The state of Washington is investing $180 million to build a new data center.  The new facility will also serve as the for the state’s Information Services division.  Whilst no one knows why exactly this decision was taken and with cloud computing on the rise, my thoughts immediately went to Apsona’s flexible architecture.

Apsona can be hosted in the cloud. Most users are going in for hosted solutions  these days. Cloud computing is certainly on the rise.  With Apsona a user can set himself up in a few hours. All he requires is an internet connection and a browser. He can import his data and start enjoying the benefits of the application immediately.

Yet, Apsona’s development team also  kept in mind users who are still wary of cloud computing. Security and outage issues are still concerns for many. So to cater to this segment, the design choice is such that users can install Apsona behind a firewall. So the data now resides on the user’s server and not in the cloud. This feature is not offered by most hosted applications. Even better, a user can start of using Apsona hosted and later decide can have it installed on his server.

True portability anyway you want it. Either way the user is the winner!

In version 1, Apsona had multi table reporting with visualizations like bar charts and matrices. Now, the application also has calculated fields in reports. The calculated fields are based on javascript.

Example: : $r['Final Selling Price']+$r['Shipping Price']-$r['Landed Cost Price']-$r['Shipping Cost']

To use the feature:

* Click the add column drop down in the report wizard and choose the field calculated value.
* Change the column name for the field to match the calculation. Example: Profit or totals and so on.
* In the calculation box enter the calculation. Syntax for the fields are : $r['fieldname']. The field name should be the exactly the same as chosen for the report.
* Choose the result type of the calculated field from the drop down, depending on the data type you want the calculated field to render.
* Click OK. Save and run the report and the report will have the calculated value.

Since the calculated fields are javascript based , users can now run complex reports with ease . Dependence on IT teams is a thing of the past, and quick, fancy reports can be run in minutes.

Try Apsona reporting  and experience its power. Feedback will be welcomed.

A web developer friend of mine, was giving me her feedback on Apsona and she used the words, ” I liked the elegant report mechanism in Apsona”.  For some reason I have always associated elegance with a dress or a setting not in an application. When I think of Apsona’s reporting,  it was always associated with the words: powerful, instantaneous, viualization, business intelligence and so on. So lets look at Apsona’s reporting  with hopefully a  touch of elegance.

Apsona can host tables and link tables with fields called reference fields. So for a business that uses spread sheets for their data management, and  have to run regular reports, Apsona can be very handy. Basically import data for the tables which have no dependencies first and then import data for the tables which  are dependant and link the tables with reference fields  and run reports of them.

The  report building process is also very simple. To create a report, click  on reports found under each table heading. Once in the reports page click on New and the report wizard opens. There are two tabs, the layout tab and the filter terms tab.  Give the report a name and click the ‘Add column’ in the layout tab. All the fields of the table drop down. If you scroll down the list of fields, you will see all the fields of the related tables as well. Click on the fields you want for the report. Once the fields are selected, with the drag and drop capability you can rearrange fields around. You can also choose to edit field names  just for the report. Click on filter terms to add any filter criteria for the report and then click Save &  run button. The report renders instantly. The data is now seen in a tabular format. So a report created with fields from multi tables, an array  of different data types and filter criteria can be built in seconds. Apsona has calculated field which can give counts, sum, totals and average. Complex formulae can be applied to the report using javascript. Mathematical elegance!

The newly created  report  can now be visualized  in  different ways. You can choose to see data in a calendar view, a  matrix, a bar chart or even groups.

So for example, let’s say you want to see all your opportunties closing by dates in a particular month, the calendar view is perfect for such data. All you have to do is click on visualize and select the calendar view. Select a date field value and a label field value. Click month grid or vertically stacked if you prefer to see your data vertically stacked . Once you click OK  the data can be visualized so differently.  Similarly, if you want to see a report of all your clients grouped by the different  insurance plans  you offer,  choose the Grouping option for the visualization.

Call it visual design or elegance crunching data suddenly seems so much fun. Try it out and let me know your views.

Till next time, Adios!

Apsona’s version 1 is just being launched. At our weekly team meeting, we realise that Apsona’s documentation needs to be updated. So I take up this task, thinking  it is an easy one, version 1 after all, right?  One week has passed and I am working heads down documenting  Apsona’s features.  I am far from done. Version 1 sure is loaded already. As I plow through all the features, I marvel at the application’s many facets. I decided to take a break from my documentation and share some of my thoughts.

My first impression is that Apsona has a super easy-to-use user interface (UI).  The UI is clean, no flashy colors and no over-the-top usage of icons. (I just think some apps have so many icons in the name of  ‘eye candy’ that it actually confuses the user.)  At present there are three different views for data records:  list, tabular and calendar view. Switching between views is simple as all appear one below the other under the table’s heading.

The list view is a two pane design.  A left pane which can have 2 or 3 fields columns and a right pane which shows all the fields in a data record, basically all the details to a record. Sections can be added in the right pane through an edit layout drag-and-drop feature. Thereby, you can make a section for the different phone numbers, a section for addresses and so on. Editing of data is done inline, right there. No page refreshes when you edit and save  data  and no losing context. Should you navigate from one table to another, the former table remembers the record you were working with–it stays highlighted. For someone forgetful like me,  it is a great feature to have.

The tabular view has a totally different look  and feel from the list view. It has data records with about 8 fields columns. You can choose to change the layout of the fields. Click on columns found on the top right of the page. A  box opens right there with the available fields in the left and the selected fields on the right. If you want to see a field simply drag it from the available fields box and drop it to the selected fields box. Click apply and you have your new field or fields in view. Apsona’s technology of JavaScript and Ajax on the front end makes for a great user experience and shows up in such areas. Again editing of data is done inline, just as in the list view. The color of the rows containing data records alternate between white and a pleasant blue. Very easy on the eye.

The calendar view was another new experience which I find extremely innovative. Click on a date field  and choose a month and year of a table and you see records which are related to the selected month. So you can see for example, all invoices to be sent for a particular month by date. Amazing!

I can go on and on but I will stop at the different views in Apsona’s version 1 and I better get back to my documentation before I lose context.

Try out Apsona and I hope you enjoy the user experience as much as I did. Till next time, Adios!

The primary focus of Apsona is its user. A smooth and easy user experience is a cornerstone of Apsona’s design.

The first aspect of the design is simplicity. We wanted to provide powerful functionality, but tried at every design step to keep things simple for the user. For example, creating a cash flow forecast report by week or month can be done in seconds. Selecting  as fields, Possible close date, Potential values:Sum and Opportunity ID count from an Opportunities table generates a report in a second. This raw data can now be interpreted for a clearer picture with Apsona’s Visualization feature in a couple of seconds. The visualization allows the user to flip between the week forecast to the  month forecast with just a click. Multi-table reporting and filtering of data is also very simple and easy with Apsona.

A second design aspect is consistency, also thought of as the principle of least surprise. The idea is to not surprise the user: once she has learned a concept in one part of the system,  she will find it far easier to learn if that concept is presented the same way everywhere else. For example, the drag and drop of fields feature feels the same whether it is used in the edit field layout, in the tabular view layout or in rearranging fields when creating a report. Similarly creating of filters, advanced search and the using of filters in reports give the user a feeling of deja vu and the learning curve is lessened.

A third aspect of the user-focused design is the choice of technologies to support it.  Apsona makes heavy use of  JavaScript and AJAX on the front end. So the browser’s and local computer’s capabilities are much better utilized, with far fewer data requests to the server. Less trips to the server makes for faster response time. This technique is widely used in many Rich Internet Applications (RIA) .

Finally, there is the melding of all aspects in the smoothest possible fashion. An example is the importing of data in Apsona, consistently using the same import wizard component for both import and update for all tables. The import  happens in three simple steps. Step 1 is pasting data, step 2 is validation of data and step 3 is the import. Steps 1 and 2 happen entirely on the client side and only at step 3 is there a trip to the server, and this is where the technology choice plays its role.

The first phase of Apsona’s development is now complete, and we would love for you to try out Apsona. User experience, comments and suggestions are welcome. We are curious about what features would be of most use to you. We are preparing a road map, but users’ wants are Priority One for the Apsona team.

Try out Apsona and we await your ideas and views. Happy app making.

Apsona is an application for creating online databases very rapidly. Starting with a data source (typically a CSV file), it lets you create the database and maintain relationships among the data records, while providing an easy-to-use UI. This also enables easy querying and reporting off the data.

Apsona makes very few assumptions about the data — it is driven completely by the metadata (information about the names and types of your data fields). So you can use it for creating a wide range of custom systems, ranging from simple lead management to insurance, real estate, project management and CRM.

When creating an Apsona application, you typically start with CSV data, but not necessarily so. It is possible to customize an Apsona application to use your own database for its back end. With this approach, you can “bolt on” the Apsona user interface and feature set on any database. You can even create multiple Apsona applications, all of which talk to one database — for instance, your operations personnel can see a detailed user interface while your executives can see a summary.

Apsona’s technology is JavaScript and Ajax on the front end, and a pure JSON data service on the back end. The Ajax front end makes it responsive enough to give it a desktop-like feel, while the JSON back end enables web services to be built around it very easily. The back end is implemented using Rhino, a JavaScript interpreter that runs inside the Java virtual machine.