Comment by navaneethpk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by navaneethpk | Hacker News Reader

Hey HN,

Founder here, I’m excited to announce that we've just launched the beta version of ToolJet’s Workflow Automation tool!

For those unfamiliar, ToolJet started its journey when we open-sourced ToolJet (https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet) here on HackerNews back in June 2021 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27421408). When we launched ToolJet, we aimed to bridge the gap between developers and non-developers, making it easier for teams to build internal tools swiftly. Our journey began right here on HackerNews, and much of our evolution has been shaped by feedback from many of you. Today, we’re taking a step further with our new Workflow Automation tool.

How it works

1. Connect your data sources: Add any of the pre-existing ~50 data sources like PGSQL, RestAPI, Zendesk, Stripe, Amazon S3 and many more.

2. Create a workflow: Create a new workflow from your ToolJet Dashboard. A workflow is a series of steps which are executed one after the other, and each step is interacting with a datasource by fetching or putting back data.

3. Business logic: Implement your business logic by creating branches based on conditions and by running JavaScript codes.

4. Debugging: You can see the logs by expanding logs panel at the bottom of the workflow builder. It will have all information you need to debug your workflow.

Documentation: https://docs.tooljet.com/docs/workflows/overview?ref=blog.to...

Availability

Currently, the Workflow Automation beta is available for on self-hosted instances running Business and Enterprise editions.

PS: We haven't open-sourced Workflows.

Can you tell us what tooljet help me do faster and better than other tools like budibase or windmill?

Budibase’s workflow product has been around for a while and we are directly competing with each other. We have our own strengths but would be difficult to say if we or them are better at this stage.

Windmill is a great product too but it is totally pro-code and building workflow with it, one has to write a lot of code compared to ToolJet. Hence, ToolJet would be definitely faster here.

(Windmill Founder here)

Windmill allows you to write code in any places but we have a hub augmented every day with pre-made integrations so that you do not have to: https://hub.windmill.dev. We also have native support for BigQuery, Snorflake, Mysql, GraphQL, with dedicated editors.

Hence, I fail to see how it would be any faster to build workflows in tooljet than in windmill. I do not have a business license of tooljet so I have not been able to do the comparison. Interested to hear feedbacks on that.

Our workflow engine and UX seems to be a lot more advanced from what I can see because we have been iterating on it for longer. Congrats on the launch though and may the best open-source alternative to Retool win.

I have not tried the product in depth but this comes from your website headline where it says “Turn scripts into .... “. But great to know you have inbuilt integrations now. Best of luck, may the best internal tooling platform wins.

If you do not know the product then maybe instead of saying that X is simpler/faster/better than Y it would be better/fairer to say "I don't know" or "from a look at their landing" ?

Maybe this should be settled Musk v Zuck style for the internal tooling crown?

On a more serious note how does this compare with Retool? I remember that doing the HN rounds in 2019 and it’s still going

haha, not interested. Sometimes it is okay to bow out of an online conversation :) Retool and ToolJet are building in the same problem space of internal tooling. Primary difference is that ToolJet is open source. And btw, we launched in March 2021.

Open source is nice. I actually find these types of tools useful in testing where you don’t have time to do a full automated suite but you need to compare data between systems

As a non dev, I'm doing every of my front and back with chatgpt code interpreter and it's working fine. I ask him to create a simulation to test each part of his code and modify until it work.

The issue with low codes tools is that I cannot ask gpt to do stuff for me, and I have the risk that gpt cannot help me as he don't know the tool.

Can’t say for all low code tools but if you consider ToolJet, you can build apps using drag and drop UI builder and doing customisation in UI. You really don’t need GPT once you get a hang on it. Ofcourse, experience can be further improved using GPT but that is not real value as of today. Compared to GPT powered traditional development, ToolJet’s approach is still faster.

IMHO, real value is when you can extend/customise ToolJet using custom code or database queries. And this is where GPT can help. We even have a inbuilt Copilot for these use cases.

Heads up: on your docs page, using Brave on Android 13, if I go to the menu and expand a section, it scrolls, but then if I click on an item, when I go back to the menu it will no longer scroll and I have to use the back button to get back to where I can use the menu again.

Thank you. Will fix it asap.

Interesting. How is this different to the likes of make.com and process.st?

ToolJet is a full stack platform for building internal tools where automation is one part of it. We also support creating web applications and have a data store.

While make.com is focussed just on automation but for all kinds of use cases and not focussed on solving internal tooling problems for the companies.

However, process street does look focussed on building software for internal applications but it is more towards no-code spectrum which has its advantages but makes it less customisable. ToolJet, on the other hand is more customisable and developer friendly because of our low-code approach.

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