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Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.

10 Microsoft Access Alternatives for 2024

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

Apr 20, 2024

5 best open source form builder apps (tried and tested)

My name is Joe, and I have been building online forms for the last 10 years of my life. I have developed forms in several different ways; with html5 form builders, with Javascript form builders, to niche React form builders, and more. From my experience, I can conclude that the best open-source form builders make it quick and easy to create beautiful, functional, and accessible forms. Forms are a critical construct of the digital age.

Joe Johnston

Apr 19, 2024

5 best open source low-code platforms (tried and tested)

Low-code and no-code are the latest phenomena to take over our strategy meetings and development chats. These solutions are not new, but the emergence of new technologies and a shift in how we work has accelerated their need within the workplace. The statistics below provide an overview of the scale of the low code market: Forrester states that as much as, 75% of application development uses low-code platforms. Gartner places worldwide low-code market growth at 23% in 2021 According to the market research study published by P&S Intelligence, the global low code market will witness a 31.

Joe Johnston

Apr 5, 2024

How to Build an Employee Portal

Employee portals are some of the most ubiquitous internal tools around. Teams of all sizes in every industry need a secure, efficient way to share information, handle requests, and deliver internal services to employees. Portals offer a unified, centralized platform for interacting with data within internal processes. Today, we’re checking out how Budibase empowers teams to build sleek, professional portals on top of just about any data source. With our open-source, low-code platform, you can output fully functional solutions in a fraction of the time.

Ronan McQuillan

Apr 5, 2024

Top 10 PowerApps Alternatives & Competitors in 2024

Microsoft PowerApps was one of the first modern low-code platforms when it launched in 2015. The goal was to provide large businesses with a new, faster way to output custom applications. Today, it’s used by developers and other IT professionals alike to simplify the process of building custom software. Thousands of companies in all kinds of industries choose PowerApps for internal development projects. However, that doesn’t mean that PowerApps is the right fit for every organization.

Ronan McQuillan

Apr 5, 2024

How to Build a Franchise Portal

Franchise businesses face some unique challenges. A huge part of this is gathering and managing information from independent locations. Without an effective, centralized way to manage data, it’s almost impossible to achieve optimal performance or even full visibility across the business. Today, we’re exploring one solution to this issue. We’re building a secure franchise portal for individual stores to share information with head office - and vice versa. Specifically, we’re showing off how we can use Budibase to build fully functioning custom portals on top of just about any data source - with minimal custom code.

Ronan McQuillan

Apr 3, 2024

How to Build a B2B Customer Portal in 6 Steps

Managing B2B sales is quite a bit different from selling to the public. This can present challenges, including managing communications, securely hosting product information, and effectively handling inventories and fulfillment. Today, we’re looking at one solution - building a custom B2B portal. Most often, business customers don’t have the same priorities as typical consumers. Above all, they want a fast, secure way to order from trusted suppliers. That’s where portals come in.

Ronan McQuillan

Mar 28, 2024

How to Build a Contractor Portal

Managing projects with external stakeholders can create some unique challenges. This includes monitoring costs, tracking progress, handling approvals, and centralizing information from disparate sources and stakeholders. Today, we’re exploring one solution to this - by showing off the speed and ease with which we can create a custom contractor portal in Budibase. See, a huge part of the problem is how we communicate and collaborate with contractors. When we handle this manually using emails, spreadsheets, or even pen and paper - we inevitably create mountains of admin work, along with scope for error.

Ronan McQuillan

Mar 26, 2024

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