Taist: slice off the "cloud" by itself

Post will be of interest to you, if you: actively use any cloud services — for example, to manage the development and projects Trello, Basecamp, Asana, Megaplan, qTrack, for accounting and Commerce — Moysklad, Modelo CRM AmoCRM, Highrise any other.

Even more interesting would be if you:
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• already have customized any software or website, that is, adapted it to their needs — for example, changing the source code, wrote plugins, or, especially custom styles/scripts
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• or at least once wrote the developers used services their wishes for functionality

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What we do:

Do Taist — platform to build add-ons to cloud services to extend it for a particular business.

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What is the problem to be solved:

the Cloud software customization necessary, but impossible.

Most standard "non-cloud" software, you can customize or modify the code or write a new/attach existing plugin. Cloud software so you cannot modify the code turns on the server access you have. To create a plugin system for cloud-based software is much more difficult and expensive, almost no company that can not afford.

At the same time to ask the developers themselves of the service to add a new feature almost useless — is that only a very small part of these requests, and then only after months, or even years, and there are a lot of reasons.

How to solve:

the Allow to build additional client-side code on a page of the site.

Code, stored on the server can not be changed, but you can change the one that is downloaded to our browser — HTML / CSS / Javascript accordingly you can modify the appearance and logic of the service.

This is what we allow ourselves to do: to create and use add — ons- Javascript+CSS code that changes the selected service to suit your needs.

It's amazing how much you can do with this is to not only extend the interface and add your logic in the service, and add your data field with its own logic, and seamless to integrate other services (including, for example, your backend) directly in the interface of the target service.

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a Couple of simple examples

1) extensible firmware interface, adding additional useful information: in the cloud JIRA OnDemand display the description of the parent tasks when viewing a subtask for a quick understanding of the context.



How did the addon: my fellow developers are using cloud JIRA. At the last place of work they used the classic JIRA, which is great to finished to suit your needs, but cloud couldn't make even the simplest improvements. Taking a beta-testing our project, my colleague in one sitting did need the addon. For the second sitting he was polished, making a great example of a add-on for JIRA.
Source code and description of addon

2) extensible functionality, embedded in the target service (Wrike.com — project management system) to another service (Google Calendar) — added the ability to schedule reminders for tasks with precision to hours, with a reminder via email/SMS. Bind calendar events to tasks stored using the storage Taist.


Source code and description of addon

How it works

To use the Addons you want to install the extension to the browser — only available Google Chrome. The extension changes the URL in the current tab if the current site is the addon that you have included applies it.
The Addons themselves are stored "in the cloud" on our website, are switched on/off in the same place.

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Alternatives and our differences

The best alternative — creating browser extensions for a specific service and a specific task.

the Taist better Than extensions:
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• you do not need to understand the creation of extensions — only standard Javascript
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• no fuss with extension update, if necessary, to Refine the addon (especially when he used a large number of users)
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• easier support and administration — has a logging and various other utility functions in the future will create a group user management
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• has a convenient functionality out of the box — for example, a simple backend "key-value" — no need to raise your server to store additional data; support cross-domain requests, etc. (will be expanded)

In General, if you want fast, reliably and without hemorrhoids to solve their business problems, Taist — your choice.

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Creating and using add-ons

To develop Addons, you can first locally using the file system, then upload to the server so they can be used by colleagues. Read more in for instructions on creating add-ons.

Addons loaded on the server, available for all to view, use and copy. Specific licensing policy has not yet chosen, but the essence will remain. In the future will make the ability to create a private add-ons available only with immediate colleagues.

During the creation and use of add-ons to accumulate know-how, knowledge of the intricacies of different websites that are useful to share with each other. So we started to wiki, which want to form a community of developers Addons.

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where to start

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• VERY IMPORTANT! Even if you can't make a specific addon, please unsubscribe, what services you use, what needs to occur — the more visible the demand, the faster someone will create an addon
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• look for examples of existing add-ons
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• try create your addon
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• like our page =) to us it is important to attract new users

For all questions feel free to contact us: the best on forum, but on FB page I Google Plus or write to beta@tai.st

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Our plans

We want to create a powerful platform for easy development of add — ons- unlike traditional software, cloud-based, you can create a single platform. But the technical platform will not work without a strong community of developers who help each other and their non-technical colleagues, creating add-ons on our platform.
Therefore, we have two key areas of work:

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1. development platform according to the wishes of developers — write here their wishes
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2. assistance in creating Addons, filling of knowledge base — so please contact for any question, help!

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a Little history

It all began more than a year ago, when we announced habré the first version of the project, when we still did not understand what and for whom we do. Since then, we have studied the problem of customization of cloud services from all parties, worked with the producers of services, creating even paid Addons and indvidualno-to-order and small, scalable, worked with Russian and Western users. And gradually began to understand how to create a really useful product in this area, and what a great way to do this will need to go. But will tell about it separately.
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Let's discuss it all

We welcome feedback from interested users.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru