Developing API Tooling For The Average Business User Over At Form.io

When I am review API services and tooling, the majority of what I see is targeting the API elite, the most technical, and specialized of us in the API space. Rarely do I come across approaches that really speak to the average business person, but each time I talk to the Form.io team I am reminded that these tools can, and do exist in the wild. 

I get regularly walk through from the team, so what they do is no surprise, but each time I see it in action, I'm moved by what is possible, and the inroads they are building into everyday businesses. Using Form.io you can build forms, but these aren't forms, they are apps, and they are APIs, as well as being a form. When you are building a form, you are building an API, and when you hit publish, it publishes the API, with the form as the first web or mobile app that is consuming the API. 

Form.io gives you the capability to publish one or many of these apps (forms), and manage the data that is pushed out, pulled in, and aggregated from across your network of apps. Form.io does all the heavy lifting for you, while still speaking the common language of the form -- which almost everyone in the business world understands. I walked though a couple of Form.io most recent case studies (which I'll talk about in future posts), but I wanted to take a moment to highlight that Form.io has made an API design, deployment, and management tool--except you don't realize that is what you are doing, as an end user, you are just building a form that matches meets your business need.