A Quick Tip on Using Bubble (Highlighting)

Imagine you have a repeating group filled with "to-do" records that include a due date along with a "Finished" field and you want to highlight those records that are still incomplete and past their due date. Here's how to do that:

• To change the font color of the due date field in the list of to-dos, double-click the “Due date” element in the first row of the to-do list repeating group to display the element's property editor.
• Click on the “Conditional” tab in the properties box, go to the "When" field  and build the expression “Current cell's Todo's Due Date < Current date/time and Current cell's Todo's Finished is 'no'”.
• In the “Select a property to change when true” dropdown, pick “Font color”. Then select to change the font color of the due date to red when the condition is true.

An Interesting Bubble Article on Medium.com

I just came across a really detailed article on medium.com about one person's experience deciding whether or not Bubble could build his business startup application (Could I Build My Product on Bubble.io?, Will Ericksson, Dec. 2020). It's strictly Will Ericksson's opinion, but the article covers a lot of questions in depth about what you can or can't do with Bubble.

While the author ended up building his application with Bubble (and now teaches a course on Bubble), he does try to provide a balanced discussion of the pros and cons of using Bubble for a relatively complex software project. The topics he covers include scalability, integrations, security, and flexibility. You can find the full article at: https://medium.com/swlh/could-i-build-my-product-on-bubble-io-75923a41b9b6 

UK Providing Free No-Code Training with Bubble

In case you missed it, Bubble's posted an article by Vivienne Chen back in March, discussing how the UK is funding no-code learning. Here's an excerpt from the article (https://bubble.io/blog/uk-no-code-bubble/):

"Many local and national governments invest in funding to help people develop professional skills that can grow local business and improve their residents' lives. But the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom has become the first region in the world to turn to no-code technology like Bubble as an affordable, scalable solution to drive economic growth and innovation.

This year, a cross-sector partnership called Supertech, funded by the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP) launched a free program teaching business professionals how to build web apps without code, using Bubble's no-code web app builder. What started out as a pilot program of 30 people is now expanding to a hundred more opportunities, including a potential university student cohort from the area."

I thought this was an interesting example of how much importance is being attached to the future of no-code programming, not just by private companies but by governmental organizations.

Can Plugins Affect Your App's Performance?

Can plugins affect your no-code app's performance? The short answer is yes, they can. Plugins are a great asset to have available to implement features that your app platform doesn't include, but too many plugins can definitely affect load times and general performance. Every plugin you use adds more code to your app, so as you make changes to your application, keep an eye on which plugins you really need.

There's a huge "need for speed" in today's apps and better performance can mean better sales. Many years ago the company I worked for sold a computer system to the manager of the local Coca-Cola bottling plant because we could sort 2500 items in less than 2 hours. Things have changed dramatically since then, but the point is still valid. If your app is faster than your competitors (or at least on the same level), that's important.

Plugins can be great - but you can have too much of a good thing.

Make Your No-Code Mobile App Stand Out

Want your mobile app to stand out from the crowd? One way to do it is to make your app capable of being used offline. It's really frustrating when your friendly ISP has a problem and you lose your Internet connection just when you're in the middle of working on something. That's when you really appreciate an app that lets you continue to work even when you're offline.

So how do you build no-code mobile apps that can function offline? Choosing the right development platform is the key. Not all platforms offer offline capability, but there are a few, including the ones listed here:

• Zoho Creator - According to Zoho: "The Zoho Creator mobile app can cache recently accessed Forms, so they're available when a user's device is offline or unable to connect to Zoho Creator. Apart from automatic caching of Forms, the mobile app supports saving of Reports, so that they can be accessed offline. Records submitted during offline state are synced automatically when your device is online.

For iOS devices, the Zoho Creator app must be active, to enable automatic synching of records. For Android devices, automatic synching of records take place when the device comes online, irrespective of the app state. The cached data is refreshed when a user accesses Zoho Creator. All cached data, failed entries, and saved reports will be deleted on logout."

Note: Offline access won't work for any form that contains an integration field, a formula field that includes other fields, or a workflow that triggers actions prior to the form being submitted. If some forms do fail once the user gets back online, the user will be able to see why and make corrections or deletions. Also, remember that reports won't include any entries made after the report was last saved while the user was online.

• AppSheet -  According to AppSheet: "AppSheet apps can be used on a mobile device even when that device is offline and disconnected from the network. This is possible because the information needed to run the app (the app definition, the data, and optionally images and documents) is stored locally on the mobile device."  Note: The app must initially have been launched when the user was online for offline access to work. Also, if the user is running the app in a web browser offline image and document caching won't work. In addition, audio and video files aren't stored locally on the user's device so they won't be available in offline mode.

• Appy Pie - According to Appy Pie: "Appy Pie apps are light, fast and deliver a native app’s user experience. What’s more interesting about them is that they have the capability to provide content to the users in offline mode also."  Since data and content are stored in the user's device the app can allow them to continue working if the network connection fails or has intermittent outages - once a connection is re-established syncing will take place automatically to download any changes in the app.

• TrackVia - Offline capability is available in all apps if you're using one of TrackVia's "Enterprise +" plans.
  

• DronaHQ -  DronaHQ is a fairly expensive platform to use (currently $100 per month, paid annually, for their basic plan), but they have offered offline access in all mobile apps built on their platform since 2017.

Sometimes it's the Small Things

Many years ago (many, many years ago) when I went to work for Litton ABS and first got involved in computer programming, my manager and I went to try to sell a new up-do-date computer to an existing client. The client's old system was actually built around a modified teletype machine. Like the 30-year old car currently sitting in my driveway, the antique computer still managed to do what they needed (albeit slowly and with the help of a lot of manual input), but the client had become attached to it and kept resisting the temptation to change.

Our new system was a huge improvement in every way (or almost every way as it turned out). It included a high-speed printer, much greater storage capacity, and a brand new bright and shiny software package. There was no way the client could resist all the features packed into the software and the great job we did of presenting it, including sample print-outs and a full-color brochure. And yet - after all that, the customer turned us down.

Why did we lose the sale? What shortcoming in the software or our presentation doomed us? Well, as it turned out it was the one thing we couldn't do for the client. The owner believed in keeping all his employees out on jobs, which left his wife to handle the computer and work the front counter in their store. Periodically, when the computer finished a stage in the job costing program it was running she had to go into the back room, check on some interim figures, and decide what to do next. Then she had to hurry back out front and be ready to serve any in-store customers.

So how did the owner's wife know when the computer had finished a stage in the job costing process? The old system, built on the skeleton of a teletype machine, rang a bell (left over from its teletype days) whenever a particular section of the program ended. With all the huge improvements incorporated in our new software package, the program couldn't perform one critical function - it couldn't ring a bell. In spite of all the work we put into developing a crackerjack job costing program and all the effort we put into presenting all its virtues, we forgot to listen closely enough to what the customer needed.

Given time we could have found a way around "ringing the bell" but we got too focused on everything we packed into our program and not what was missing. It's many years later now but the point is still valid - let as many people as possible look at your app now, while you're building it, to make sure you're not overlooking something important that could cost you sales.

A No-Code Challenge from Microsoft - Response #2

In a post the other day, I mentioned that I came across a statement in an article about Microsoft's Power Fx language that read:

"The truth is, point-and-click tools are great for quickly assembling experiences and workflows, but many real-world solutions need a layer of logic that goes beyond what is practical to drag and drop, for example:

Show a list of customers who signed up in the last 7 days within 15 miles of this location.

Highlight the newest entries in green.

When a user clicks for more details, if the record has outstanding action items associated with it, pop those to the top of the screen."

I wanted to find out how true that statement is, so I decided to try building an app on no-code platforms that met those criteria. Below is my second attempt, which I created on Caspio. 

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I used the same database as before (customer Id, customer name, address, distance from us in miles, sign-up date, action items) and imported it from Google Sheets. Once the data had been imported I selected the "Data Pages" tab and created a tabular report to display the customer records:

Next, I made a copy of the report, opened it and selected to filter the report with pre-defined criteria:

Once I picked the "distance" and "sign-up date" as the fields I wanted to use in my filter, I set the first criteria as "distance" less than or equal to "15":

And I set the sign-up date to "within the previous 7 days":

Once I made those changes, I previewed the report again and this time the only record displayed was the one record that met the two criteria:

Note: You can also set a different colored background for certain records with Caspio but it requires using some JavaScript statements. The exact steps you need to use (including the JavaScript) are laid out in detail at:

https://howto.caspio.com/tech-tips-and-articles/advanced-customizations/how-to-dynamically-change-the-background-of-a-results-page/ 

However, since this is supposed to be a "no-code" project I decided to leave this example as is and not bother trying to include the record coloring feature.