ZC plus Oodle = Zoodle

This is the third post in a series detailing a real-world example of using Zoho Creator as a small business software platform. If you’re interested in catching up, here are the previous posts:

• In How Zoho Creator Can Help My On and Offline Business Pt.1 Mark Galloway detailed his hopes and expectations related to using Zoho Creator as a tool for his small business.
• In Ted vs. Zoho Creator, we introduced Ted the CSR, clarified our assumptions, and showed an unwieldy example form.
• In BuggyRocket Illustrated we sketched out an option for how the BuggyRocket customer service process might work from a high level.

False Assumptions

When we last left Ted, we said the next step was to publish a prototype that would let him enter a customer’s real estate listing and automatically post it to Google Base once it was ready. And a few days later in a tangentially related post about ZCrIS, I mentioned we’d be throwing ZCrIS into the mix of technologies for this case study. As it turns out both of those statements were lies, lies, lies.

We’re actually going to use Oodle instead of Google Base in our example because Oodle’s feed requirements are much simpler, allowing us keep our focus on Zoho Creator instead of Google Base’s API and relatively complex feed requirements. Furthermore we won’t need ZCrIS because as it turns out Oodle will actually come and get our XML feed from us (after we email them to tell them about it), instead of us having to submit it to them. It took a few iterations before this simple approach became apparent but our prototype in its current state is both fairly straightforward and entirely self-contained within a Zoho Creator application.

Meet Zoodle

The current prototype, nicknamed Zoodle, includes a couple unique features:

1. A multi-part form: We break up one long record of real estate listing data into four smaller forms. Contrast this approach with the proto-prototype that implemented one big form.
2. A custom XML feed: Oodle requires its users to submit a feed using its own custom format. We manage to export a feed that matches this format directly from Zoho Creator.

We provided a diagram depicting a high-level take on the BuggyRocket customer service process in an earlier post, but let’s look at a slightly modified version that shows how the Zoodle-to-Oodle interaction fits in:

Zoodle will let Ted enter the listing data he gets from a BuggyRocket customer as it becomes available and only publish it for Oodle to pick up once it’s complete. Other features include:

• Listing detail page: Although it’s not the slickest looking thing in the world, we do manage to provide a “detail page” served directly from Zoodle. We also provide an image URL in the same fashion.
• Private application with some public pages: Ted’s use of Zoodle requires his authentication but the detail page, image URL, and Oodle XML feed are all publicly available on the web.
• Gradual approach to form completion: Through the use of several forms that are attached to the main “Essentials” form, Ted can easily fill out the parts of a real estate listing that he currently has data for and come back to finish the rest at any time before publishing.
• Republishing: Data can be edited, overwritten, and republished at any time.

Given our current understanding of the business need, Zoodle is probably OK as a conversation starter for enabling BuggyRocket’s information system. But we can’t rest on our laurels, Zoodle is only intended as a prototype so Mark can check in with our efforts and see where we need to go from here. Look for Mark’s comments on this very subject in an upcoming post.

Introducing ZCrIS

Zoho Creator Information Services (ZCrIS) is an experimental mail filter intended for Zoho Creator applications that need read/write access to various external web services.

As a trivial example of ZCrIS’ possible uses I’ve created a simple zip code checker for the United States. It’s a public ZC application; a quick look at how it’s put together plus a reminder from ZC Quicktip #1 posted at the end of October should give you some idea of how it’s working.

In essence a Zoho Creator application sends email to ZCrIS@landofzohocreator.com and indirectly reads from or writes to one or more external web services. ZCrIS receives the email your application sends, does your bidding, and sends the response data right back to your application, you guessed it, over email.

Documentation and more plugins will surface if there’s enough interest. Source code for ZCrIS itself is available at googlecode.com.

Please report any bugs and of course feel free to repurpose the basic ZCrIS code for your own particular needs.

Incidentally, for our own purposes we’re going to be using ZCrIS to post some real estate content up to Oodle in the next installment of our BuggyRocket series.

(ZCrIS’ pneumatic message cylinder was rendered at buttongenerator.com)

Finally Getting a Round to It

ZC now supports a rounding function. Great!

Creator, Maps, and Pipes

Technology Made Wicked is a new blog authored by Jynn, a software engineer in Hyderabad. The blog’s maiden post is a nice example on quickly integrating ZC RSS feeds with Google Maps via the Pipes feed processor:

Zoho creator is used to update movie info using the UI or even Bulk upload and Google maps is used to overlay the data.

I also used the cool technology of Yahoo Pipes to basically transform the Feed generated by Zoho Creator.

I’m looking forward to more from Jynn in the way of Zoho Creator mashups. Back in August LoZC posted a similarly brief experiment, sans Pipes and suffering from a somewhat glaring lack of decent street address validation.

Doug on ZC + Texty

Doug is continuing his series on using Zoho Creator JSON feeds as part of a client-side content management system or, more accurately, a content managment system that’s usable by folks who can’t or choose not to write server-side applications. In this latest post he’s building a facility for displaying a dynamic table of contents for pages hosted on sites like Microsoft Office Live Basics :

…if a specific article is requested in the URL (articles.aspx?271), the article will be displayed. If no article is requested (articles.aspx) or a nonexistent article is requested, the user will be shown a Table of Contents…

“Webification”, Brought to You by Open Source

Today LongJump Blog published two posts that together do a nice job of indirectly highlighting the subtle connection we have today between open source and situated web application platforms (SWAPs):

Is Open Source An Option for Small Business?

Because most open source applications are built by unpaid volunteers, bug fixes or complex features are sometimes not a priority. Most small business are better off using a reliable, world-class business application suite they can depend on

Webification and LongJump

…only recently have small businesses began to focus on leveraging web applications to take their business to the next level.

When I first read the post about open source my immediate reaction was to think blatant FUD but on close reading decided it’s a fairly accurate post, at least from the high level and brief attention with which it approaches the subject. Open source does often require relatively complex setup and will frequently exhibit bugs you can’t reliably expect to be fixed in the time you require. The resource limitations typical of small businesses can make these drawbacks particularly unattractive, even more unattractive today as we find more and more business software alternatives appearing in our web browsers.

The cool thing about this trend is that open source undergirds so many facets of the SWAP landscape we survey today. I can’t speak too much about the internal software choices of these companies of course but if you take a look at the web server identifiers of the software delivering your LongJump, Coghead, DabbleDB, and Zoho Creator content to your screen, you’ll see the word Apache staring back at you. And ZC in particular incorporates JFreeChart and javacc into its offering. Doubtless most companies offering a SWAP-like product are incorporating lots of open source software to deliver their functionality.

So while the direct employment of open source has definite drawbacks for small businesses trying to succeed with technology, as more of them gravitate to the applications implemented on a SWAP, they are unknowingly reliant on open source technology perhaps more than ever.

BuggyRocket Illustrated

This is the second post in a series detailing a real-world example of using Zoho Creator as a small business software platform. In the first installment we introduced Ted, clarified our assumptions, and showed an example form.

Sketching out how BuggyRocket will help offline customers post their items online is still preliminary and a bit messy but the effort does help us clarify for Mark and ourselves how we plan on things fitting together. First, a somewhat jumbled diagram:

The customer sees a BuggyRocket print add, remembers he’s trying to sell his house, and calls the 800 number. Then a bunch of stuff happens. Ted takes the call, receives content from the customer, and completes all the data entry (using Zoho Creator). In case you can’t tell that’s Mark in the lower left, keeping tabs on his business and interacting directly with Ted or his customer if needed. Remember, the customer by definition isn’t online so interacting with him or her means going to the phone, fax, or post office.

A simple swim lane diagram hopefully makes the “best case” or “happy path” process more clear:

Starting in the upper left above, the process is triggered when the customer makes the phone call. It completes when the customer’s listing is published online. The sequence transpires something like this:

1. Customer makes phone call
2. CSR notes call/explains product
3. Customer orders product
4. CSR enters order
5. Backend validates/stores order
6. Backend publishes listing

While all that’s going on, at certain steps other observations and conversations are taking place. Mark is monitoring things as he can, Ted reports back status to the customer as requested, etc. It’s a purposefully trivial process at this point: we aren’t illustrating any exceptions or errors, we just want to understand how this thing is supposed to work.

In the next post we’ll get down to the nitty gritty with Zoho Creator by starting work on a system that can help Ted take an order and automatically post something to Google Base.

Zoho …is not a Company.

In addition to giving the service generally high marks, Ancillary Factory had this to say about Zoho Creator:

…pretentious design-tards may have a hard time matching it to their site. And, seriously, how does this company make money?

It’s true that look-and-feel customization is currently not a strong point but given that Ancillary Factory is itself a graphic & web design company the reference to “design-tards” can only be self-deprecating humor.

As for the “make money” question it’s remarkable how many folks automatically assume Zoho is a company when cursory digging finds it simply self-described as an Office Productivity Suite from AdventNet Inc.

From what I can tell it looks like TechCrunch is the main source describing a parent company relationship.

If anyone knows the real deal, please let us know. In any case Zoho is not exactly a struggling startup…