What is Amazon Honeycode?
Amazon Honeycode is recently launched by AWS in beta form. It is a fully managed service that empowers you to create powerful web and mobile applications without using any code. It lets you get started in minutes and uses the familiar spreadsheet model. Being well versed with spreadsheets and formulas gives you an advantage as everything you know about them, still applies. It can build applications ranging from simple task tracking to something as complex as project management applications that handle multiple workflows. The AWS-built database is leveraged to build these applications. “Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them”, said the vice president of AWS, Larry Augustin. There is no need to write code with Amazon Honeycode and anyone can build custom mobile and web applications with it.
Things you should know
In Amazon Honeycode, the data management capability of a database is combined with the familiar interface of a spreadsheet. Interactive mobile and web applications are created by using a visual application builder backed by an AWS built database. It can facilitate interactive business processes, notify users of changes, track data over time, route approvals and perform various such tasks.
- Amazon Honeycode and the APN
The members of APN (AWS Partner Network) can improve the business processes and productivity needs by using Honeycode internally. The AWS director of product management, Meera Vaidyanathan said that “Honeycode is a great product for consulting/services partners to use to build apps for their customers that they might not have had time to develop with code.” In the APN program, Honeycode needs to be enabled and AWS is working for the same.
Honeycode is primarily for business users for whom coding is out of reach. Amazon had an interesting rationale for choosing this particular name for the product. It is named “Honeycode” as Honey indicates something sweet conveying the message that building applications can be fun and is now accessible to all business users. For this service, they brought honey and code together!
- Amazon Honeycode Basics
Amazon Honeycode will eventually be available in all the expanded regions but is currently available only in the US west region. Customers only need to pay for the larger applications and can build applications with up to 20 users for free. This service comes with templates for common applications including simple to-do lists, customer tracking, field service agents, time off reporting, event management, team task tracking, weekly demo schedules and purchase order approvals. Users can also design the application screens with buttons, lists and input fields. They can also import the data in a workbook and define the data model by using the spreadsheet interface.
The changes and customizations done in the Honeycode applications will get deployed immediately. You can get started by importing the existing data in comma-separated values (CSV) format or with an empty table. Honey code provides great built-in features to modify tables and generate email notifications. The built-in functions also include FindRow which is a powerful version of the Excel VLOOKUP.
There are two application programming interfaces (APIs) of Honeycode which allow users to interact with the applications. They are used to read, write, update or delete the data stored in workbooks of Honeycode. The APIs are – GetScreenData and InvokeScreenAutomation. The external applications can also interact with Honeycode-built applications by using the APIs. The users can get announcements, updates, read and watch how-to articles and videos in the Amazon Honeycode Forum.
- Lightweight Tool
Honeycode is aimed at the end-users inside the enterprises, mainly non-professional developers. In this initial release, the tool is very lightweight and is not a substitute for the custom solutions built using AWS. Amazon Honeycode has the potential to build a no-code configurable user interface into parts of a large application that can be run on AWS. There are other no-code application development platforms from Microsoft and Google – Microsoft Power Apps, compared to them Amazon Honeycode is very lightweight.
There are low-code and no-code tools available in the market and they have been growing in popularity in recent years. It enables people to build the applications they need with little or no coding experience. The three common tiers of functionality – database, business logic, and user interface are built and linked automatically with these services. The Honeycode-built application can update the dashboard and views in real-time as and when the underlying data changes. The application can also be shared by the customers by simply clicking on the share button.
To Conclude
Amazon Honeycode has created several opportunities to build apps and to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of business. You can adapt your customized application built with Honeycode as your business changes. All the updates are immediately made in the app or its data are immediately published. You can also personalize the experience by configuring your custom Honeycode app. Each team member will see nothing more than the data they need. It can be built for web browsers and mobile devices so that your team can work from anywhere.
AWS also has several support options including Developer, Business and Enterprise support. The support costs can increase significantly depending on the requirement of the business as the basic support may not meet the requirement of certain businesses. AWS can be expensive for larger-scale applications.
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