Community applications, building an entire gift card business with No Code, and how to build powerful websites, web apps, and client portals on Airtable, in 10 minutes.
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Today is the day! We are now taking applications for the No Code Ops community Cohort #1. Cohorts will be limited to groups of 10 and applications are reviewed on a first-come, first-serve basis.
What you'll get as a member:
- Learn with and from other world-class No Code Operators from around the globe
- Exclusive group chat with me and all members
- Workshops, fireside chats (featuring some of the world's top operations executives), virtual dinners, mastermind groups, hackathons, and private vendor demos
- Access to platforms and features that aren't yet on the market
- Office hours with experts on different No Code platforms (think Zapier, Airtable, Bubble, etc...)
- Special discounts and offers on No Code platforms
- Sweet No Code Ops swag
- And more...
How much No Code experience do you need to join?
- None. Why's that? The beauty of No Code is that it can be learned FAST. So we are just as interested in people newer to this space joining as we are in experts. We only ask that you are enthusiastic about the promise of No Code and are looking to apply it to operational work.
How much does this cost?
- If accepted into the program, pricing is either $45 USD per month or $450 USD per year.
- Payments start upon the start of the program, however, if accepted, a $45 deposit is required to hold your place. When the program starts you can choose to pay monthly or yearly.
- If you pay monthly, your deposit will cover your first month.
- If you pay yearly, your deposit will be a down payment on the total amount owed.
When does Cohort #1 Start?
- In about 1 month. I will work with the Cohort members to align on orientation dates.
What's required of members?
- Outside of onboarding, most events are optional and/or asynchronous. So it is up to you how much time you put in, but that will also be correlated to how much you get out of the community. Ideally, you have at least 2 hours per week to commit.
Have any questions at all?
- Simply reply to this email or book a time to connect with me here.
- However, as spots will go fast, I recommend that you apply even if you have questions (as no commitment or deposit is required to do so).
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Have you ever:
- Run into the rate limit of a third-party application's API (such as Airtable's limit of 5 requests per minute)?
- Searched for and not found proper logs on third party automation tools?
- Experienced the joy of maintaining the code of APIs you've set up?
- Felt like you needed a Ph.D. to understand complex API documentation?
Well, have I got the tool for you! Meet No Code API. Now you can:
- Use caching technology to avoid rate limits
- Easily find logs, as they are layered on all No Code APIs
- Forget about painting code, just click, click, build!
- Avoid having to go into student debt to learn how to decipher documentation
As this free newsletter is supported by our sponsors, please do support this amazing company and learn more about how you can master APIs (without coding) below.
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No Code Operator Interview |
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Can you describe the problem you aimed to solve with No Code?
Our goal is to introduce a gift card service to the children’s activities sector in the UK, allowing grandparents, aunts and uncles, and family friends to purchase a gift card that can be spent on fun activities by the child.
Tell us about the solution.
The process starts with a family friend or member visiting an app built in Glide. The glide app allows them to find out more about beecard and of course purchase a gift card. We use a 3rd party service called GiftUp to manage all the gift card complexities (purchasing, values, redemptions etc) and we simply include an embeddable widget in our glide app, so that the user can easily purchase a new card. GiftUp integrates with Stripe so all payments are handled by them. Gift cards can be emailed to the child (or their parents), and we are about to introduce a physical card option so they have something to unwrap on their birthday, Christmas, whatever the occasion is.
To use the gift card, the child and their parents can visit the same Glide app and browse a list of classes that support beecard as a payment method. Once they find the class they hit a ‘Book now’ button. We are working on several redemption options to cater to the industry, these include:
- Redemptions via a booking system. We partnered with a leading booking platform in the sector to build an integrated ‘pay with beecard’ option.
- Manual redemption. We built an app in Bubble for suppliers to log in, check card balances and redeem a certain value based on the booking. They can also see a history of beecard purchases for their classes.
- Concierge. This is something we’re exploring, where we provide a Virtual Assistant-like service to make the booking on the customers' behalf.
There is a lot going on behind the scenes too! We use Airtable to keep a record of suppliers we have signed up, redemptions that have been made, etc. This powers a lot of the apps we’ve built and allows us to really quickly experiment with new app experiences.
Stripe and Xero also play a huge part in our solution, to make sure that funds are held in the right accounts and are paid to the right accounts when the balance is redeemed.
Platforms used?
Integromat, Parabola, Bubble, GiftUp API, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Zapier, Trello, Xero, Stripe, Rebrandly, Airtable, Glide, Cloudflare, and ParseHub (just to name a few).
What was the most challenging part of implementation?
In order to attract some integration partners, we developed an API (complete with documentation!). Our goal is to be integrated with many booking platforms and CRMs in the industry so that they can support beecard payments within their systems. We used the Postman documentation tool to help pull that together.
The accounting entries and requirements were challenging. We have to ensure the money sits in the right account at the end of the day, so making sure that all worked and is robust was a big effort.
Return on investment or wins generated thus far?
Ideally, we’d have fully launched and iterated on the solution by now, but with Covid-19 restrictions in place the industry has moved mostly online and we felt it wasn’t the right time to launch our service. Instead, we are focusing on being ready for when in-person classes open back up later this year.
We have over 80 suppliers signed up and ready to use the service when the time is right.
Perhaps the biggest win so far is how effectively we’ve been able to spend the project budget. Using no-code tools has really enabled us to get a full tech infrastructure and customer experience up and running at the fraction of the cost of traditional development methods.
Advice to other No Code Operators looking to implement a similar solution?
This was very much an “Ops First” (I just invented that) project, with the various apps being fairly small and just surfacing some of the data.
From an Ops perspective, we had to make sure that the main parts of the solution all interacted correctly for each business event (card purchase, card redemption). Only then could we build the apps.
Certainly, before diving into Zapier we would suggest looking at your toolset to see if it will do something natively.
Web scraping is HARD (and expensive) so have something in your back pocket if you intend to do that. The learning curve is steep.
Refactor your Zaps!
Don’t pick an Integration tool favorite. Zapier, Integromat, and Parabola all have distinct roles in beecard. They overlap in some cases, but not all.
Connect with Nigel and Dan on Twitter
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Elevator Pitch:
Softr is a no-code platform to build powerful websites, web apps, and client portals on Airtable, in 10 minutes. With Softr, you can build dynamic web-apps like Listings, Memberships, Events Directory, Online Courses, Online Communities, E-Commerce, Job Boards, Upvoting Sites, Services Marketplace, Client Portals, and more.
Softr is perfect for...
makers and companies.
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"Aha! Moment" Demo Video with Softr |
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Articles:
- The No-Code Revolution: 5 Industries That Will Win Big The year 2020 tested the mettle of countless businesses and industries, but those who were able to stay afloat had one thing in common: the ability to adapt to an increasingly digitized world by embracing future-facing technology.
- How Automation & Low Code/No Code Platforms Help Power our Lives: 4 Trends Driving Adoption It’s time to retire the phrase “The robots are coming”—the robots are already here. Almost three centuries after the first Industrial Revolution liberated human workers from tedious physical labor, the automation revolution has now arrived for knowledge workers. At the forefront of this transformation is a new class of innovators popularly known as “low-code/no-code” (LCNC) platforms.
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No Code Job Spotlight:
Okta is hiring a Workflows Builder Advocate
Imagine being able to build complex automation, without having to write or deploy code. That’s Okta Workflows, our no-code platform.
The goal of Workflows is to automate identity-centric processes (like the onboarding and offboarding of employees in different applications), all in a visual, drag and drop interface. As the fastest growing product at Okta, we’ve seen incredible success, and we are looking for great teammates to join a cross-functional team tasked with driving adoption of Okta’s Workflows product.
Firstly, you’ll be responsible for engaging directly with customers and helping them successfully deploy a no-code platform for identity-centric use cases. Second, you’ll help us create a wealth of content (tutorials, samples, YouTube videos) that will help us scale our adoption efforts. Lastly, as the internal Workflows expert, you’ll help enable and support the extended Okta team to make sure they understand how to use a complex and powerful platform.
If you enjoy working with customers and want to help drive the success of a powerful no-code automation platform, then this is the perfect opportunity for you.
Job Duties and Responsibilities:
- Within Okta be the Workflows subject matter expert and champion customer needs and priorities across product, engineering, and marketing.
- Organize and host customer-facing webinars and 1:1 virtual office hours to help customers build, optimize, or troubleshoot their Workflows, answer technical and product-related questions, discuss the viability of use cases, and demonstrate product functionality and common use cases.
- Host internal office hours for colleagues from Sales, Customer First, Support, etc. to validate use cases, optimize and debug flows, discuss product roadmap, etc.
- Help to monitor and answer questions on internal Workflows-related Slack channels.
- Participate in and contribute to Workflows “Community” sites and programs.
- Create interesting educational content in a variety of different formats: sample Workflow “Templates”, articles, YouTube videos, etc.
- Develop materials such as lab guides and deliver training to other internal teams.
Required Skills:
- BA/BS/MS in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or equivalent work experience.
- 5+ years in pre-sales engineering, technical support, IT, or similar technical field.
- Experience working with cloud applications.
- Familiarity with major cloud application APIs is a bonus (Google, MS Graph API, Salesforce, ServiceNow, etc.).
- Experience working with Identity and Access Management solutions for internal workforce and external customer identities preferred.
- Experience automating business processes via code, scripts, or an IPaaS solution.
- Experience with no-code solutions such as Okta Workflows, Azuqua, BetterCloud, Tray.io, Zapier, etc. is preferred.
- Ability to conceptualize and model IFTTT-like workflows.
- Working knowledge of modern authentication standards (OAuth 2.0, OIDC).
- Experience consuming REST APIs using scripts, code, or Postman.
- Experience conducting discovery workshops to derive customer requirements, specifications, and business processes.
- Experience in working with various groups internally – sales engineering, professional services, technical marketing, product management, and product marketing.
- Comfortable presenting to and delivering technical training to large groups.
- An ability to quickly communicate complex ideas around a technical topic to audiences with varying levels of technical expertise.
Apply Here
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And that's all, folks! See y'all on Thursday, February 25th.
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Cheers, |
Philip Lakin
founder
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