Google launches a new low-code, application development tool- App Maker

Google has announced the launch of App Maker, a new low-code, application development tool that people can use to easily develop custom applications based on their business needs.

“Whether you’re looking for better ways to onboard new team members, staff projects, or approve employee travel requests, App Maker helps you build an app for that in days instead of months,” said Elissa Murphy, VP of Engineering, G Suite in a blog post.

The new service features a cloud-based drag-and-drop development environment that lets you build the user interface and populate it with data from your G Suite applications, Google Maps, Contacts and Groups and virtually any service that offers an API.

Also, it features built-in templates and point-and-click data modelling for faster modelling and prototyping. To further ease the process of development, App Maker favours most open and popular standards including HTML, CSS, Javascript and Google’s own material design framework. This will enable you to create familiar, stunning UI elements for your new app.

The typical use case for these kinds of apps are time-tracking solutions, or tracking orders and inventory — essentially any problem inside a company that can be easily digitised and solved by a very basic custom app.

The plus point here is that you can focus on the development and delivery of your app without thinking about the back-end infrastructure which supports the same i.e. it allows them to develop apps that solve their very specific needs without the need to bring on a developer. Users who want to delve deeper, though, can also do so using the built-in scripting editor, which surely looks like a pretty fully featured IDE.

App Maker is now available through Google’s Early Adopter Program for G Suite Business.

In addition to the App Maker announcement, Google also announced that it is expanding the scope of its already existing “Recommended for G Suite” program with new enterprise apps. This program certifies that an application is well-integrated into G Suite and that it has been tested for security vulnerabilities. New apps which have been added to G Suite via this program include Virtru, LumApps, DocuSign, Freshdesk, Zoho Invoice, Xero, and Asana.