It’s a drag and drop form builder that saves as JSON schema. You can export and use in your own app, or submit to our backend and send Webhooks to an automation service like zapier.
I use it in my client projects since I frequently need to customize form fields, then I can reuse them across clients.
https://ResponseVault.com is built for that. Drag and drop React form components that can embed in any app. All responses and the form definition are saved in json-schema and can be exported to be used with any package that interprets json-schema.
It's great to see more libraries that deal with rendering JSONSchema. I've been working on a drag and drop formbuilder / grid [0] for creating crud apps that leverages react-jsonschema-form.[1]
I noticed that while I create custom rails apps for clients, they often want to create additional forms and still leverage the authentication, permissions, and existing data in the app. This rules out most 3rd party form builders like typeform, jotform etc. which are mostly for surveys anyway. Sometimes the dev time to create them(UI, DB migrations, testing, validations) is too costly for an idea they just want to test.
So, I use the builder to create a JSON Schema, then embed the form into the rails app. What's cool is that I can utilize permissions from the core app to disable certain fields, and I can pass in enum values so drop downs have up-to-date options pulled right from the DB.
We use react-jsonschema-form, but the jsonschema we produce could be used in any of the tools mentioned in this thread.
I'm close to opening this up to other devs soon, and would love your feedback. There's a signup form on the website if you're interested.
Early on, it's meant spending months on implementation, hand-holding the first few users so they can become evangelists within the company. It's not a lot of work, it's just over a long period of time.
I track usage metrics every day and routinely message power users to ask what may be keeping others from adopting, asking non-users if they've been trained, and asking execs if they have evangelized from the top down.
So, you have to hit everyone over a long period of time.
I guess my point is that there are some crews where all their work is remote and subject to spotty cell service. It all depends on the kind of work the company is doing. So, for some companies, it's not a corner case at all, it's a factor in the primary use case.
The company I work with gives everyone a verizon cell hotspot and an android tablet. These work fine in city areas where this company does a lot of utility work.
But, when you do an install of electric wire towers on a mountain, you might not have cell connectivity. Most apps get by this by saving data locally, and then transmitting on the next connection.
Having built a field management system in the construction industry[1], I can confirm, it's a tough market. And, most of it comes down to getting in front of people. A lot of my time is spent going to trade shows and pitching, just like Tracy did, when I'm not coding.
There's a stigma that this industry is full of people who resist technology, but I really don't think that's the case. People in this industry resist change because change is risky. There's too much money at stake, and delays associated with new technology can ruin an entire job. Paper processes are usually terrible, but you're never going to have to battle wi-fi connectivity to flip through your spec, or experience your pencil throwing a 500 when you fill out a safety analysis. It takes a while for anyone in the field to get comfortable with the pros and cons of a new process versus a paper process that's worked for years.
It's changing incredibly quickly, though. There's a lot of new products getting funded, and a big opportunity to integrate between them.
OP. Yea, that was interesting on my end using chat. I probably would hate that on your end as much you did. I did have some pretty fun conversations though. I removed it, because that got exhausting.
OP. This is an idea I've been going back and forth on for a while.
I have checked out Quickbase, Airtable, Ragic, etc.
What I've noticed is that I always want the ability to go to code when I need to. My clients are all on Rails apps today, and I'm happy with rails as a dev solution. And, I don't want to give up that flexibility.
However, there are use cases where I want to just use a form builder UI to manage a data model. I've been using http://form.io for that recently. You use a form builder to generate a UI and an API simultaneously and submissions are stored in Mongo. And, I can build the app as I want using their API.
I think that paradigm is the future, it just needs more refinement.
OP. This is a great point. The activation cost for you to respond to support calls is probably more than the company would be willing to pay you. Which is why SaaS businesses with support teams that benefit from scale are the de facto model for these businesses.
I think there's a version of something like Microsoft Access that can take away a lot of support requests.
I get a ton of requests related to lists of collections within the app, which could be maintained by the users themselves.
OP. I was actually thinking something similar. Do you mean the ability to send out emails with app data rather than code and orchestrate them yourself?
One thing a lot of us underestimate is the flexibility of things like spreadsheets, and believe it or not, paper.
The resolution of an A4 piece of paper is a crisp 3508px x 2480px. For comparison, my MacBook Air is about a third of that at 1440px x 900px.
And, the processes companies have developed over years are tailored to that medium. While tech has gotten drastically cheaper in recent years, it still needs to get cheaper still for most businesses.
This is an example of one of the more insidious cases of "fake news."
His pay wasn't cut, he simply didn't earn 100% of it as he did in previous years because they missed their sales goals in 2016. That's baked into his contract, and isn't really "news."
It may just be wording, but the headline makes the effect sound much more sensational than the reality.
It's these instances of seemingly harmless clickbait that are eroding the public's trust in major news outlets.
I tried a month in Thailand last year. I wouldn't say that I didn't like it, but there's just pros and cons to the different places you go, and a lack of a "home."
Getting out of my comfort zone was really inspiring and made the trip easily worth it. I did get the sense that it would get lonely. In that area of the world there are a lot of expats who are moving around a lot, so it would be hard to maintain deep relationships. If that's important to you, then that's an item in the "con" list.
"Wherever you go, there you are." Moving to another country isn't very likely to make you happier if you're just not happy with yourself.
The post on this thread highlighting the revelation that you're most happy working on something you enjoy is spot on. If you feel you're contributing and are in the flow state, it doesn't matter where you are.