Amazon Honeycode

Build Custom Apps without Programming

Amazon Honeycode gives you the power to build apps that improve how your team works. Build as many apps as you need - the only limit is your creativity.

This new fully-managed AWS service gives you the power to build powerful mobile & web applications without writing any code. It uses the familiar spreadsheet model and lets you get started in minutes. If you or your teammates are already familiar with spreadsheets and formulas, you’ll be happy to hear that just about everything you know about sheets, tables, values, and formulas still applies.

Amazon Honeycode includes templates for some common applications that you and other members of your team can use right away to get started with app building.

For over a year now, the tech company has been working on the no-code service Honeycode. Earlier, the service had the project name 'AWS for Everyone,' intending to allow anyone with little to no software development experience in an organization to build simple business applications without the dependency of the IT department. Now the service is available in AWS as a managed service with the name Honeycode, where users can leverage a visual application builder to create interactive web and mobile applications backed by a powerful AWS-built database. Moreover, the applications which users build, can range in complexity from a task-tracking application for a small team to a project management system that manages a sophisticated workflow for multiple teams or departments.

Features

AWS announced the beta launch of Amazon Honeycode, a new, fully managed low-code/no-code development tool that aims to make it easy for anybody in a company to build their own applications. All of this, of course, is backed by a database in AWS and a web-based, drag-and-drop interface builder.

Developers can build applications for up to 20 users for free. After that, they pay per user and for the storage, their applications take up.

The service includes templates for common applications including simple to-do lists, customer tracking, simple surveys, inventory management, content tracking, time off reporting, event management, team task tracking, weekly demo schedules, field service agents and purchase order approvals. Users also can import data into a blank workbook and use the spreadsheet interface to define the data model and design application screens with objects like lists, buttons and input fields.

“You can customize these apps at any time, and the changes will be deployed immediately. “You can also start with an empty table or by importing some existing data in CSV (comma-separated values) form. You can also take advantage of a collection of built-in, trigger-driven actions that can generate email notifications and modify tables.”

Amazon Honeycode’s built-in functions include common ones associated with spreadsheets and Honeycode-specific functions, including FindRow, which is as strong as the Excel VLOOKUP function, if not better.

Applications can scale up to 100,000 rows in each workbook. Amazon Honeycode automates the building and linking of the three tiers of functionality found in most business applications -- database, business logic and user interface, according to AWS.

Honeycode has two application programming interfaces (APIs) -- GetScreenData and InvokeScreenAutomation -- that allow users to programmatically interact with Honeycode apps.

The APIs can be used to read, write, update or delete data stored in Honeycode workbooks as users interact with Honeycode apps. External applications also can use the APIs to interact with Honeycode-built applications.

Honeycode-built applications can be shared with the click of a button. Users with mobile devices can install the Honeycode Player – there are iOS and Android versions -- to use apps shared with them.

AWS has an online Amazon Honeycode Forum, where users can post questions, find Honeycode announcements including updates, access Honeycode courses, read and watch how-to articles and videos, and find other resources.

Lightweight’ Tool

Amazon Honeycode is aimed squarely at citizen developers – non-professional developers – who are end-users inside enterprises, according to Jason Wong, research vice president at Gartner, the Stamford, Conn.-based research and advisory firm.

“The tool is very lightweight in this initial release and would not be a substitute for any custom solutions that partners would be building using AWS.

It’s unlikely that partners would use Amazon Honeycode themselves due to the limited functionality of the tool."

“Over time, Amazon Honeycode could potentially be used by partners to build a no-code configurable user interface – e.g., a form or app -- into parts of a larger complex application that runs on AWS,”. “Partners could also build and contribute app templates if a marketplace, catalog or exchange is offered by AWS at some point in the future. Gartner sees a platform marketplace as a key value driver for low-code platforms to create critical mass adoption.”