May 2021 Summaries

Jetfuel, co-founded by JJ Maxwell, leverages Retool to enhance its internal tools and streamline operations across various teams, including customer support, creative, and trust and safety. Initially reliant on expensive contractors, Jetfuel needed more flexible and efficient solutions to integrate data and actions. Maxwell discovered Retool, which allowed quick and cost-effective development of critical dashboards and tools, such as a support dashboard and an advertising campaign management tool. These tools enabled Jetfuel's teams to visualize and act on data within the same platform, significantly reducing response times and improving customer service. The adaptability of Retool has allowed Jetfuel to iterate quickly, scale operations efficiently, and support thousands of creators, ultimately accelerating the company's growth and enhancing its service delivery.

Developers reportedly spend a significant portion of their time creating internal tools, with larger companies seeing this figure rise to 45% for developers in enterprises with over 5000 employees. Despite the productivity benefits these tools aim to provide, many developers opt to build custom applications from scratch using popular programming languages and frameworks like JavaScript, React, and Angular, which can be time-consuming. While low-code solutions offer a faster alternative and are favored by those who adopt them, many developers remain hesitant, driven by a sense of pride and the desire for ownership over their work. The article argues that embracing low-code tools could reallocate developer resources towards more innovative, customer-facing projects, suggesting that doing so could prove more cost-effective for businesses while still allowing developers to customize and maintain a sense of ownership over their projects.

Retool has officially launched its developer community to support users in building internal tools, offering various platforms for collaboration and learning. The community includes a Discourse forum for technical discussions and feature requests, a Power Users Slack group for engaged developers to access beta features and share complex apps, and a range of educational resources such as a blog, documentation, and the new Reschool platform for learning Retool from scratch. Additionally, the Developer Network connects developers with businesses seeking contract help, facilitating mutual growth and financial opportunities. The community also encourages sharing projects through social media and features initiatives like an App of The Week contest. Retool's goal is to foster a space where developers can openly share their work, inspiring others while advancing the development of internal tools.

Sentropy, a company specializing in abuse detection to protect online users, leverages machine learning and a predominantly technical team to address severe online harassment, a problem affecting 1 in 3 American adults. Engineer Li Yu and business strategist Laura Gentile exemplify the company's multidisciplinary approach, with Li initially facing challenges in bridging technical and operational workflows, which hindered efficiency and responsiveness to customers. By adopting Retool, a platform that simplifies workflow management and allows non-technical staff to manage customer data independently, Sentropy significantly reduced reliance on engineers for routine tasks, thereby optimizing its sales cycle and enhancing customer service. This shift not only empowered the business team to provide faster and more accurate responses but also allowed engineers to focus on advancing Sentropy's core mission of combating online abuse, thus aligning operational capabilities with its technological goals.

The article highlights the importance of speed as a key factor for success in competitive markets, emphasizing that internal tools play a crucial role in achieving this speed by improving efficiency and enabling growth. It describes how five high-growth startups—Avo, LeadGenius, DoorDash, Neo4j, and Descript—leveraged internal tools, particularly Retool, to streamline operations, reduce technical debt, and empower non-technical teams to manage workflows independently. These startups experienced significant improvements, such as saving engineering hours, cutting costs, and enhancing team productivity, which allowed them to focus more on customer-facing features and adapt to market demands swiftly. The article underscores that building a better "engine," rather than simply accelerating, is essential for overcoming operational challenges and achieving rapid growth.

Plaid, a financial technology company, connects users to over 11,000 financial institutions through a single API, facilitating the integration of apps like Venmo and SoFi with users' bank accounts. Chris O’Neill, who joined Plaid in 2017, played a pivotal role in enhancing the company's customer support capabilities, particularly during a period of rapid growth when the company expanded its customer base and workforce significantly. Faced with the challenge of streamlining support workflows and improving integration visibility, Chris opted to use Retool—a platform that allows for rapid app development without extensive coding—to build internal tools that provided comprehensive insights into integration health. This decision allowed Plaid's support team to quickly adapt to evolving workflows, significantly reducing the time required to develop and iterate new processes. As Plaid continues to grow, Retool remains a critical part of their strategy, enabling faster and more efficient internal operations that support their expanding customer base and product offerings.

Checkboxes in web applications, especially those built with React, provide essential functionality for selecting multiple options, and developers have various tools at their disposal for implementing them. While native React checkboxes can be used for simple applications, styling them is often cumbersome, prompting many developers to turn to libraries like Bootstrap, Material-UI, or specific React components that handle styling and complex functionality better. Different use cases—such as trees of checkboxes, groups of checkboxes, indeterminate checkboxes, or those requiring custom styling—can be addressed by dedicated components like react-checkbox-tree, react-checkbox-group, react-input-checkbox, and pretty-checkbox-react. Developers should first explore whether their existing libraries offer suitable checkbox solutions before considering additional packages, as these specialized components can significantly ease development by reducing boilerplate code, enhancing styling, and ensuring better browser compatibility.

Retool has introduced significant updates to enhance its Markdown capabilities, featuring a revamped Text component and a new App Documentation feature. The redesigned Text component now offers full GitHub Flavored Markdown support, improved image handling, and dynamic height adjustment, making it easier to create visually appealing and functional displays in Retool apps. Meanwhile, the App Documentation feature introduces built-in README files for all apps on the Startup plan or greater, providing a centralized location for sharing project details with collaborators. Additionally, User Documentation support is available for plans with end-user permissions, enabling developers to provide guidance directly to app users. The text also includes an illustrative example of using the new Text component to create a dynamic 5-day weather forecast for San Francisco, demonstrating the integration of live data and Markdown formatting to enhance app presentation.

Financial services companies are leading in the investment and development of internal tools to boost efficiency and resource allocation, as demonstrated by firms like Brex, Ramp, and CommonBond. Brex developed a Template Manager to enable non-technical employees to manage app notifications, thereby freeing engineers to focus on more critical tasks. Ramp uses a centralized dashboard to streamline its underwriting process, allowing for quicker credit limit decisions and improved customer experience. CommonBond created an internal tool to simplify its forbearance process, reducing manual input and enhancing operational efficiency. These examples highlight how internal tools can significantly reduce manual work, improve processes, and reallocate engineering resources to customer-facing features while maintaining security and compliance in the financial sector.

Building forms in React can be done using either pure React and HTML for basic needs or leveraging React form libraries for more complex requirements. Form libraries like Formik, react-hook-form, and react-final-form offer developers a range of features such as data validation, styling, and dynamic rendering to streamline form management. Formik is the most popular due to its ease of use and large community, allowing for custom validation logic and integration with the Yup validation library. React-hook-form, built to utilize React hooks, offers superior performance by minimizing component re-renders, making it ideal for complex forms with multiple interactions, despite some compatibility issues with popular UI libraries. React-final-form, known for its small bundle size and high performance, provides modularity and strong typing, favoring developers who need control over form styling. Ultimately, the choice of form library depends on the specific needs of the project, such as performance requirements, community support, and the desired level of customization.