The Apex Firebase Integration Toolkit is one of the newest products in the suite of Apex tools. This toolkit contains a set of coach views and services that allow you to quickly integrate with Firebase and have access to real-time data within your application. As amazing as this product is, you might be thinking, what in the world would I do with it? Let’s walk through three scenarios where you might find it helpful to use within your IBM BPM application.
#1 — Real Time Collaboration — Collaboration on a task is common in the business world; however, with workers scattered around the globe, it’s not always easy to make happen online. In traditional database ways, on-screen data can quickly become stale or require a manual “refresh” to display current data; having real time information to make business decisions is often a critical success factor for an application. Using the coach views within the Firebase Integration toolkit, you’ll be able to open a connection to Firebase from your coach and any updates to the data (from any user) will be reflected on screen within seconds.
#2 — Proof of Concept — In a world where a “quick win pilot” is often the path to more funding for your project, you want to be up and running quickly with access to real data. Screen mock-ups are good, but a running application with real-time data is better. Firebase is a full backend, so you won’t need to install database servers or write SQL code to create and access your data. Using coach views and services from the toolkit, you’ll be able to quickly connect your application to Firebase and have data stored and synced within minutes!
#3 — Build Consolidated Views of Data — Finding the most relevant data to display to your user doesn’t always come in a pretty package; often it’s dispersed across multiple tables, databases, and even systems. Sometimes it’s necessary to bring all this data together into a single view, which can easily be set-up with Firebase. Displaying task data and business data for a single entity can often be an impressive and helpful view to a business user wanting to see all the activity that has transpired for the entity.
These are three common scenarios where the Apex Firebase Integration toolkit will help you take your IBM BPM application to the next level. As illustrated, the capabilities within Firebase combined with Apex Coach Views will help you present rich mash-ups of data to your user to help them work in a very collaborative way.
We can’t wait to see what you’ll build with it!
