I'm looking for a solution to help me do calendar management in my system (something like Calendar as a Service).
Some of the features that I would need are
Ability to create a calendar for every user in my system.
Allow everyone to set their availability and Off Days. They should also be able to change the availability for a specific day.
Ability for the system to book a timeslot on any of the user's calendars.
Ability to check conflicts before booking a slot.
Ability to get notified via Webhooks whenever someone cancels the already booked slots.
I don't need a UI. I can use any readily available Calendar UI Component. All I need is a service that can provide APIs to manage multiple calendars (one of each user in my system).
I've explored Calendly, but it requires every user within my system to have an account on Calendly as well. So it's not going to work for me.
Currently, I'm exploring Calendso, but I would appreciate it if you could share any other services you are familiar with that I should explore for this use case.
Related
We are developing an application for our customer that helps businesses to effectively plan and track their business changes.
Our application has three core elements, creating initiatives, capture their impacts and defining their actions.
One of the requirement in our product is for the stakeholders of these initiatives to be able to communicate with each other on these initiatives. So be able to like the initiatives, put comments, mention other users, notify each other when an action was taken and so on.
We are evaluating GetStream for this requirement and trying to understand if it best fits into our requirement or not.
We have spent enough time reading the GetStream REST documentation, the core concepts of how feeds and activities are designed. From initial understanding it looks as if the activities are tightly coupled to a user's feed or timeline vs what we need is to be able to add activities against the Initiatives and have multiple users communicate on the same initiative.
Our frontend is built in ReactJs, we have spent about 2-3 days evaluating react-activity-feed package.
We need help to understand if GetStream best fits to our model or not.
Appreciate all the help. Looking forward to a response.
This is a use case that Stream feeds are well fitted for. They are very customizable. It sounds like if you're using React then you'll need to ask us to make one of your groups global read or read/write. This will decouple the feed from being tied to one user and anyone can read or write to it. Email me at support#getstream with your AppID and the feed group which you'd like to change, along with whether you'd like to be read or read/write when the time comes and I can do this for you.
Best,
Stephen
I'm working for a startup and we have a customer who uses Demandware for their online store.
Our company provides vouchers which are worth a specific amount of money. So customers on the retail site can enter the voucher number near the end of the checkout experience and if it's worth, say, 10 dollars, their shopping cart is updated (-10).
I have the CTO saying we just need to "drop a few lines of javascript" onto the retailer online store. But I think this requires a Demandware plugin (especially updating a shopping cart), which involves signing up for a developer or partnership account (which takes some time), learning Demand Script and building the plugin, then releasing it to Saleforce's app store. Am I correct? Is this the only way to achieve this?
Just to be clear, the functionality is: the voucher code box needs to take a voucher number, an API request is made to our service to check what it's worth, then update the cart.
That's a pretty broad question but I'll try to explain.
First off, Demandware has gone all JavaScript.
But yeah, it has a huge API so the process sounds about right the way you've described it.
Ask your client whether they have a service integrator they're working with, because that would be their job. Your job would be to provide an API so that Demandware can check whether the voucher code is valid.
Demandware is a closed community so it's unlikely to learn it unless you're working in a company that is doing Demandware development.
Oh, and if it somehow ends up being your job to develop this, a tip from me - you probably need to get access to their site's files and use the LineItemCtnr class to createPriceAdjustment() :)
The first tip from me is that Demandware got bought by Salesforce and is now branded as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, so if you hear either, they are the same thing.
You are right that you are going to have to work with Salesforce to get going. They are a cloud provider and there is no self-hosted version of the platform, so in order to do any development, you need to have a relationship with them.
So then it depends on how you get access. If the client has any sandbox environments they are willing to share with you, you could do this as a custom build working in their environment, modifying cart code to make the service call as you ask and as the previous response suggests. But then (depending on the terms you have with the client) your company may or may not be able to reuse that code for other clients. You will also have to work with them to get that integrated into their existing site, get it deployed through their processes, etc.
If you want to write something that other Commerce Cloud clients could use, then you should set up your own partner relationship with Salesforce and get a software package they call a cartridge to what they call their LINK marketplace, which is basically a big clearinghouse of integrations like yours.
Technology-wise, the platform has gone through some changes recently, going from an XML-based GUI tool to specify business logic to using CommonJS scripts to define them. If your client is a new client within the last year or two they probably have this new fully javascript implementation, but if they are an older client than that they may be using the old way, which has a steeper (read: more proprietary) learning curve.
I have gone through the documentations of Bonita and read a book about it. I have also watched almost all the tutorials offered by bonita on YouTube. However, the software limitations are not clear to me yet.
The company that I work for, a consultancy company, wants to use bonitasoft to manage its enterprise resources.
Examples of tasks that we want to implement :
Vacation planning for our employees (This a task so it is easy to
implement with Bonita)
Finance management and generating bills. (This is not a task. I need
to link a consultant to a contract and a client. Finally, generate a
bill at the end of each month)
Manage how bonuses are attributed to different consultants. This
depends on their performance. (Not a task)
Consultants should be able to see their history and how long they
worked for a given client and how much money they have brought in.
(Not a task)
Managing job applications. (Applications and uploaded files like C.Vs
and cover letters).
I was not able to find any demo website made by bonita to see if people tried to build an ERP system based on bonitasoft. Is this possible?
I think that it should be possible to create a form and modify it using JavaScript to implement a non-task functionality.
Is this considered as hack?
Are other people using bonita this way or not?
Also is implementing non-taskfunctionality possible using widgets (HTML, JAVASCRIPT and maybe an external webservice)?
Bonita BPM is a process-based application platform. I'm highlighting the process part of it here as this is a key concept in the platform.
Basically, the business logic part of any Bonita application is designed using a BPM (Business Process Management) approach. You design a process that represent your business logic and implement its behavior by coding business rules, data processing, integration with third-party systems and so on.
Then once, the business logic is implemented, you can build reports that will display to the end-user the data resulting from the execution of the different processes.
If we take the examples you gave:
Vacation planning for our employees (This a task so it is easy to implement with Bonita)
Typically handle by a process.
Finance management and generating bills. (This is not a task. I need to link a consultant to a contract and a client. Finally, generate a bill at the end of each month)
Can be handle by a process. The finance manager will have initiate the generation of a new bill from the application. But really, in the backend, it will trigger a new case (process instance), then follow all the steps down to the generation of the bill.
Manage how bonuses are attributed to different consultants. This depends on their performance. (Not a task)
You're right, not typically process based. Maybe just entering the bonuses value in a DB. If there are business rules associated to the calculation of the bonuses, it could be handled by a process.
Consultants should be able to see their history and how long they worked for a given client and how much money they have brought in. (Not a task)
Should be a report pulling data from an external DB or the Bonita DB.
Managing job applications. (Applications and uploaded files like C.Vs and cover letters).
Typically process-based.
So the short answer is yes, Bonita can be used to build this kind of application.
I'm just looking into Dreamfactory, and it seems to me that all permission-logic is to be done by the client.
I want to develop an app with documents, and not all users are allowed to edit all documents. If the logged in user has permissions to the database, how can I prevent that user from making false API calls that delete or modify someone elses document ?
While your observation is correct, the app must control access, we do offer a couple features that will solve your problem.
First off, the roles system is very flexible. You could create different roles, reader, writer, admin, etc. And assign them to the corresponding users. This can be done today.
Secondly, we will be releasing an update in the next few weeks that has several new features, one of which, will also solve your dilemma. I'm not 100% sure what it is going to be named, but it will allow you to have the system automatically inject runtime data (I.e. user ID) into REST service calls to the DSP. Very flexible and powerful.
More information and doc will be available with the release so hold on a tad and we'll get you there!
The upcoming release at the end of the month lets you do a server side filter, or use server side scripting to lock a user to modifying only their own records, or those you see fit.
Ok, so about a year ago I wrote a web app that helps organize appointments for my dads company. He now "couldn't do business without it". I have decided that I want to build a SAAS subscription model out of it and open it up to the public.
It's currently built on codeigniter and php which I do not think is a good fit for a SAAS version. I am planning on rebuiling it from scratch in laravel 4 and using stripe as a payment gateway.
My concern is how best to handle the database / application structure for more than one client. Currently, it just serves the one business and is very un-abstract and is specific to my dads companies needs. I need it to be able to handle different data depending on what the business who uses it does.
I have looked into multi-tenancy but i'm not sure this is right for this. I am thinking that a 'gmail' style approach would be better. One app / domain that after login the user will see their customised dashboard and only their data.
Before I get stuck in with the coding I need to work out how best to handle multiple 'accounts' on the one database. I do not want to create a table for each user, nor a database for each user.
I guess my question is can anybody point me in the right direction for how best to handle a monthly payment subscription in Laravel? It's not so much the code that I'm stuggling with, rather what exactly I would need to build to handle charging the customer each month and denying them access if billing failed etc.
Thanks
You are in for a lot of reading and a ton of work!
First of all, let's completely ignore the billing aspect of this for now — at the end of the day that portion of the application is really fairly trivial. Take a page out of 37signals Rework (page 93 and 94) and launch your product with a 30 day free trial before you even begin implementing it (you should know how to implement it by then).
Second, why do you think that "gmail" doesn't use multi-tenancy, URI structure tells nothing about the underlying database structure. I'm fairly confident they aren't cloning a database schema for every one of their customers. Therefore you've probably answered your own question — you want to implement multi-tenancy.
You're going to want to abstract your database (and application architecture), and honestly there is no better resource to help you on your way to doing that than Taylor Otwell's (creator of Laravel) book Laravel: From Apprentice To Artisan. His book is not for beginners, and by the time you're done reading it you should probably be able to answer this question for yourself.
You are not going to be creating a table or a database for each user, you aren't even going to be creating one for each organization. Instead you'll be creating abstract database structure in code, which will pull your users data out of the database.
Think about checking for permission to access an organization as another layer of user authentication. On every request you'll be checking to see if that user can access a particular organization. You'll likely also check to ensure that organization is still active (did it expire because they didn't pay?) this will again happen on every request and likely with a filter within laravel.
This really leads to the next very important factor of developing a SaaS application.
I don't know about you, but I'm paranoid, and I couldn't sleep well at night if I wasn't sure that user number 4506 couldn't see the data of an organization that he doesn't belong to. The only really good way to ensure this is through unit testing, which I'd highly suggest learning if you haven't already.
The best way to do this within Laravel 4 is to read Jeffrey Way's book Laravel Testing Decoded. This book is extremely advanced, but still easy to understand if you have a good grasp of the fundamentals.
Last but not least, the number one thing is get involved in the community — the easiest way I'd suggest doing that is idling on the #laravel IRC channel (freenode). Ask some questions, maybe answer some questions, everyone in the channel is very nice and responsive.
You are definitely in for an adventure, don't be afraid to ask questions and make mistakes. Good luck.
As a rough overview, I would have a clients table, and a subscriptions table. Any other data that needs storing such as contacts, or appointments, can be associated using foreign keys to the client table.
In laravel, you can use the ORM to get the currently logged in client, and then through a relationship, fetch appointments and contacts belonging to them.
There are some useful tools for laravel at cartalyst.com, including sentry and sentry-social for user auth, and integrating user accounts with facebook/google/twitter, etc.
Stripe will allow you to configure recurring payments, and will notify you via web hooks each time there is a payment attempt. you can log these in the payments table, and associate them with a user/client. you can use this to keep track of who has paid, and how recently.
Also, bear in mind that you may not want to cancel the account immediately on failed payment.
Stripe will reattempt, and it may be that your best response is after it is two or three days late, or you get an invalid card notification,to get in touch with the client and prompt them to update their payment details.
It may also be an opportunity to check when they last logged in.
If it was over a month ago you can credit them with a free month, and remind them of how much your app can do for them.
By doing this, you may be able to get people to continue using (and paying) for something they had forgotten they had subscribed to.