No-Code data collection

Welcome back to Decoding Love. It's been a while, but we're working on more content. Today is a special edition. So we will pause for a minute where we have sort of stayed. We will pause with basics. And today will be a special edition focused on data entry and how you can do this in a scalable, efficient way. And then, in one of the next editions, we will continue with the basics. I like your smile. So let's get right to it. Let me pull up the example that I have prepared here. And actually zoom in and make this much, much bigger. Dina,(...) I also need you here. You recently approached me that you faced some issues with your data entry. So that you have certain things that you care about, but that you are not finding them in an easily accessible way. For example, you were talking about tasks that are spread across many Excel sheets.(...) But you might have also machines or big projects or just back office processes where you want to record some information about certain items.(...) And what I have prepared here for you today is something that can actually help you solve such topics rather easily. So let's jump right in. We have a move us over into the corner and make this here big. What are we looking at here? Actually, let's go to the other corner so you can see it better. Well, what we're looking at here is something that is called a no code, low code database tool or backend as a server solution. Everyone of you probably has heard of Microsoft Office and some people know Microsoft Access for database. And a lot of people with an IT background are a bit scared of access because people build applications in there that are very hard to eventually transition to a more proper IT process or proper database. Imagine you had something like access,(...) but with the means of in the background interacting with a proper database and also giving you a proper machine readable API on the fly without any extra work. How would this be? Well, let's just start here. So, Dina, I ask you now to just operate this. It's actually the first time Dina is taking a look at this interface. So bear with us. It will be fun. And I will ask you to help me to join me here in building actually your new application from zero to hero in a couple of minutes.(...) So let's get started. Please take the mouse and click create collection. So for starters, we will create collection.(...) Do you want to do something with tasks or do you have? I actually had one idea. Machines that we want to collect here. Machines. I had one idea. I don't know whether it's possible or whether it makes sense. But for example, if many people are working on one, I'd say Excel. Yeah, one idea. And if I create a version for myself, because it might be that I make the most amendments and then other colleagues are working on the other version where they just put their comments in our scheme, what we currently have. And then we get another version from some external with their comments. So they are scattered. Would this apply for that? Yeah, we can try this.(...) So let's give it a name.(...) If you want to collect tasks, we will probably name these tasks.(...) Maybe it is nicer to give it lowercase letters, but both would work. Looks nice. And yeah, from a database perspective, like we still have some matter, but you will have an easier life later if you select this option here instead. Because of this particular task, particular application, or there is another reason I don't need to understand it now. We need to understand it now. But basically, if you want to create a copy or backup clone of this data that is stored in the system, it's much easier to just get the unique values instead of an incrementing value of the state of the increment stored in the database. But that is nothing we have to care about for today.(...) Anyways, so we can select a couple of fields which we may want to have. Let's say, for example, a status field. We want to be able to sort this thing, and to store who created the task and when it was created, and if it was updated and who updated it, we serve the basics. Okay, so that's quite boring. Let's create our first collection. So what has happened behind the scenes, a table in the end of our database was created. In fact, the tool that we are using here is Directos, and it is a backend as a server solution, and it allows us to flexibly plug in any database from your self-hosted Postgres database or MySQL database or something else to a more cloud-native database. What we are currently using here is something that is running on my local computer, and I will explain later how you can run this also on your own. But for now, we want to focus on the use case of DINA of saving certain information. Okay, we have already a task. Well, we don't know what this task is about.(...) So can you add a field so we can store information about, let's say, maybe it's task title and task description? What do you mean? Just click the create field button here. Do I need to amend something here? No, just click the create field button. Now we can create a new field. So perhaps you want to have a title about the task. So if a short summary of what the task is about. So we would just select the input box and say we need a new thing where we can store this. We could give it a short thing like summary or title. We don't need to prefix it. You could just give it name, for example. What do you mean? You don't need to write task underscore name. You could just write summary or just short description or name. Name.(...) That's the same. Okay. Yeah, it's the same. And we can say, ah, this is my L you must actually be set. And there's no placeholder or anything. What do you mean it needs to be set? Well, it should not be empty. Okay. We always have to store name. And this is interesting because let's say if you do this in an Excel sheet, you cannot set certain constraints, right? People are very flexible in what they can enter. And if you later want to work with this, it's very tricky because it's not super structured. Okay, let's save this. We want to store a bit more.(...) Let's say the description. If you want to store the description, what you can go for is, for example, a text editor, because you want to store the description. So let's select an input. We are also inputting text. That's right. It's a good question. The difference is that in the text from input is just a plain text without any formatting or layout information.(...) If you here go for this, what you see is what you get editor. Let's name this description. We get a proper, let's say, text editor like a note from the word. And we say that must also be said it should not be empty. And let's save this. And let's briefly take a look at how this actually looks like. So if you go here on the side, we will see we have the tasks and that's create a task. But now we are creating the task only with this description and the name. Yes, let's start. So we can call this maybe test. Yeah, I have a full effect. Test. Yeah, I'm a bit nervous, right? Okay, fill in. Actually, let's make this more nice. This one should be something big and something small as well. Cool. So let's save this. For now, it's status draft. And now we end up with this thing here. We can always come back to it. So my question is, do we want to store something in addition to these things? What do you commonly need to also store? Sometimes you need a link. Linked to another task. No, I mean link in the description maybe to easily find it afterwards that you don't need to search. But you have already a link to your document, for example. Okay, yeah, this is something we can do. So let's go back to our data model, to the task and change this. Let's add a new link here. Can you say create field? But it's the same thing we did before, yeah? Okay. It's the same thing we did before, exactly. So we have different types of fields. We have, for example, the possibility to search for tags.(...) We can have other things like a date, for example. You can enter a specific color, that's a due date of the task. Maybe we need this as well. You can even have checkboxes. You can have a dropdown.(...) And we can infer also, let's say if you have tasks, you want a reference to a parent task. You can also create something like this. So you can connect one task with another task. Say, first of all, I have to finish task one. Then we can finish task two. I think we need all of this, what we just said. And then there is also the possibility to have some, I guess, file upload. You can say, I want to directly upload a document, for example. It would be actually stored with this system.(...) But you can say, it's already hopefully not just an outlook in an email, but somewhere else. And instead of uploading it here,(...) we could just basically make another text input and say, this is the file path. For simplicity, we may for now assume this is the file path. This is okay for you. How do you prefer to upload it? Yeah, file path is good. But I wouldn't put it on required, because sometimes you have a symbol you don't have. That's totally fine. You can even give it a cool icon, but for now, let's just skip that. Okay, we have a file path now. And we said we want to have a due date. So here, let's select a due date. And we say this must be set. Can't be empty. Is that okay? Or sometimes we don't know. Sometimes we don't necessarily have a deadline, you know. Okay. So let's skip this. And yeah, actually, the format that we need is just a short form. And we don't need seconds or something in too much detail. Let's also add this due date. And now we also want to have this parent. So it's not called relation. But here we have groups maybe. Yes, we have it here. Some of them have relationship that we can say one task can depend on. Many things can depend on a single one or with the versa. Many to many or one to many. So let's just test this out so you see the difference. One to many