The PC Magazine article faced off 4 low-code application development platforms – Appian, Microsoft, Salesforce and Zoho in a challenge to build a basic but working scheduling app in an hour.

It was an interesting read and I did not think much of it then, but I do remember thinking, after reading the article, that, “Hey! Joget Workflow could easily build a working scheduling app in under 60 minutes”.

And then a week or so later, the same friend forwarded another article titled, “Microsoft Bookings is a new Office 365 service for managing appointments” (http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/20/microsoft-bookings-is-a-new-office-365-service-for-managing-appointments/)

I definitely remembered asking my friend why is scheduling and resource bookings cropping up so frequently all of a sudden. We laughed about it and that was that.

Then, last week, I was in Jakarta, Indonesia, on a business trip to visit some of our customers. Itasoft, our local partner in Indonesia, made appointments for me and Hugo to visit 3 of the largest financial institutions there, whom are already using Joget Workflow to build web applications and automate their processes.

In one of the meetings, the client mentioned that they would like for their internal team to be able to developed a meeting room booking application that can be used to managed all their meeting room reservations. They actually showed us the requirements for the application that they wanted to build.

I did not know what came over me, but as soon as the client explained and showed us the requirements for the meeting room scheduling and booking application, I dived in and offered to meet the challenge to build the booking web app using Joget Workflow in 15 minutes.

Responsive theme showing the booking in calendar view.

I expected my colleague, Hugo, to protest. But without batting an eye, he got to work. Using the Joget Workflow App Generator and a calendar view plugin from the Joget Marketplace, he managed to build a full functioning and working scheduling app in less than 15 minutes totally unrehearsed. I was amazed, the client was amazed and their team was amazed! But the really amazing part of the story was that Hugo did not type a single line of code to build the fully production ready app. Codeless. (You can download the exact booking app as-is here if you like. After downloading, import it into your v5 installation. Totally free to use, distribute or modify to your needs.)

Which brings me to the topic of this blog post, “Is Joget Workflow Code Less or Codeless?” Let me define what we mean by “code less” and “codeless”.

Back in 2012, we pivoted from a workflow engine to a web app development platform and we needed to highlight Joget Workflow as a platform that non-programmers and business users can use to build data driven applications and automate processes with little or no programming. That was the first time we used the terms “code less” and “codeless” in our marketing collaterals.

Room booking form.

“Code less” simply means that coding is still needed to build web apps, but “less coding” or “code less” (or some may refer to as low-code). And “codeless” simply means that no coding is needed to build web apps!

So to answer the question, “Is Joget Workflow Code Less or Codeless?” I would have to say that Joget is both a “code less” and a “codeless” platform depending on who the user is and what level of programming knowledge and experience he/she possessed.

I would be the first to say that there is no magic web application development platform that can be completely “codeless”. But to a non-programmer or a Citizen Developer who wants to solve his or her problem quickly and with a relatively low learning curve, Joget Workflow may just be exactly what they need.

Now, if you happen to be one of these non-programmers that need to build a web application really fast whether as prototypes or as production ready apps, I would strongly urge you to try Joget Workflow out. And if you do not mind, share with us your experience by commenting below. Let us know what you think.

Feedback is gold to us. Cheers!

P/S All web apps developed on the Joget Workflow platform are mobile ready. Download the Joget Workflow iOS and Android apps from here.

Some Screenshots of the Booking App: