
Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.
Appian is one of the most popular low-code platforms on the market today. Founded in 1999, it’s also one of the older players in this space. Perhaps more than any of its competitors, Appian is highly focused on enabling teams to automate manual processes, without necessarily having previous development experience. On top of this, it offers all of the same kinds of functionality that we see with other platforms in this space - like a visual interface builder, data management tools, and other features for speeding up internal app development.
Ronan McQuillan
Jan 2, 2024
Obviously, Google Sheets is great for collaboratively managing all sorts of data. There are big downsides here too though, especially if you’re working at scale. One solution is using a form to enter data into Google Sheets. Today, we’re going to look at exactly how you can do this in Budibase. There are a bunch of other ways you could do this too, of course. We’re biased, but we think Budibase is the best option.
Ronan McQuillan
Jan 1, 2024
There are countless situations where you might need to integrate multiple databases. This might be necessary for a particular app project. Providing more centralized and efficient access to information could also be a goal in itself. However, accomplishing this can be a challenge, especially for inexperienced developers. Today we’re going to look at two methods key methods for integrating databases, as well as how Budibase can make life easier along the way.
Ronan McQuillan
Dec 22, 2023
We love to hate spreadsheets. They’re everywhere. We use Excel for everything from planning our vacations and weddings, to managing inventories, payroll, and just about any other business process under the sun. But, like any blunt instrument, spreadsheets are almost the most elegant solution. Today, we’re going to look at a better way to manage data, calculations, and workflows. That is, how to make an app from Excel spreadsheets. You see, spreadsheets offer a huge amount of flexibility - there’s a reason why they’re so ubiquitous.
Ronan McQuillan
Dec 21, 2023
Quickbase is one of many tools on the market today that seeks to give teams a single platform for unifying data, managing internal processes, and automating menial tasks. This reflects a huge problem that’s faced by almost every business today. Companies have never relied on data more. At the same time, data assets are dispersed, siloed, and uncoordinated. Therefore, centralization offers huge potential for efficiency savings, improving accuracy, facilitating collaboration, providing oversight, and more.
Ronan McQuillan
Dec 12, 2023
When Airtable launched in 2012, it was a real innovation. Spreadsheets hadn’t changed much in several decades. So, the power to add interfaces, automations, advanced in-line components, and external data syncing on top of this was huge. Today, Airtable has upwards of 300,000 users - including some of the world’s biggest companies. But, despite Airtable’s popularity, it’s not necessarily the ideal solution for every use case. Today, we’re exploring some of the other tools that teams can use to collaborate on data and manage internal processes, with our roundup of Airtable alternatives.
Ronan McQuillan
Dec 6, 2023
The humble table is the core of almost any data-centric app interface. Table UI design is central to how your users find, view, and interact with all kinds of information. With such a fundamental role in your tools, the design of your tables and the screens that contain them can have an outsized impact on your overall user experiences. Today, we’re going to look at some of the top ways you can design your tables for maximum efficiency, usability, and effectiveness.
Ronan McQuillan
Nov 27, 2023
Manufacturing dashboards offer a real-time snapshot of the state of your production processes. The goal is to provide decision-makers with a fast, easy way to access KPIs and other important insights. Crucially, this replaces the need to manually crunch numbers each time you need the figures in question. Any time we set out to build dashboards, the biggest challenge is getting all of the different data that we need into one location, formatted compatibly.
Ronan McQuillan
Nov 10, 2023