By Lesley DeCanio, Chief Revenue Officer
Many of the digital agencies we work with don’t have a backend team. And yet that hasn’t stopped them from building a variety of applications. So how are they getting it done? By using the 8base console, one of the standout features of 8base’s platform.
The 8base console is a secure, easy-to-access web portal that can be accessed from any computer. Its simple graphical user interface (GUI) allows frontend pros and other digital agency staff to create tables (and relationships amongst those tables).
“The 8base console is my agency’s secret weapon. It let us do data entry right out of the gate. It offers full configuration plus gives us control of our data and data structure. The 8base console allows non-technical customers to see and enter data very easily. - Angel Lacret, VP of Product, Cobuild Lab
Data from a Salesforce.com account can even be pulled in via 8base’s Bolt, a single API endpoint that traditionally would have required varied expertise and significant budget to develop and maintain. All of the Salesforce data appears in virtual tables, which can then be customized in the console without impacting how it appears in Salesforce. This includes adding custom fields and files.
Once a workspace has been set-up, 8base’s API Explorer helps your team make use of live production data. The in-browser integrated development environment (IDE) permits the exploration of a workspace’s API, simplifying the task of writing and executing GraphQL queries within that workspace.
“The speed at which you can put together a data model and then change it as you're figuring things out makes the architecture process really fast and accessible. The API Explorer is a game changer — being able to write and test queries on real data in the same place you're creating the database is hugely powerful.” - Luke Rabin, co-founder, BLDR
8base provides the most robust GraphQL-based query language for your API. Open sourced by Facebook in 2015, GraphQL eliminates the need for a frontend team to ask a backend team for new endpoints or changes to existing endpoints. It allows agency staff to build features in real-time and take advantage of advanced query syntax for filtering, full text search, sorting, pagination, groupings, and aggregations.
Setting up a backend with the 8base console doesn’t require much coding expertise either. Those with a cursory knowledge of JavaScript, TypeScript or SQL have told us they’ve been able to set up their application’s backend in about a day.
Should your team need some coaching, we’ve prepared a wide variety of educational materials. Check out the 8base Academy for videos on working with data and the API Explorer, or read up on related topics in the console section of the 8base Docs library. What you’ll learn will change how your agency creates apps from here on out.
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