is an effective way to validate our ideas without going to the effort and expense of building the real thing. Not only does this enable us to prove that our approach to the problem at hand is viable - it also gives us a valuable opportunity to gather real-world input from potential users, developers, target audiences, and other business stakeholders. But, achieving this can be more challenging than you might think.
Ronan McQuillan
Sep 29, 2023
Sales dashboards are fundamental to how we track, monitor, and plan around our incoming revenues. Businesses today sit on mountains of data. But, when it comes to sales reporting - decision-makers often only need high-level metrics. So, the challenge is cutting through the noise and providing clear, actionable insights to the right people. Today, we’re exploring how Budibase can be used to build complex, custom solutions with all sorts of pre-existing business data.
Ronan McQuillan
Sep 19, 2023
Managing requests and approvals is a fundamental step within all kinds of business processes. In fact, almost any internal task is going to require some element of sign-off or vetting. The tricky thing is that this is often tightly aligned to very specific policies and procedures within a particular organization. In other words, the specific steps required to gain approval - and the logic underpinning these - will vary across different businesses and individual tasks.
Ronan McQuillan
Sep 19, 2023
The early stages of application development are critical. A huge part of this is gathering early user feedback. Today we’re comparing two approaches as we explore the differences between building a prototype vs an MVP. See, even the most basic application development projects can be expensive, drawn-out processes. From initial ideation, it could be months or even years before the final product is live and in the hands of users.
Ronan McQuillan
Sep 19, 2023
Process applications are kind of the unsung heroes of digital transformation. These tools are the backbone of countless efficient, streamlined internal business processes. Despite this, they’re rarely at the top of anyone’s list of priorities. The reality for on-the-ground IT teams is that bigger development projects and maintenance needs for existing solutions often take priority. So, even though they have such a huge role to play in optimizing internal workflows, projects to create new process applications often go unrealized.
Ronan McQuillan
Sep 19, 2023