Show HN - Relatable.io, turn spreadsheets into customizable apps | Hacker News Reader

Show HN - Relatable.io, turn spreadsheets into customizable apps

5 pointsrschooley3 comments

Hi HN,

We've been working on a product idea and would like your feedback.

The product site and app can be found at: www.relatable.io

The target consumer is small businesses that run their companies out of spreadsheets. Our web app turns those tables into simple grids and forms with validation. Users can then create new tables in the product and relate data to other tables. This is all done by users and doesn't require custom app development.

We'd like to add a bunch more features, but would like to know what more people think. If you have any issues in the app and would like 1 on 1 support please email me: support@relatable.io

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Cool home page I wish mine was that good. Impressive UI.

Related work: (my stuff) http://www.cellmaster,com.au/AppBuilder.html The product is is different, unlike other approaches, you can create sophisticated custom software. Create custom software, with spreadsheet formulas, the kind a only programmer is able to create.

http://stoic.com - this is maybe the closet to relatable.io

http://www.spreadsheetconverter.com

http://www.spreadsheetweb.com

http://BaseCase.com

http://www.smartsheet.com

http://www.forguncy.com/ (Japanese)

Tried it out. Very sleek with a nice ui but I fail to see the benefit or even the use of it. Why not just use Excel where you have access to hundreds of features (charts, vba, lookup tables, better filtering/sorting, validation, conditional formatting)? My suggestion, after trying it out, would be to add API bridging where they can populate tables from external data. Adding the right features (like ones that are difficult for users to do in Excel) could give this app some traction.

Thanks for trying it out.

I agree there are a lot of things that Excel does that the product does not. We plan to add better grid functionality like sorting, filtering, reordering and saving of those views for later. We also plan on adding charts to better visualize data.

We do not plan to try and replicate all of Excel's functionality. Power users in that system are there for a reason. But there are companies using spreadsheets to run their business because they don't know any better, or don't want to foot the bill for custom development. We are focusing on those users right now.

Some of the things that Excel cannot do well that we plan on adding are things like workflows of data, triggering notifications on field values, and rollup dashboards. We are also currently finishing adding teams for groups to manage data together.

As for an API, we have one in place with how we designed the app. The front end is built in angular and packaged with grunt. The backend is a node API that only talks JSON (except the initial payload). They only look like one entity for the sake of not using CORS.

Exposing the API to the public is something that would be targeted to developers and IT departments rather than end users which wasn't the plan. However if that ends up being where the demand is we will follow it.

Thank you for the feedback, we appreciate it.

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