33 articles about Apps, in reading order.
Start here
What Parsware is and how its parts fit together, shown through one real application, from the tables underneath it to the phone screen, the approval process and the printed report.
Start here
A step-by-step walkthrough, from an empty solution to a working app. Create a table, add five kinds of field, build a filtered view, and open it with real rows in about ten minutes.
Model-driven apps
Building an app doesn't give it to anyone. Share it with a role, check who that actually reaches, and the app appears on their launcher and nobody else's. The sharing travels in the solution, so you don't redo it in every environment.
Model-driven apps
A dashboard in Parsware is a screen you draw. Counted tiles, charts, the table's own grid and its quick create form sit on one page, and the page goes into an app's navigation like any table.
Model-driven apps
Every Parsware environment comes with an Organisation app. It holds your units as a chart, the people in each one, and who does which kind of work where, which is what processes route work by and what "my unit and below" access is measured against.
Studio apps
A model-driven app, Contact desk, with the Contact list screens and the Contact table side by side in its navigation. The drawn screens open as its home page, their own links stay inside it, and the task inbox comes with it.
Studio apps
Contact list opened from the Shell's app list, with nothing around it: every screen at its own address, a top bar that says who's signed in and signs them out, and the platform's own bar switched off so the drawing fills the window.
Custom apps and controls
When a screen needs something tables, forms and views can't say, you write it in React. A custom app is built on your own machine with two downloads from the help site, packed into one file, uploaded once, and opened from the Shell like any other app. We built a visitor board for reception.
Custom apps and controls
Everything a custom app does in Parsware goes through one object: who's using it, where it was opened, the data their role can read, saved queries, Custom APIs, object storage and the log. We grew the visitor board with company totals from a saved query, readable visit purposes, and a button that keeps today's list as a file.
Custom apps and controls
A custom control does nothing until a form uses it. In the form designer, select the field, choose the control under Custom Control, and save. We put the badge field on the Visitor form, where reception now types b-2210 and the form saves B-2210.
Security and administration
Who may open an app, what they may do with a table, and which of its records they see are three separate questions in Parsware, answered by users, roles, teams and policies. This is the map: what each piece is, where it lives, and which question it answers.
Security and administration
A new user is an email, a name and a password you hand over yourself. We added Alex Morgan, had a short password refused, gave Alex the Field Sales role, and watched their first sign-in open on the one app that role is shared with.
Security and administration
One app, two roles. We copied Field Sales into a read-only role, gave it to Jordan, and opened the same Accounts list as Alex and as Jordan: the same records, with and without the commands to change them.
Security and administration
A team is a group of people that records can belong to, and it can hold a role. We put Alex and Jordan in Field Sales North, gave the team the Field Sales role, and watched Jordan's open session gain New on its next refresh, with no sign-out.
Security and administration
A role says what someone may do with a table; the policy beside each permission says which of its records that reaches. We narrowed Jordan's read on accounts from every record to Mine and my teams', handed an account to the team, and Jordan's list went from a hundred accounts to four.
Security and administration
The unit policies need an organisation to measure against. We built one in the Organisation app (Head Office with a North and a South region), put three people in it, and gave Jordan read access on My unit and below. From Head Office, Jordan sees the accounts both regions create, and nothing owned outside the chart.
Portals
Any Studio app can be published at a web address of its own. One panel says which app, which address, who can open it, and which screens a stranger may see before signing in; one tick puts it on the internet, and the same tick takes it off. We published the landing page sample and opened it on a desktop and a phone.
Portals
One case, followed from both sides: a customer raises it on the portal, the support team answers it inside the platform, the customer replies with a photo, and the status says whose turn it is at every step. The customer and the team never share a screen, and each one sees only what is theirs to see.
Languages and appearance
An app built on Parsware gets the platform's own words for nothing, in all seven languages it ships. What a maker writes is another matter, and this article is honest about where translation lives: in app guides and in drawn screens, but not yet in table and column names.
Why Parsware
Parsware is for organisations whose work runs on forms, approvals and spreadsheets passed around by email, and who want those turned into real applications without running the servers themselves. This is what it's for, who it's for, and what a tenant actually gets, shown on the capital planning sample.
Why Parsware
The people who use Parsware apps never see three products. They sign in once to the Platform Shell, and every app in the environment is a tile on its home page: model-driven apps, drawn Studio apps and custom React apps, all in the same page, the same top bar and the same session.
Power Apps
Parsware for Power Apps installs two model-driven apps. Parsware Studio is where makers draw reports and screens, and it only exists in development. Parsware is what every environment gets, and it starts almost empty on purpose, because the reports and screens your users open belong in your own apps.
Sports & Leisure
Tennis courts, football pitches, a pool and a café across three sites, usually run with a diary, a spreadsheet, a card machine and a group chat. This is a day at a demonstration leisure business running all of it on Parsware instead.
Sports & Leisure
Four courts a month, or was it five? Is he still paid up? At most clubs the answers live in somebody's head. Here is a demonstration club where every membership says what it gives, every member says where they stand, and a suspended member is refused at the desk with the reason.
Sports & Leisure
Two people turn up for the same court, and somebody has to explain. Here is a demonstration club where every court, pitch and lane is on one sheet, and a booking that can't happen is refused when it is made, not on the night.
Sports & Leisure
Eight pounds or eighteen? Members and non-members, peak evenings and weekends: at most clubs every booking is a sum somebody does in their head. Here is a demonstration club where prices are a list of rules, and every booking says which rule set its price.
Sports & Leisure
Twenty-five pounds back, or nothing? At most clubs a cancellation is a phone call and a judgement. Here is a demonstration club where the rule is written down once, and every cancelled booking works out its own refund.
Sports & Leisure
Twenty places in the class. Who gets the last one, and who tells the twenty-first? Here is a demonstration club where every class counts its own places, a course is booked once for every lesson, and the register is on the session.
Sports & Leisure
A coffee is £2.50, and £2 for a member. So who at the counter knows which customer is which? Here is a demonstration club whose till knows its members, works out the change, and writes every sale down against the right site.
Sports & Leisure
Fifty members pay their fees every month. Did they all pay, and who's checking? Here is a demonstration club where every member's payments are set out with their dates, a declined card lands on one list with the reason, and the desk takes the payment when the member is in.
Sports & Leisure
Ten to eleven at night, and a member wants a court tomorrow evening. Who tells her if one's free? Here is a demonstration club whose members book for themselves on the club's own page, from their phone, and whose desk sees the booking the moment it is made.
Sports & Leisure
How did today go, and how's the month looking? Here is a demonstration club where the first page you open answers both: the day's bookings and attendance, the month's money, how much of the place was used, and a report for anything more, all worked out as it happens.
Sports & Leisure
Who at your club can change the prices, and who can see the takings? Here is a demonstration club where the desk, the café till, an instructor and the manager each sign in to the same app and each see their own job: nothing missing, and nothing they shouldn't touch.
