Raphaël: Hey, and welcome back to our series on EC's methodology. Last time we talked about security. This time, we're going to talk about administration. You might be building this app for someone else to use, but most apps need to be managed in some way, shape or form. So you'll need a management account or multiple, and you'll need a management user interface. We find that it's really common for people to build apps just for their users, but they forget about their role in the system.
You inevitably need some sort of way to manage the data and users and other things within the context of your application. Sometimes this means building a whole separate apps for management teams to go in and take care of the tasks that they need to. Or at the very least, it might mean building a separate section just for admins in your main app.
If you're using a framework like Django or a few others, you can probably make use of built-in admin tools with Django, you get the Django admin, basically out of the box. For relatively simple data access and management, something like the Django admin might make a lot of sense. But if you've got complex requirements and tasks that your admin team needs to take care of, it probably makes sense to build a custom app from the ground up.
Alternatively, if you land somewhere between the two, like a lot of folks do, it might make sense to use a tool like Retool or AppSmith. They'll usually give you a nice balance between simplicity and power, which might be a good place to start. One other alternative for really small teams that have a technical person on the team is something that you should really avoid doing down the line.
But at the start, it might be okay, which is have a developer just go straight into the database and make changes if necessary. If you want to learn more about how to build custom software, we've actually put together a free PDF that you can check out. If you have experience with this sort of thing, we're kind of curious, how did you deal with management tasks in building an app? And follow us.
If you want to keep up with the series, we have a lot more to share and we're constantly updating our process. As we learn from ourselves, our partners and our community. If you think we could work together, we'd love to partner with you on your next project. Thanks and see you next time.