Customer Interview: Hayton College

In this latest customer interview Matthew Rowe tells us about all of the interesting ways Rollbase is being put to use at Hayton College in Australia to do things that historically required bulkier ERP systems such as PeopleSoft:

Rollbase: What kind of organization is Hayton College Pty Ltd?

Matt: Hayton College is a private college that provides training to the travel and tourism industry. Established in Australia in 1976, we are now an online-only educator with students all around the world.

Rollbase: What kind of applications are you building using Rollbase?

Matt: As a training college, management of student records is a big issue for us. Our students' results need to be stored for 30 years by legislation, but in practicality that means we design our systems to store them permanently. We still have students we trained decades ago contacting us for copies of results or Certificates, so we need to be able to retrieve them easily.

The first application we developed, then, was to rebuild our student database in Rollbase - storing enrollments, grades etc.

We looked at other areas where Rollbase could help, and one of the simplest ones was to manage the initial sales enquiry process.  While most of this process is handled by our trainers over email or the phone, a Rollbase portal on our website captures the initial enquiry - creates a sales lead, notifies a trainer, and then uses workflow to track the process.

We have big plans for our Rollbase apps - we're building a series of templated communications at the moment to manage everything from student support to invoices, and plan to integrate Rollbase with our learning management system to automate enrollments and grade transfers. The main feature we're looking forward to rolling out is a full student portal for them to access their details.  While many university students might be familiar with student portals from Peoplesoft or the like, this type of functionality just hasn't been available to organisations our size in the past.

Rollbase: What kind of applications were you using before Rollbase?

Matt: An inefficient mix of Excel spreadsheets, Access databases and hard copies.

Rollbase: What problems did you face that caused you to look for a platform like Rollbase? Did Rollbase solve these problems?

Matt: Hayton College operates largely as a virtual corporation - our staff are distributed, and our plans for international expansion make traditional systems difficult to implement reliably and securely.  We are too small for a traditional ERP system, or even a web-based open source one.  The cost of customisation and implementation, and then the cost to support ongoing was always too high. The ease of customisation of Rollbase and the price were the main selling points for us. I could (reasonably) quickly build the apps we needed without development resources, and our staff can access the systems worldwide.

Rollbase: What are your favorite Rollbase features?

Matt: There are many.  The ease of building objects and the relationships between them; portals; workflow; templates and integration codes; the ability to customise pretty much everything.

Rollbase: What features would you like to see Rollbase add to it's platform?

Matt: There are many features we'd like to see: use of our own domain names; built-in multi-currency support; a "development environment" to make changes to the applications and then roll out only when it's complete.  It has been a problem for us at the moment that we're designing and experimenting with new features on "production" applications and live data.  This means we probably haven't pushed the system as far as it could go for us, and it also means we've had to keep running our old systems in parallel as backup. Of course - we knew when we purchased that the system was still in beta.

The other big feature group we'd like to see added would be financials and accounting.

Rollbase: Would you recommend Rollbase to a friend or colleague in your own personal network?

Matt: Absolutely!  Aside from being a fantastic product, the support we've received from Rollbase has been amazing.  Ricardo and Matt in particular have gone out of their way - it's obvious that this is a company that understands its clients' needs, and does what it can to help them.

We have a lot of faith in the product and the team, and we hope to be there when Rollbase IPOs to say we were there from the beginning!

All the best,

Matt & the team at Hayton College

New Platform Features This Week

Over the past few days we've deployed another batch of powerful new features (as usual, contact us for more details until we step back from R&D to update our docs). Some of this week's new features include:

HTML template based Reports
Now you can build sophisticated, highly customized HTML document template based reports using merge fields and the standard Rollbase token syntax to generate professional looking results including tabular data as well as totals, averages, percentages, etc. When an HTML report is run it can be dynamically filtered and popped out into a separate window for easy printing. We will soon be showing examples of this powerful functionality in the form of videos and new website content.

Ability to publish Roles with applications
Rollbase now allows you to attach any number of Roles to be published with your applications. In many cases applications are designed with a very specific target audience in mind, such as HR Managers and Recruiters. It is therefore quite useful to be able to predefine Roles and all related out-of-the-box application permissions, and then publish those Roles as part of the applications they are used in.

Ability to mark Questions as publishable with applications
Now that Rollbase provides a flexible framework for questionnaires via the new "Survey" and "Survey Taker" attributes, we quickly found that it would be very useful to deliver a default set of Questions with any Survey object when it is published. For example, a Requisition object representing job openings might come with a pre-defined library of 20 to 30 questions of different types that recruiters and hiring managers could draw from when setting up questionnaires for applicants.

Ability to publish object records with applications
Also new as of this week is the ability to mark specific object records as "Seed Records" which will be published and installed as part of any application the object is used in. This is quite useful when you want to include seed or sample data with your published applications. (Note that only Rollbase Support representatives can mark object records as seed records so please contact us to accomplish this before publishing your app; we purposely implemented this limitation to prevent the publishing of oversized applications.)

New "Time" field allowing selection of a Time value
A new field type called Time is now available allowing users to select a time value. This field consists of two small adjacent picklsists allowing selection of an hour and minute value. The available hours will vary based on the user's date format preferences. (Note that Time field values are not treated like Date and Date/Time values with respect to automatic time-zone adjustments. Because there is no day component, it is not practical to adjust Time fields to the current user's time zone. Keep this in mind when deciding whether or not to use the Time field type.)

A Plethora of New Features

Over the past few weeks we've been very busy wrapping up a large number of new platform features. Below are summaries of some of the more significant items we've deployed recently, although not a comprehensive list. Until  we have time to update documentation and record a new set of Rollbase videos, please contact us if you need help diving into any of these features:

• Sequential and Parallel Approval Processes
• Online Surveys, Survey Takers, Questions Library and Ranking
• Multi-Column Page Layouts
• Tabs in View Pages
• Posting Records to Portals
• Mass Upload (Import and Parse Documents)
• Unique Indexes
• Dynamic View Filtering
• Detailed Search Component
• Grid Edit Component
• Filtering by Related Fields
• Ability to Filter by Viewed/UnViewed and Flagged/Unflagged
• ZIP Code Radius Search
• Global Portal Pages
• Document Template based Reports

Sequential and Parellel Approval Processes
A new Approval object attribute enables you to create new Workflow Actions to invoke a sequential or parallel approval process for any record by triggering sequential emails to either the first assigned approver or all approvers on the list respectively. When an approval process is initiated on an object record you can optionally change the list of assigned approvers at runtime.

Only users who have been assigned the new "Approver" option can be added as approvers to any Workflow Action or record on the fly. In addition, by defining an appropriate number of Workflow Actions for approvals you can have predefined lists of approvers based on location, function, department, etc.

Online Surveys, Survey Recipients, Questions Library and Ranking
New object attributes "Survey" and "Survey Taker" allow you to build question and answer capabilities into any two related objects. For example you may want to build customer survey functionality into your custom Rollbase CRM application. To do this you might create:

- An object called Customer Survey with the new "Survey" attribute. This attribute enables a  "Questions" library for that object allowing you to create any number of questions which can be attached to any record to form a questionnaire. Each question's answer can be ranked to assign kind of score or ranking to survey responses.

- An object called Customer Response with the new "Survey Taker" attribute. This attribute enables a related Survey record's assigned list of questions to be embedded in a portal or backend page where recipients can provide answers to the questions.

Questions are like special kinds of fields whose values are designed to be ranked and added to form an overall survey score. The following Question types are currently supported:

• Checkbox
• Group of Checkboxes
• Currency
• Date
• Date/Time
• Email
• Integer
• Picklist
• Picklist (Multi-Select)
• Radio Buttons
• Text
• Text Area
• URL

Multi-Column Page Layouts
While the contents of any page Section can be organized in 1, 2 or 3-column layouts, up until recently Rollbase pages could only present Sections in a single column. Now in Generic pages you can specify whether to use a 1 or 2 column page layout. If a 2-column page layout is used each section can be placed in the left or right column, or you can choose to have a section span both columns.

To enable multi-column layout on any generic page:
1. Edit the page by clicking "Edit this page"
2. Click on the page title
3. In the Properties box change the new "Columns" property to 2
4. Now select any section and change the new "Alignment" property to Left, Right or Span
5. Notice that the page editor will update in real-time to show you a WYSIWYG layout preview

Tabs in View Pages
As your applications become more sophisticated, record view pages can become very long with large numbers of sections containing fields and many related lists below. To address this from a usability standpoint, now Pages can be organized into any number of tabs. You can create and manage page Tabs within the Page Editor, and easily move sections between tabs as well as re-order tabs as necessary.

To enable Tabs in any view page:
1. Edit the page by clicking "Edit this page"
2. Click on the page title
3. In the Properties box select the new "Enable Tabs" property
4. You will now see tabs at the top of the page. Click "Add Tab" to add as many tabs as you'd like
5. Click on any tab to go to that tab in the editor and use the Properties box to change the Tab label
6. Select any section and assign it to a new tab by changing its' "Tab" property
7. Notice that the page editor will update in real-time to show you a WYSIWYG preview

Posting Records to Portals
A new "Postable" attribute allows you to define objects whose records can be "posted" to specific portals. For example, you may have multiple portals representing product catalogs. By enabling the "Postable" attribute you can choose which portals each record should be shown on. In addition, in some cases you can also specify which "New" form is used to respond to any posted record. For example, you might select which request information form should be used when a prospect wants more info on a product in one of our catalog portals.

In addition, a new Workflow Event type called "Post/Unpost on Portal" allows you to control when certain records are posted to or taken down from specific portals based on any criteria and time delays you define.

Mass Upload (Import and Parse Documents)
Now any object with the Document as well as Contact and Location attributes provides a new menu called "Mass Upload". This new tool allows you to place any number of Word, RTF, PDF or TXT files into a queue and then upload them via AJAX. Rollbase will parse each document and create a new record by attaching the document and populating name, contact and location related fields with information gatherd from the document. You can watch the process take place in real-time through a dynamic user interface.

Unique Indexes
As you may already know, many fields provide an advanced property called "Do not allow duplicate values in this field". By enabling this property no two records of that object type can have the same value in this field. By enabling this on more than one field you can define significant duplication protection. However, until recently you could not combine fields together to form a more advanced dup validation mechanism.

Now each object definition has a new component called Unique Indexes. A Unique Index is basically a list of fields which form a combined value that cannot be duplicated and hence, prevent duplicate records from occurring. For example, if a Unique Index consists of fields X, Y and Z, then no two records can have the same values for X and Y and Z. However, for example, this does not prevent two records having the same values for X and Y but different values for Z. This is a very powerful new way to define duplicate prevention based on your specific application needs (you can even use Lookup fields to define unique indexes).

Dynamic View Filtering
You may have noticed a new "Filter" link associated with currently selected Views. This activates the filtering component directly above the View on the current page you are viewing allowing you to qucikly filter and refresh your selected View without having to switch to full View Edit model and committing yourself to any changes to your filter criteria. This same type of dynamic filtering is also available for Reports.

Detailed Search Component
A new Detailed Search component can now be embedded in any Generic pages in Portals as well as backend Pages. This component allows you to provide a small object-specific search form allowing users to locate records based on specific criteria relevant to the situation at hand. For example, you may place a Detailed Search comoneont in the home page of a product catalog portal to allow users to search for products based on price range, availability, type, brand, etc. Like other page sections, this component can be configured to display fields in 1, 2 or 3-column layouts. In addition, for each field chosen to appear in the component you can specify the operator used in the search such as "equals", "greater than", etc.

Grid Edit Component
Now you can create and edit related records in a dynamic grid component in any New and Edit pages. Simply drop the "Grid Edit" component into any New or Edit page and save your changes. Then click "Configure" to select which fields should be used as columns in the Grid.

Grid Edit allows you to create multiple related records at the same time you are creating a parent record. For example, when creating a Purchase Order you might use a Grid Edit component to add an arbitrary number of Line Item records associated with the PO you are creating. (We will cover this new component in more detail in a future post.)

Filter by Related Fields
In all Views, Charts, Reports and anywhere else you can filter data in Rollbase you can now also filter on related field values. For example, suppose you have a Customer object related to a Partner object and the Partner object has a User lookup field called Partner Owners. Now Rollbase will let you create a filtered Customers View filtered by Partner Owners. This seamingly small addition greatly broadens the ways data can be filtered in Rollbase.

Ability to Filter by Viewed/UnViewed and Flagged/Unflagged
Up until recently you could not search for or define filters to find or hide records that have been viewed, not viewed, flagged or not flagged. This is now available in the filter mechanism for Views, Charts, Reports and object-specific Search.

ZIP Code Radius Search
The object-specific search page for each Object with the "Location" attribute now includes a new ZIP code radius search capability allowing you to find records within a certain mile-based radius of any given US ZIP code. This can be useful for finding nearby leads, contacts, etc.

Global Portal Pages
All portal pages can now be shared among any number of portals. For example, you may want to use the same New Lead form in three different portals without having to duplicate it. Rollbase now allows you to assign portal pages to the specific group of portals you'd like to use them in.

Document Template based Reports
Rollbase now allows you to go beyond 1, 2 and 3 layer Tabular reports to build custom document (HTML, TXT Word and Excel) templates to be used for report generation. Using a robust set of merge fields including filterable functions such as SUM, COUNT, etc, Rollbase now provides a powerful mechanism for generating reports in a format specific to each customer's requirements. (We will cover this new functionality in more detail in a future post due to the extensive merge field options available and the virtually limitless display and formatting capabilities.)

Marc Benioff cites Rollbase as example of "Web 3.0"

We've always been fans of Salesforce.com and continue to be inspired by their relentless push to redefine the enterprise software landscape now with Platform as a Service (PaaS) as they have already done with SaaS. So it was with pleasure that I read Marc Benioff's guest post today on TechCrunchIT called Welcome to Web 3.0: Now Your Other Computer is a Data Center:

"Web 3.0 is about replacing existing software platforms with a new generation of platforms as a service... The new rallying cry of Web 3.0 is that anyone can innovate, anywhere. Code is written, collaborated on, debugged, tested, deployed, and run in the cloud. When innovation is untethered from the time and capital constraints of infrastructure, it can truly flourish...

Amazon.com, Google, and salesforce.com have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build these infrastructures already, and a dozen others, including Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Rollbase, Longjump, Dabble db, Intuit, and Coghead, are also offering some form of platform as a service in the cloud."

Interestingly one reader posted a link to Eric Schmidt's response to "What is Web 3.0?" which demonstrates a nearly identical view from Google's perspective:

"I would tell you that its a different way of building applications... My prediction will be that Web 3.0 will ultimately be seen as applications that are pieced together... applications are relatively small, data is in the cloud, applications can run on any device... very fast, very customizable... Thats a very different application model than we've ever seen in computing... likely to be very very large... new generation of tools being announced..."

At Rollbase our entire platform was conceived, architected and now continually improved upon with a similar vision in mind. Over the next several weeks we have some great new "Web 3.0" features to announce along with our first major Rollbase-native enterprise application that will be licensed separately from our standard PaaS plans.