By Mike Wells
This blog post is broken into two parts. First, I’ll talk about how we used Honeycode to reduce effort, save time, and improve quality of customer inspection for thousands of customers by getting our data out of spreadsheets and into Honeycode. Second, and a bit more technical, I have some open source code that I’d like to share, which can help you integrate your data into your Honeycode application.
Our Story
Managing customer health is a key issue within the support organization. One of the key requirements for understanding customer health is gathering feedback from people in the field and reporting on data from multiple disparate systems. We were managing data in a shared spreadsheet, which filled the need but left a lot to be desired in terms of the user interface (UI), automation of data collection, and the ability to report on the data. We considered developing a traditional web application, but due to time and budget constraints this just wasn’t an option. One of our support engineers found Honeycode and brought it to our attention. With features like drag and drop UI components, familiar tools for creating formulas on backing data, and the ability to create automations, it was the obvious choice for our application.
Honeycode allowed us to quickly aggregate data and build dashboards for Management to understand customer risk and act on it. Through Honeycode’s API and a few quick lambda functions, we were able to build a system that pulls data from several databases and stores them in one centralized repository. This combined data allowed us to evaluate, understand, and review customer risks and document each step along the way. Through Honeycode’s automation and notification powers, we were able to notify key stakeholders in the company when and how risks could be mitigated.
Bonus Open Source Code
In interacting with Honeycode’s API, I saw a need to make integration with our specific domain more robust, so we created an Object Relationship Model builder for Python applications interacting with Honeycode though the APIs. The Honeycode ORM Builder takes in a workbook ID of a Honeycode deployment, and builds a set of classes that map to tables in your Honeycode application.
Integration with outside data sources (in our case Redshift and Salesforce) is made possible already though Honeycode’s APIs. This open source application allows you to simplify and increase readability of your code that’s interacting with Honeycode though the API, and make interacting with your tables extremely intuitive. Simply download the Honeycode ORM Builder and pass it to your workbook as a parameter. A Python class for each of your tables in your Honeycode application will be built for interaction with that data set.
Consider a table similar to the following:
After running the Honeycode ORM Builder with the workbook id found from the Honeycode workbook, a Python file for each table in your workbook is generated for you, allowing you to write code like:
customer = Customers()
customer.petname = "Mr Peepers"
customer.pettype = "rock"
customer.ownername = "JJ Pennell"
customer.save()
batchOperations = CustomersBatchOperations()
customers = batchOperations.listAllRows()
for customer in customers:
print(customer)
The output would look something like:
Customers<petName=Fido,pettype=dog,ownername=Jim Wells>
Customers<petName=Spot,pettype=dog,ownername=Brodie Halvorson>
Customers<petName=Whiskers,pettype=cat,ownername=Alry Adams>
Customers<petName=bubbles,pettype=fish,ownername=Julie Thigpen>
Customers<petName=Mr Peepers,pettype=rock,ownername=JJ Pennell>
Honeycode enabled us to build an application in about 3 weeks, which would have taken months of development work in a traditional web application model. Honeycode allows non-coding members of the team to contribute as part of the “development” team. We’re now taking steps to export the data into S3 and build QuickSight charts, as well as understanding trends using QuickSight’s machine learning (ML) features to predict issues before they happen.
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