Applications that you can build with the Betty Blocks platform

Now we know a little about the different developer personas, but what can you actually build with the Betty Blocks platform? As mentioned before, the platform is cloud based, so it runs on any modern browser. As you might have guessed, you can develop web applications with the Betty Blocks platform. But what kind of web applications, you might ask?

Let’s start with the basics of web applications. A web application can be either public or private, which means that you can develop pages that are publicly accessible through the internet with Betty Blocks, but also private pages that require some form of authentication to be able to access them. By default, everything in the platform is set to private, so you don’t accidentally expose any private information to the public web.

Also, there is the option in Betty Blocks to build Back Office applications. The Back Office is a part of Betty Blocks and allows you to really quickly set up a basic application with full Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) functionality. The interface is fixed, so you can’t change the layout, but you do have some options for sorting by columns and fields. Back Office apps are focused on internal use only. The users are different than the ones accessing the frontend – they are basically the same as the builder users, just without the builder permissions. We’ll talk about this in more detail later.

All web applications that you create with Betty Blocks are responsive by default, meaning they are accessible from a computer, tablet, or smartphone. This feature comes out of the box with the platform and requires minimal action on the part of the developer to make this happen.

Lastly, what types of applications can you build with Betty Blocks? Let me give some examples:

• An order management portal, where users can access their orders, add new ones, and modify them
• You can build your own custom CRM
• Questionnaire apps, for example, to get information from customers
• You can also build additions to your existing CRM by connecting to your existing CRM and using its data to create a portal for your customers
• You can build an inspection report tool, where people can do inspections on site and add images
• You can build a document management system with a workflow behind it
• You can integrate with almost any API out there to create even more complex applications that use data from internal and external data sources and connect to specific services such as Google Maps, for example

Let’s see an example of the ideal areas for deployment of the Betty Blocks platform. If you are planning on building applications within this space, Betty Blocks is the ideal platform to utilize.

Figure 1.2 – The ideal areas for application development with Betty Blocks

I can give a lot more examples of the kinds of applications you can build with the platform. But basically, the sky’s the limit.

So, are there things that are not possible with Betty Blocks? Of course, data visualization over millions of records is not something you would use a platform such as Betty Blocks for, nor creating native applications. Both are possible but are not easily done by citizen developers and require coding knowledge to accomplish. However, here are seven points that do make Betty Blocks stand out:

• Ease of use (no-code empowerment): Users have the tools to develop end-user functionality with their desired look and feel in a simple, fast, maintainable, and non-destructive way.
• Templates (content) and reusability: Reuse functional parts across applications to increase the speed of development. No-code is faster than coding, but if you can reuse entire functional parts, you are even faster!
• Integrations: Integrate applications with external systems. All connections are secure and based on industry standards and IT retains full control. When you need to connect with the more exotic APIs, there is always the coding escape hatch that lets you build without any restrictions.
• Builder collaboration: Applications are always built in (cross-functional) teams. Users can develop and maintain applications together. They have the ability to safely work together on one or multiple applications.
• Escape hatches for flexibility: You can build almost anything without a single line of code. But, if needed, you can add code, ensuring you never get stuck. With escape hatches, experienced developers can build any feature in no-code applications by using code.
• Governance of citizen development by IT: IT wants business users to build applications themselves, but wants to retain oversight to keep things safe and sound. They want to be able to give citizen developers the right building blocks and environment and govern the entire development and delivery process, and Betty Blocks gives them the platform they need to do this.
• Scaling citizen development in enterprises: Enable employees to build their own applications within an enterprise environment while the IT department stays in control of the development process.

But there is so much more that can be done and especially by your business users, which opens up a whole new world. Let’s dive deeper into the platform to explore this.