Microsoft has PowerApps and Microsoft Flow for low-code development of apps that use data and services from its Office 365 productivty and communications suite. Now Google has released Google App Maker, a low-code development environment for developing software based on its G Suite productivity and communications suite.
Intended business teams, App Maker can be used for processes such as purchase order requests and help-desk ticket resolution. App Maker uses templates for building UIs, which can be assembled via drag-and-drop. These templates serve as starting points for apps.
Templates available include:
- Starter App, providing a Material-styled application layout.
- Material Gallery, with UI features such as cards for entering data and viewing charts and metrics.
- Document Approval, for creating workflow for document approval.
- People Viewer, for viewing people in an organization.
- Partner Management, to manage a list of partners.
- People Skills, to find colleagues based on their skills.
- Q&A Forum, for discussing internal topics.
- Training Hub, for tracking employee training.
- Project Tracker, to track the status of projects.
- Travel Approval, for managing travel requests.
Users can connect apps to Google services such as Gmail and Google Calendar. Administrators can determine which apps are allowed to run.
App Maker supports Google’s CloudSQL managed database service, for users with a Google Cloud Platform account. Users also can connect to their own databases using JDBC or a REST API.
The AppMaker service is available with G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise Editions.
