ViziApps is the first mobile app creation without coding service to introduce a revolutionary new capability for mobile apps: Offline Data Access & Remote Sync.

Mobile users worldwide have become dependent on their smartphones and apps to provide them with capabilities and data wherever and whenever they want. And now companies using ViziApps are enabling more and more corporate data to be available from our mobile devices.

But the reality is that mobile data connections are often unreliable, very low bandwidth, too expensive to use, or completely unavailable in needed work sites. Yet these issues can hit at exactly the time and place we need to get our jobs done. A mobile device without a data connection suddenly becomes frustrating and useless.

Offline Data Access & Remote Sync

ViziApp’s approach to Offline Data Access & Remote Sync, like the rest of our no-coding platform for mobile app creation, couldn’t be simpler for the user and even for the app creator. In fact it’s practically transparent.

Data Access While Offline

For a user, the synchronization between a remote database and their mobile device happens automatically as a background process. There is no action the user needs to take. When a user makes a data query, their app will use a local copy of the synchronized data which not only gives them access to their data while offline, but also allows the app to perform much faster than normal online operation.

Data Updates While Offline

Mobile users without a network connection can now continue working and updating their data sets, such as filing reports and even submitting photos. The next time that the user runs their app with a network connection, the new data will be automatically synchronized back to the remote database in both directions.

Simple To Enable

For the app creator, in ViziApps Studio just go to the App Properties selection for “Setup Offline Operations”, then select “Use offline operation.” That’s it – the rest is automatically handled for you. There is no difficult middleware to install or configure or worry about for scalability.

Offline Data Access & Remote Sync is now available for Intuit QuickBase and Android devices. ViziApps will soon be releasing Offline Data Access & Remote Sync for iPhone and iPad users, and then expanding to other remote data sources.

ViziApps provides app creators with a major advantage – the ability to quickly produce data-rich mobile business apps without coding.

And now, with an online guide available in the ViziApps Studio, app makers have a handy reference to help them build apps using Google Docs spreadsheets for access to a wide range of data, including text, images, and maps. The searchable documentation speeds development of robust data-rich apps for the iPhone and iPad and Android smartphones and tablets.

Designing and building a mobile business app with ViziApps is free. If you haven’t already, sign up for a ViziApps account here.

To check out the data management documentation, simply look for this button in the manage data catalog and click it:

ViziApps users tell us that delivering their business data into the hands of mobile users is driving new revenue and attracting new customers for their business. Providing mobile access to business data is what sets their apps apart from their competitors.

To make the most of your business data in your next mobile app, take a look at the new data management documentation in the ViziApps Studio. There you will learn how to present and manage data in a way that gives your app users the information they need – wherever they are.

Topics covered by the data management guide include:

• Introduction to database commands
• Updating and deleting data
• Incorporating images and maps
• Using Google Docs spreadsheets
• Data Management best practices

This is just a sampling of the topics provided to help app creators select, create, and efficiently manage data for use in their mobile business apps. Check it out by clicking the “Spreadsheet User Guide” on the Manage Data page in your free ViziApps Studio account.

• Part 1 in a Series – Mobilizing Your Business, From Hardship to Rapid Impact

  During April, we will have a series of blog posts focusing the increasing importance of Mobile apps in Rapid Application Development - what does it mean to have mobile apps power the way your organization works. This will include Showcasing different companies leveraging Mobile Rapid App Development, aka MRAD, to improve their business results.

  What we have seen are some incredible productivity enhancing stories that provide competitive differentiation. In some cases, companies have prioritized their operations focus on the back of mobile app platform. We are in very interesting times where mobile is changing the way we do business.

  But you might be wondering, why are employees still tethered to their desk and not out in the field selling or servicing customers, at the customer’s office or at a Starbucks.

  The reasons are many fold.

  • First, it is important to understand what are the deficiencies of SaaS applications being provided in the marketplace. There is no doubt that you as a customer leveraging a RAD platform has seen the increase in number of productivity apps. DIY users are quickly able to make some pretty nifty apps. But the SaaS providers have not optimized their RAD platform for creating mobile apps. Yes, you can get a mobile app but it lacks the functionality that is required in a mobile oriented workplace. A report or task workflow on a mobile device needs to be different than a report in a desktop browser. RAD platforms are still playing catch up to the mobile space and will probably never catch up as mobile devices keep rapidly evolving.
  • Second, creating a mobile app is not the same as creating a browser app. You might want to take advantage of some native capability of a mobile device in your app and you want that information stored on desktop app. Two sets of requirements which further leads to – can your org have the capacity to take on two unique approaches to solve the problem.
  • Third, mobile apps need to have simple task navigation, as the screen real estate on the device is limited. Trying to jam too much information only leaves a bad taste in the app’s user experience, resulting in low-adoption.

  Companies need to be innovative in their thinking to adopt mobile apps as they choose a RAD platform. Companies that have embarked on DIY mobile apps with the right MRAD platform are seeing the business results impact in a just a matter of days, As they mobilize workflow by bringing mobile business processes to the palm of their mobile workers hands, wherever they are, and whenever needed.

  Next, we’ll some unique use cases where different companies have solved key business needs with rapidly developed mobile apps.

• Part 5 in a Series: Make it happen with ViziApps

  We’ve discussed how Viziapps is disrupting mobile app development with the power of visual rapid mobile app design, data connectivity, and publishing. Let’s recap the key factors ViziApps provides.

  Visually Design your Mobile App User Experience. Viziapps is a Visual platform for IT Professionals and Citizen Developers to easily design, test, and publish mobile apps for iOS or Android OS devices. All this through the Visual Design studio that supports all of the cool features that you want in your mobile app’s User Experience.

• Publish Your Mobile Apps In An Instant

  ViziApps has pioneered fast creation of custom mobile apps without the need for coding. However, you may need a faster more controlled way to distribute your apps than available through the public app stores.

  Now you can also publish your custom mobile apps directly into the hands of your iPhone, iPad, and Android users, literally in minutes, with ViziApps Instant Publisher.

  The Need for Instant Publishing

  There are a number of situations where you may not want your custom mobile app to be distributed through a public app store:

  • Your app is only to be used by company insiders and channel/supply partners
  • Your app contains ideas, concepts, or intellectual property you don’t want competitors to see
  • You want to avoid the complexity, delays, and cost of publishing through public app markets
  • You need fast distribution to a limited set of users
  • Your user population is small
  • You are conducting a Beta or Pilot test

  How It Works

  ViziApps Instant Publisher™ creates a special App Installation Web Page, unique for your app, that guides your users through a simple and fast installation process.

  ViziApps also creates a unique App Invitation Card which contains a bit.ly short URL and QR code that will bring your users directly to the App Installation Web Page.

  

  App Invitation Card

  Your users open your installed app directly from your custom branded App Icon on their device home screen, and the same published app can run on both Apple and Android devices. ViziApps Instant Publisher is available to use with the latest version of ViziApps from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

  Try installing the demo app shown in the Invitation Card above to see how Instant Publisher works.

• Ready to Build Your Own Mobile App? Begin with the ViziApps Quick Start Video

  Check out the new video in the ViziApps Studio. It will help you get a jump on your mobile business app.

  First, sign up for a free ViziApps account (or log into your account), then set aside about 90 seconds to watch our Quick Start video. In the time it will take you to read this blog post, you’ll see how easily you can create an eye-catching mobile app for your business.

  ViziApps requires no programming skills and lets you use your own images or the ones we provide. You can use it to create business apps for iOS and Android devices.

  If you’re a beginner, you might want to take advantage of one of the ViziApps templates. They let you base your design on one of ours while you customize it to meet your particular requirements. Other videos in the ViziApps Studio will help you brand your mobile app and understand your options for providing it with the data needed to make it an effective tool for your target users.

• Signature Capture for iOS and Android Apps

  

  Many business transactions require a signature to seal the deal. With ViziApps businesses can build a mobile app that easily captures signatures on the iPhone, iPad, or Android smartphones or tablets. By providing a mobile app for digital signature capture, companies can help their users reduce the amount of documents they need to carry around with them and ease storage and retrieval of signed materials.

  Like all the functionality that ViziApps provides, digital signature capture capability can be easily incorporated into a mobile business app – without any coding. And signatures captured can be stored safely in cloud data sources supported by ViziApps, such as Google Docs spreadsheets, web services and SQL databases.

• Snap To It! How ViziApps Supports Mobile App Screen Layout

  By Neil Perlin, Hyper/Word Services (www.hyperword.com)

  One of the hardest parts of creating mobile apps is to align all the screen objects – labels, text entry boxes, and so on. Aligning the bottom of a field label with the bottom of the corresponding text entry box, for example, can be difficult to do. Checking the result by eye or by holding a ruler up to the screen sort of works but is inefficient. ViziApps offers two ways to address this problem, a built-in alignment tool and the ability to use an external alignment grid. This post describes both methods.

  The Built-In Snap to Grid

  

  Selecting this button in the ViziApps Studio makes screen objects automatically align themselves on predefined grid lines. (Using this feature is like using a sheet of graph paper that can automatically move your drawings to specific grid lines.) Say, for example, that you insert a label and move it to a position with X and Y coordinates 14 and 74, as shown below.

  

  You set the grid spacing to 10 pixels, by clicking the icon on the right side of the Snap to Grid button as shown below.

  

  That label’s X and Y coordinates now default to 10-pixel positions, such as 20 and 70. By doing this, you are limited to moving the label in 10-pixel units.

  This feature not only lets you put objects precisely where you want them but also helps align multiple objects. No more tedious pixel-by-pixel movement to align two labels. Just position the first label at an X coordinate of 20, for example, then move the second label until its X coordinate also snaps to 20, as shown below.

  

  The External Alignment Grid

  The Snap to Grid feature is very useful, but there are two design considerations to keep in mind.

  • You can’t see the grid position. You have to assume that the objects are moving where you want them. They are, but you may want to see what’s going on.
  • The grid positions are absolute, but you may want to use them as guides. For example, you may want to customize where the descenders of letters like “y” touch the grid baseline rather than use the predefined snap-to grid settings.

  To address this, you can create a graphic the size of the canvas and draw your grid on the graphic, as shown in the example below.

  

  This graphic is easy to use – make it the app’s background image during development, then replace it with the real background image once you finish placing all your screen objects. (Thanks to Dan K, in ViziApps Support, for providing this graphic.)

  Either approach works fine. Just don’t use both on the same mobile app development project or you may find that the objects you so carefully aligned using the visual grid suddenly shift position if you turn on the Snap to Grid option.

  Features like the alignment tools make mobile app development much simpler and more efficient than coding by hand. You’ll find other helpful features in the ViziApps Studio, and there are more features for building mobile apps in the works.

• The Critical Role of Data Management in Mobile Business Apps

  Whether you use ViziApps to build a native app or web app for your business, it’s important to consider the role of data management as it applies to your mobile business app. Think about it. Your business runs on data: data on your customers, products, services, inventory, pricing, and more. Therefore, any business app should leverage the collective intelligence of your company to efficiently deliver information to your employees and customers.

  For a mobile app designed to engage and enhance employee productivity, information can be culled from internal systems such as customer relationship management (CRM), inventory control, pricing, purchasing, and expense control systems. Mobile apps targeting customers commonly include product information, pricing details, coupons, and promotions. An ideal mobile business app should be able to access all this information from corporate databases that store critical business intelligence. We’ve built ViziApps to enable you to do just that — easily and without coding.

  Depending on the mobile strategy you’ve developed for your business app (a topic to be covered in a future post), there are different types of data that will need to be accessed to power your app, and different ways to access that data. ViziApps gives you the flexibility to access and update your back-end data with the app in three simple ways: through a web service interface; directly to your database; or by connecting to Google Docs spreadsheets. As always, this integration with ViziApps is done with no coding.

  

  So which data management connection is right for your business app — and why?

  It really depends on your mobile strategy, who and what your app is designed for, how much information your app will need to access, how that information is currently stored, and how often that information will change.

  To help you determine the right data management interface, we’ve defined how each works within ViziApps, depending on how your data is structured.

  Web Service: If your information is already structured to drive your public or intranet web sites, you can access and update it with ViziApps’ web service data interface.

  Database: If your data already exists in a database, the ViziApps database interface lets you map the fields of your database directly to data fields in your app.

  Google Docs Spreadsheets: If your data is not yet structured in a database or for web service access, or if you want the data to be easily updated by employees through a simple spreadsheet interface, then you can use ViziApps Google Docs spreadsheet data interface. Google Docs spreadsheets provide the capabilities and ease of use of Excel and add powerful but easy-to-use database commands. This way, you can easily build or import information as a flat file database in a Google Docs spreadsheet for use with your ViziApps app.

  Need more guidance on choosing the data management interface that’s right for you? Some practical, real-world examples might help. If your app is designed for field sales or service reps, other employees, or channel partners, then you can connect through a web service interface because it provides direct associations to your organization’s critical and securely stored data. It also provides more flexibility in the types of information provided, and in all likelihood, the web-service-accessible databases are already built through internal systems such as CRM. If your app is designed for nimble customer interaction, connecting through Google Docs spreadsheets can give you a quickly customizable solution for data to be changed and updated easily to accommodate frequently changing dynamics, such as coupons and promotions. ViziApps is built with safe and secure direct access to your backend data using any of the three data management options.

  If you still aren’t sure what method is best for your business app, sign up for a free account on ViziApps and schedule your complimentary one-hour online training session. A ViziApps representative will be happy to answer your questions.

  As you build your business app, consider how best to leverage your business intelligence by utilizing strategic data management to power engaging and efficient mobile apps for your employees and customers.

• ViziApps 2.0 Provides Rich Data Management

  In Mobile Is the New Face of Engagement, Forrester analysts Ted Schadler and John C. McCarthy describe how smartphones and tablets will continue to change the way companies interact with their customers, employees and partners. Through “context-aware apps and smart products,” they write, businesses will empower those constituencies.

  Context-aware mobile apps like those they describe, and like most business applications, require access to data.

  With ViziApps, building a mobile business app that uses business data does not have to be a long, complex process. Or an expensive one.

  For a while now, the ViziApps Studio has been making it possible to create data-rich native mobile business apps online and without coding. Now, with the release of ViziApps 2.0, it offers new design tools that let businesses create web apps that can easily access robust data sources across the web, like Google Docs spreadsheets, also without coding.

  That’s a first in the industry.

  The ViziApps platform enables the entire app building process to be done with drag-and-drop wizards and tools that are easy to choose and use. It offers a storyboard feature, precision positioning and multiple types of back-end plugins for data access for the creation of single or multi-page mobile apps. And apps can be designed once and run across the major smartphones and tablets.

  Create a free ViziApps account and discover how easily and quickly you can build native apps and web apps that utilize your business data. ViziApps makes it easy to bring your brand directly to your customers, enhance the productivity of your employees and improve the effectiveness of your partner relationships.

• ViziApps Eases Building Data-rich Mobile Apps with Online Guide and Graphical Query Tester

  ViziApps provides app creators with a major advantage – the ability to quickly produce data-rich mobile business apps without coding.

  And now, with a new online reference guide available in the ViziApps Studio, app makers have a handy reference to help them build apps using Google Docs spreadsheets for access to a wide range of data, including text, images, and maps. The searchable documentation speeds development of robust data-rich apps for the iPhone and iPad and Android smartphones and tablets.

  ViziApps users tell us that delivering their business data into the hands of mobile users is driving new revenue and attracting new customers for their business. Providing mobile access to business data is what sets their apps apart from their competitors. So, make the most of your business data in your next mobile app. Check out the new data management documentation in ViziApps Studio to learn how to present and manage data in a way that gives your app users the information they need – wherever they are.

  Simply click the “Spreadsheet User Guide” button in the Manage Data section for info and tips.

  • Introduction to database commands
  • Updating and deleting data
  • Incorporating images and maps
  • Using Google Docs spreadsheets
  • Data Management best practices

  This is just a sampling of the topics provided to help app creators select, create, and efficiently manage data for use in their mobile business apps. Check it out by clicking the “Spreadsheet User Guide” on the Manage Data page in your free ViziApps Studio account.

  Easier Testing of Data Management Designs

  Recent enhancements to the ViziApps mobile app creation platform allow testing of any spreadsheet query directly from the ViziApps Studio. In other words, it is no longer necessary to go out of ViziApps to your mobile device to test individual spreadsheet queries

  Now mobile app creators can use this new graphical query tester early in the app design process to verify which queries are working and to identify issues that require attention. Every spreadsheet query in the ViziApps graphical query tree now has a green icon that represents this new testing tool for that particular query.

  

  When a user clicks on it, a pop-up appears with that query for testing.

  

  This new ViziApps capability speeds app development and eliminates the need for app creators to move in and out of the ViziApps Studio to test every query made to a database.

  The tester works for all query types. For update, insert and where condition tests, the app creator enters test values in the empty device fields and clicks the “Test” button. That simple action submits the query and then displays the results in a second graphical response tree. Both single values and array values are displayed, as well as any query errors that may occur.

• ViziApps Expands Intuit QuickBase Support – Now includes Sub-Account Authentication and Query Response Limits

  Companies worldwide use QuickBase to create cloud-based business process applications, without doing any coding.

  Those businesses often require access privileges to company data at different levels of authorization.These QuickBase apps can run on iPhones, iPads, and Android smartphones and tablets.

  For example, a Sales VP may have a higher level of authorization than regional sales people have. While the Sales VP may access sales results in all regions, an individual sales person might have access to sales results only in his/her region. When an end user logs into their QuickBase ViziApps app, their login credentials will automatically determine which data to select depending on their level of authorization.

  Here's how it works. When you register QuickBase as a data source for your ViziApps app, you will see a dialog box like the figure below. Add the field names in your app that will be used for end users to login and access your QuickBase data. Then, when the app runs, your users just login and the data query you designed in ViziApps uses the authorization from their login.

  

  Also, the ViziApps Studio now enables you to specifiy a limit to the number of responses for any data query, since large data sets may have much more data than is needed by a mobile user.

• ViziApps named one of Massachusetts Largest Mobile Startups

  The Boston Business Journal named ViziApps as one of the Top 20 Largest Mobile Startups in Massachusetts. ViziApps joined the ranks of Mobiquity, uTest, Fiksu, Apperian, and Kinvey in this recognition of our growth by New England’s premier business journal.

  

• ViziApps Now Supports Quickbase for Integrating Data in Mobile Apps

  Companies worldwide use Quickbase to create cloud-based business process applications, without doing any coding.

  Now, using ViziApps Studio, enterprise and small business users can easily build mobile apps using Quickbase data to run on the iPad, iPhone, and Android tablets and smartphones, without coding. Taking advantage of the ViziApps drag and drop process for creating apps, Quickbase users can quickly and cost effectively build mobile apps that provide access to robust cloud-based data.

  ViziApps® provides the features described below for creating Quickbase mobile apps.

  

• ViziApps Offline Sync – Use Your Mobile App Anywhere

  What does Offline Data Sync mean in a mobile app?

  Offline data allows a user of the mobile app to view, add, delete or modify data in the mobile app with no connection to the internet or network. All of the changes the user makes will be automatically synced with the main backend database, once the mobile app user comes back into online network connectivity.

  So, why this is important?

• ViziApps Selected to show Rapid Mobile App Innovation at TechJam 2015!

  

  The Mass Technology Leadership Council selected ViziApps to demo our Rapid Mobile App Platform at TechJam 2015. See us there Thursday May 11th in Boston: https://masstlc.proximate.com/btj2015#?p=np

• ViziApps Smart Pages™ Provide Predesigned Data-Ready Mobile App Pages

  If you’re not the most artistic designer or you’re trying to meet a tight deadline, or you want to share your mobile page design with your team or our community – you will love ViziApps new Smart PagesTM. As with any design activity, starting with a blank page can be intimidating and there are often aspects of building apps for Apple and Android devices that need to be repeated or reused in a new context. Why reinvent the wheel when you can leverage existing best practices for mobile app design?

  Solving these issues is exactly what ViziApps is delivering with our new Smart Pages catalog of professionally designed Smart Pages. Use them for the fastest way yet to build full-featured mobile apps. Or create your own Smart Pages so that you can organize your designs and share components for team development or share with the ViziApps community.

  A Catalog of Smart Pages

  

  The ViziApps catalog offers a range of Smart Pages to perform functions like displaying data to a scrolling table or showing a place on a map. And the catalog will grow with more Smart Pages over time. Just find a Smart Page that meets your specific need, plug it into your app design, connect it to a live data source, when needed, and that page is done!

  ViziApps offers a range of data connections so you can get business data into your users’ hands in real time, without coding. Our data sources include Intuit QuickBase, Salesforce.com, Google Spreadsheets, SQL databases and REST interfaces. As with the rest of ViziApps, hooking up your data to a Smart Page is a simple drag-and-drop process.

  

  The process of building mobile apps with ViziApps is an easy visual experience without coding, and allows you to build complex apps from individual pages. Smart Pages makes this experience even faster because you can organize your app by selecting a series of Smart Pages, connect to live data sources, and put in the finishing touches.

  Of course the best-designed components can’t anticipate all individual needs, so ViziApps lets you add our standard fields to the Smart Pages in your app, so you can customize them to achieve the perfect user experience. You can even mix Smart Pages with your own fully custom pages in the same app in any way you want.

• ViziApps Supports Quickbase for Mobile App Data Integration

  Using the no-coding ViziApps mobile app development platform, enterprise and small business users can easily create QuickBase mobile apps.

  Companies worldwide are using ViziApps, to build mobile apps from Quickbase to mobilize the processes vital to their business – for the iPhone and iPad, and Android smartphones and tablets.

  ViziApps provides several key features for creating Quickbase mobile apps:

  • Create Quickbase database operations with a drag and drop process for familiar database commands such as select, insert, update and delete. Adding QuickBase database operations to your mobile app takes just minutes.
  
  • ViziApps enables your mobile apps to run without network access. When network access returns, it automatically syncs with your Quickbase account.
  • Customize how users navigate your work flow in your app for the optimal user experience,

  Because ViziApps provides a no-coding process for mobile app development, business and IT professionals can quickly and cost effectively use the ViziApps tool to build mobile business apps that empower employees, partners, and customers.

• ViziApps to Demo Rapid Mobile Apps at Intuit EMPOWER 2015

  Join ViziApps at Intuit EMPOWER 2015, to be held at the Hyatt Regency Chicago from May 26-28, 2015.

  For several years ViziApps has been enabling customers and partners of Intuit QuickBase to create custom mobile apps, with all of the non-coding ease-of-use that Quickbase users have come to expect. Yet ViziApps is powerful enough to incorporate native mobile device features and simultaneously connect with other data sources such as Google Sheets and SQL databases.

  The EMPOWER conference will be a great opportunity to learn more about using QuickBase to create business apps that meet your exact needs without coding. And while you’re at it, stop by and visit with ViziApps to learn more about building custom mobile apps that use QuickBase.

  Find out more about Intuit EMPOWER 2015 and save $100 on conference registration:

  ViziApps at EMPOWER 2015.

• Webinar: Create Mobile Apps Without Coding

  Want to become highly proficient creating mobile business apps? A new online workshop, titled Create Mobile Apps Without Coding, will walk you through the development of a simple but fully functional native app without doing any coding. Using the ViziApps mobile app development tool, plus Google Docs as your database, you will learn valuable app design principles and see how easy it is to build a functional mobile app just using basic computing skills.

  ViziApps-certified trainer Neil Perlin will conduct the 6-part webinar from July 9-17, focusing on different topics in each session, such as using an app template for layout, creating pages and page elements, and advanced data management for mobile apps, a key advantage offered by the ViziApps mobile app development tool.

  Enterprise business units looking to develop their own apps (without relying on IT for technical expertise or development budgets) will find this webinar especially useful. Attendees will come away equipped to build apps for both internal users and external mobility campaigns.