Betty Blocks Resources Page

First and foremost, Betty Blocks is a no-code development platform. Meaning? Most complex development processes like actions and data models have been encapsulated behind a straightforward ‘drag-and-drop’ interface. Minimizing hand-coding requirements this way allows business users to collaborate on (or even build) complex applications without needing a professional IT background. 

For Citizen Developers, data modeling, actions, and web services only require basic expressions or text inputs to flesh out which would otherwise be impossible. Similarly, the front-end can be entirely designed using customizable pre-built elements in a bootstrap grid. 

But what about tools for professional developers? In order to meet growing enterprise business needs, applications need to work alongside existing tech-stacks. So, Betty Blocks allows developers to fully customize components or integrations using coded templates. IT is also able to control and maintain all applications in production from the Block Store.

Originally, the inner workings of the platform were built using Ruby on Rails which was the ideal choice in the early stages. Once applications scaled up and users built more detailed, complex applications, we made the change to Elixir. There are multiple reasons for that but our primary goal was to increase performance in development environments. Elixir’s expression-based language ended up supporting the growing scale of applications which are becoming more frequent. 

We believe that Betty Blocks complements bi-modal IT models in a number of ways. According to Gartner, “Bimodal is the practice of managing two separate but coherent styles of work: one focused on predictability; the other on exploration. Mode 1 is optimized for areas that are more predictable and well-understood. It focuses on exploiting what is known while renovating the legacy environment into a state that is fit for a digital world. Mode 2 is exploratory, experimenting to solve new problems and optimized for areas of uncertainty.” (1)

Because no-code platforms drastically speed development time, they make it easy to rapidly develop prototypes. The flexibility of Betty Blocks also lets users iterate fast along the road from MVP to final product. Alternatively, because Betty Blocks opens the developer pool to citizen developers as well, we provide more hands to tackle the divided approach of bi-modal IT.

Walk around with your mobile solution! Build a mobile application and fully customize the front end specially built for mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, rather than large desktops.

Long story short… it’s a hybrid system that uses PhoneGap or Cordova depending on your specific needs. 

How does that translate to multi-channel/mobile development? When you’re creating a web application on our platform, the mobile version is already being created. As you add in functionality, new blocks, and web services, they’re instantly added into a mobile frame. This also means that when you want to add new features, you only need to apply them in one version.

With the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence, we’re starting to see even more powerful web services enter the market. External services like Google Maps, PayPal, and PowerBI (to name a few) provide extra functionality which greatly improves user experience if implemented correctly.

Through the Block Store: Rather than needing to build integrations yourself, a large selection of web service endpoints are readily available from the block store. These include services like Google Maps or Twillio which can be ‘installed’ with a single click. Developers can also save their own integrations or application modules here for re-use at a later stage.  

Custom Integrations: Adding a custom API to your own application in Betty Blocks is done with the web service tool. All you need to do is fill in the host and endpoint information to create any JSON, XML, GraphQL or REST API. Once you’ve filled in the correct data, Betty Blocks automatically creates data models based on the information returned by the endpoint. 

Check out our How-To Guide for a more detailed walkthrough.