Think fast
Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.
Top 7 Rapid Application Development Tools for 2025
Choosing the right rapid application development tools for your team is a tricky prospect. Most software procurement decisions come down to finding the most cost-effective way to perform a specific task. RAD is a little bit different. It’s not so much concerned with what you do, as how you do it. So, yes, RAD tools enable your development team to build software solutions, but more importantly, they allow them to do it quickly.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 19, 2024
How to Send Form Data to an API in 4 Steps
Populating API requests is one of the most basic, universal use cases for web forms. However, building forms to do this manually can be a laborious, time-consuming process. It’s also beyond the skills of most non-developers. But there is a better way. Today, we’re checking how Budibase can be used to send form data to APIs. Specifically, we’re going to see how we can create and store dynamic REST requests, along with custom UIs, to populate them in a matter of minutes.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 19, 2024
How to Create Form Validation Rules
Form validation is essential to the accuracy, integrity, and consistency of our data. It’s also one of the key ways that we can enhance user experiences around data entry and management workflows. These enable our form UIs to check that submissions comply with any rules that we have as part of our data model - as well as giving feedback to users where submitted values aren’t acceptable. However, implementing this can present some pretty serious challenges.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 15, 2024
How to Send Form Data to JSON: 4 Methods
Web forms are some of the most basic applications around. But the value we get from them really depends on what we can do with the data we gather. Most form builders are kind of limited in this regard - largely restricting us to their built-in databases. We can also go down the route of building fully custom forms. This provides greater flexibility, but it also requires a lot more from us in terms of time, effort, and expertise.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 14, 2024
How to Build a Client Intake Form
Intake forms are a critical part of the client onboarding process. At the most basic level, we need to ensure that the correct information is gathered at the outset of new projects. Even more importantly though, we need to gather and store data in such a way that we can use it within follow-on workflows, without compromising security. Today, we’re going to see how Budibase empowers teams to build advanced forms on top of just about any data source.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 12, 2024
How to Build Conditional Logic Forms + 5 Examples
Implementing conditional logic is one of the most common ways to make our form tools more effective. On the one hand, conditionality enhances user experiences. More importantly, though, it helps us to gather the right information - even when this varies from case to case. Today, we’re checking out how Budibase makes building conditional logic forms a breeze. Specifically, we’re going to look at how we can build five of the most common use cases for conditional forms using our open-source, low-code platform.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 12, 2024
How to Build an IT Request Form
IT teams rely heavily on request forms for delivering services to colleagues. For instance, support ticketing, equipment checkout workflows, incident reporting, or a whole host of other workflows. The goal - first of all - is to gather the information we need in a consistent structure and format. This can then be used for categorizing, prioritizing, delegating, and ultimately actioning requests. Today, we’re exploring how Budibase empowers teams to build secure, advanced forms for all sorts of request workflows.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 7, 2024
How to Build an Embeddable Contact Information Form
Contact information forms are probably the most common data collection tools around. They’re everywhere - whether as embedded UIs or standalone apps. In fact, just about every business needs to build contact forms - for their customers, users, colleagues, or other stakeholders. However, not all contact forms are equal. Most web forms are either built manually with HTML or using traditional form-builder tools. We can create perfectly functional forms this way, but these methods also leave a lot to be desired.
Ronan McQuillan
Feb 6, 2024