Land of Zoho Creator

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.