April 2021 Summaries

Internal tools play a significant role in company operations, and the decision to build or buy these tools isn't straightforward. Experts from Halp, On Deck, and Auth0 argue that the choice between building and buying internal tools should be context-dependent, often involving a combination of both approaches. Halp uses no-code platforms to quickly build internal tools that empower non-technical staff, while On Deck advocates for creating low-code MVPs to validate ideas before further investment. Auth0 suggests that early-stage companies may benefit from building tools due to limited budgets, but as their needs and customer base grow, buying specialized tools becomes more viable. These insights underline that the build vs. buy decision is not a dichotomy but a strategic choice influenced by factors such as company size, growth stage, and specific requirements.

Retool has developed a system to streamline the process of providing startup credits to early-stage companies, initially using a manual method involving Typeform and spreadsheets, which proved inefficient as demand grew. They built an automated app using Retool to simplify the process by integrating with Stripe, allowing the marketing team to easily add credits and manage customer data. The app, developed in just one day, has significantly reduced the time and effort required for approvals, improved response times, and centralized customer data, thereby enhancing both customer and team experiences. As a result, they have saved two hours per week and improved approval times by four times, all without needing engineering resources. Looking ahead, they aim to automate email confirmations as they scale, offering their app as a template for others to use.

Angelina DeLago, Co-founder and VP of Innovation at Botkeeper, leveraged Retool to streamline internal processes and enhance efficiency by connecting disparate systems and automating tasks. Botkeeper, which automates pre-accounting tasks for accounting firms, faced challenges with fragmented information across different platforms, hindering task automation. Angelina prioritized unblocking her team by using Retool to create an integrated entity management system that allows teams to manage partner clients, track their status, and automate workflows efficiently. This integration has improved client management by providing a unified view of partner information, enabling quick actions, and offering analytics on partner scaling and deployment processes. Retool's automation capabilities have minimized manual interventions and headaches by syncing data across platforms like HubSpot and task management tools, reflecting client changes instantly. With minimal coding required, Retool has empowered Angelina to develop dashboards that enhance visibility into client activities and streamline operations, allowing the team to focus on strategic tasks.

The tutorial provides a step-by-step guide on building a Retool app that integrates with the SendGrid API to send emails to customers within an hour. It outlines the process of connecting SendGrid to Retool by creating and configuring an API key, then pulling a list of users from a Postgres database to populate a table. The app's user interface includes a rich text editor for composing emails, modals for editing email details and viewing recipients, and a button for sending emails. The guide details creating queries to format email content, make POST requests to SendGrid's API, and iterate through selected email addresses to send emails. It also suggests additional features like adding attachments, using BCC, and personalizing emails, emphasizing the app's adaptability and further potential with SendGrid and Retool.

The guide outlines a step-by-step process for creating a user interface in Retool to interact with DigitalOcean's Spaces API, allowing users to list, view, and upload files within a Space. It starts by setting up a connection to DigitalOcean Spaces via Retool using a custom S3 endpoint and details how to create a basic UI for listing files in a specified bucket. Users can input the bucket name, triggering queries to display files and metadata in a table format, with options to preview images stored as Base64 data. The guide also explains how to upload files through a file picker component and a custom query, addressing potential CORS issues that may arise during file uploads. The tutorial highlights the flexibility of Retool in customizing UI interactions with Spaces, providing a practical solution for managing data storage efficiently.

In 2018, over $500 billion in remittances were sent globally, providing crucial support for families of individuals working abroad. Remitly, a global consumer payments platform, simplifies this process by offering services like Remitly for Developers, an enterprise API solution that allows developers to integrate international money transfer capabilities into their apps. To ensure the success of this new product, customer-facing teams needed tools to effectively troubleshoot issues, leading to the implementation of Retool. Ellen Musick, a Senior Software Engineer, played a key role in deploying Retool on Remitly's Kubernetes cluster, enabling customer success agents to access transaction data and resolve errors quickly. The use of Retool has improved customer support, allowed faster product rollout, and enhanced the team’s ability to continually improve their tools, ultimately ensuring that remittances reach recipients securely and efficiently.

React Native map libraries offer numerous options, but after evaluating several, the guide identifies react-native-maps as the top choice due to its popularity, robust community support, frequent updates, and comprehensive documentation. With 115,000 weekly downloads and double the GitHub stars compared to its closest competitor, react-native-maps stands out for its ease of use and active community of 109,000 users and 400 contributors. Its APIs, such as MapView and Marker, allow developers to create customized map implementations. The library's reliability is emphasized by its use in notable applications like Airbnb, demonstrating its capacity to support complex mapping needs. React-native-maps simplifies the development process by providing thorough documentation and ongoing support, making it an attractive option for developers seeking to integrate mapping features into their applications.

Notifications are essential to enhancing the mobile experience by boosting user engagement and retention, but managing notifications across different platforms can be complex. While developers can choose to build their own notification systems, using a library like react-native-push-notification is often more efficient, as it supports both local and push notifications across Android and iOS through a platform-independent approach. This library is favored for its comprehensive documentation, extensive features, and ability to simplify the integration of notifications, despite the inherent complexity of managing different APIs and mechanisms for Android and iOS. Other libraries such as react-native-notifications, react-native-onesignal, and react-native-root-toast offer varying degrees of specialization and platform-specific features, but react-native-push-notification remains the most popular due to its balance of features and support, making it ideal for most React Native applications.

Retool introduces Modules, a new feature designed to enhance the reusability and composability of components and queries across different applications, addressing previous challenges in adhering to programming principles like DRY and composability within its editor. Modules allow developers to create a shared library of reusable components and queries, making updates instantly reflected across all applications they influence, thereby promoting efficiency and reducing the need for duplicated efforts. Drawing parallels to React, Modules enable communication between the parent app and the module through data and query inputs, facilitating organization and customization for complex use cases like admin panels and customer lookup apps. This innovation empowers teams to tailor their Retool applications to specific needs while maintaining a streamlined management process, supporting diverse teams such as support and sales with specialized functionalities. Modules represent a strategic move by Retool to help developers manage an increasing number of high-performing applications, encouraging the creation and use of a library of modules to meet varied operational requirements.

BWH Hotel Group, a leading global hospitality network, is leveraging technology to enhance its operational efficiency, particularly through the use of Retool, a platform for building internal tools. Stephan Zimmer, the Enterprise Analytics and Automation Manager for BWH Hotel Group Scandinavia, has been instrumental in transforming the group into a data-driven business by creating interactive and efficient tools for revenue managers. He replaced cumbersome Excel spreadsheets with dynamic applications that allow real-time data analysis and forecasting, significantly reducing manual workload and enhancing decision-making processes. By implementing Retool, Stephan accelerated the development of these tools, achieving market readiness five times faster than competitors and saving substantial time and costs. His efforts have empowered revenue managers with accurate, interactive data, enabling them to adjust strategies based on real-time insights. The success of these tools has prompted plans for further expansion into finance operations, underscoring the strategic role of technology in differentiating BWH Hotel Group in the hospitality industry.

The article presents an interview with Ken Liu, an Engineering Director at Cockroach Labs, focusing on the company's internal tools and the role they play in enhancing developer productivity. Cockroach Labs, known for its distributed SQL product CockroachDB, has a dedicated team for developing internal tools to address specific needs that off-the-shelf solutions cannot, thereby supporting the rapid growth of their engineering team. Liu discusses the challenges of managing a diverse set of tools, many of which originated as informal projects, and highlights efforts to improve their operational maturity through better logging, monitoring, and alerting systems. The interview also touches on the decision-making process between building in-house tools versus purchasing SaaS solutions, emphasizing the importance of security and efficiency. The company is actively hiring to support its growing needs, particularly in backend engineering and cloud services.