Cloud App Studio basics

Introduction
Cloud App Studio is a tool where you can create web applications. A web application is where you and the people you choose can collaborate around data. Data created by: you and the people you have invited.

An example of a Cloud App Studio based app could be a simple form that lets users create content, combined with a view that lists all content. For example: you could have an app that lets your users report when something is not working in your building: lights gone out, paper missing in toilets, broken things, etc.The caretakers then get the information from people that find the problems, rather then they need to find all problems themselves.

Illustration I - Data, or "content", is created using "Forms" - Content is presented in "Views"

No need for programming skills
Cloud App Studio does not - I repeat: does not require ANY programming skills. You add your fields you need. give them a label and maybe default data. Select a check box to make it a mandatory field. Then your done - you don't have to define any "data-tables", relations, or other techie-stuff.
You can even position them exactly where you want your fields to be by dragging and dropping (using the Free Form layout-option)!
Once you've saved your form (and set the sharing properties you want) you are all public. By "all public", we mean your Form will use  Google's infrastructure provided by Google App Engine. This is the same infrastructure used in Google's other highly proven services! Isn't that amazing :-)

Creating the view is as simple: you select which fields you want in your view - based on an entire form, or by adding them separately. Re-order by drag and drop.

Built on Google App Engine
Cloud App Studio is built on top of Google App Engine. This provides the best abilities for you to have a scalable solution without you having to think about all that. It scales when necessary.
This let you login with your Google-, or Google Apps account. Currently this is all we support. In extension to this you can activate Facebook authorization to activate users logged in on Facebook to work with your web application. This is something you activate for each web application depending on your needs.

Cloud App Studio consist of a set of "Components" to serve the needs to create a web application. We are continuously adding more components and add functionality in the components available.
When writing this, we have released the following:

• Forms - Let you create a form without any programming skills. Place your fields wherever you want by drag and drop, for example.
• Views - Used to present the submitted data. Add/remove columns in the view, reorder by drag and drop.
• Layout - lets you brand your app by adding a navigation to all forms and views, it also let you add rich-text formatted headers- and footer fields to give your web application a consistent experience.

Components in our beta environment are:

• Page - the first component aimed for programmers, use HTML to create your web application. We also have plans creating a no-Code Page component.
• Files - a place to store your files: images, documents
• Scripts - To add functionality to your web application, for example having a scheduled action export all your data to Google Drive, as a backup solution - as an example.

Security model

Currently there you can select among three different access levels:

• Administrators, have complete access to the web application as well as submitted data.
• Editors, cannot modify the web application, but see and edit submitted data
• Contributors, can only see the Layout and the Form, letting them submit data. They cannot see the content of the views (currently they can see the link to the views in the web application navigator, but not access the data.

In addition to this you can set access to:

• Anyone, can have "No access", "editor" or "contributor". "No access" is default
• Facebook users, needs to be activated as part of the Web Application settings. When done, they can have the same access levels as "anyone".