The Alpha platform is a unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct "no-code" and "low-code" components. The vendor says that using the Alpha TransForm no-code environment, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the…
$35
Nintex Process Platform
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Nintex offers a platform that helps companies discover, automate, and optimize business processes.
The speed of development from concept, through development and delivery of the end product is so impressive [with Alpha Anywhere]. There is an impressive array of genies and helper functions meaning that you can focus on what matters, the end user experience. It is not a "No code" solution but it is a very impressive "low code" solution which allows detailed access under the hood to tweak the applications to your own needs and the needs of your clients.
Nintex is best suited when processes are drawed by the business and then can be furter enhanced by IT professionals. When only used by business units we see that there are some lose ends in processes and some bagic process knowledge is needed. Therefore it is wise that the persons in the business who will use Nintex have some basic knowledge on how to set up business processes
Our company had been creating small business applications since the 1980's, when we used DBase IV (don't laugh... that's what was available). Then, we got more "sophisticated" with Microsoft Access. Clearly, we would always be limited with what we can do with those two programs. By accident, during an Internet search, we saw and ad for Alpha Anywhere (back then, it was called Alpha V). After working with the 30 free trial for just two weeks, we retired Access, for good. The best part was Alpha's flexibility in its use of "back end" data tables. That allowed us to use existing Access tables as we redesigned the front-end program (Alpha ships with its own DBF system, but we prefer SQL-Based tables). You can choose, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Access, Paradox (actually, too many to name) for your tables. You can even create links to Excel spreadsheets or QuickBooks Tables. It's outstanding!
Alpha allows developers to create very large and very complex programs. However, it's also a great choice for RAD (Rapid Application Development) for those who need to be up and running quickly or for less experienced programmers. Actually, the interface truly allows for "codeless" development of your application (more on that later). That means you can design a fully functional application, without typing a single line of code. They have some examples on their website.
My favorite part of Alpha is that it is constantly adding features and functions that allow us to do more with our applications. In fact, one of my biggest problems is that I need more time to learn and practice the added features as fast as they are introduced
Prior to Alpha Anywhere, we never considered creating/developing "mobile" applications (for tablets, smartphones, etc.). Alpha created a unique "panel" system that makes those application work great... and allows for the design of very sophisticated Apps.
Adding Machine learning features like the "Image and Text Automation" component, which allows bots to extract data from unstructured sources like scanned documents or PDFs.
Natural language processing (NLP) features to understand and interpret human language, which can be useful for tasks like customer service or data entry. mostly for middle east countries where Arabic language is used.
Integration with external systems where many industries uses their own legacy systems and they need RPA bot to interact with their systems as well.
Adding More OCR tools for Document data extraction and dynamic content.
We are currently investigating which collaboration platform best suits our needs. Chances are that we move to SharePoint Online and then we're going to also consider the microsoft power platform (power automate and power apps) to develop forms and workflows. Aspecially the pricing model for the cloud is currently a blocking factor to go for the Nintex solution in the Cloud.
Based on the on-prem experience with this tool, I believe that they have a lot of potential to help the online version catch up to where the on-prem left off. Nintex developed their online version and it is not as fully formed or capable compared to the on-prem version, and the licensing model scales back what we would have liked to be an expansion or at least continuous improvement of existing flows. It is also not near as user friendly specifically to non-developers and has an uncanny similarity to Microsoft Flow in the online instance. Consistent with my reviews of the tool - I believe they have some good approaches to design thinking that, if translated well from on-prem to online, could make this a clear winner again.
The Nintex Process Platform has never crashed or had any availability issues during my usage. However there was an issue that was of my own making that caused a slowdown of the system. I had set up a process to run once a day and check for employees on a list that had certain parameters selected, and for some reason that I had to troubleshoot, the process instead ran constantly, which filled the cache quickly. I ended up having to dismantle that process so the system didn't crash.
Unlike any other process automation product out there. Not only is it a low-code, easy to use tool for building processes in environments like SharePoint or Salesforce, they have really started to expand their tool-set by offering tools to manage other things like process mapping, RPA, mobile,etc.
The support team works as fast as they can and they are usually fast to solver the issues. Sometimes they need more time to solve one of them because our workflows and so on are more complex than usual clients.
I used the Nintex training software, it was easy to watch and follow along. It didn't go too fast and was descriptive enough to understand what the steps needed were in order to produce efficient workflows and user friendly forms.
test runs for key persons to insure the system is set up prior to rolling out I think the platform is good, I think the roll out and the local implantations is where we are failing as a company in using Nintex
Alpha Anywhere is a full-stack IDE. It’s no code and low code, but you can also custom code if you need to. About 10% of our application is no code. 80% is low code and 10% is custom code.
It's much more reasonably priced and we were able to actually experience the platform for a bit before we made a decision. And by the time our demo was finished we had already started depending on it for some of our processes so it would've been very hard to separate from it
The scalability is really bottlenecked by the imagination of the user. I was able to make processes for my own personal usage, making my daily tasks easier. I was also able to make processes that affected hundreds of employees, making large standardization and efficiency gains. So either way, the system is used the same way, and I was the limiting factor.
Allows for a great return on investment since you can quickly become very productive and complete more projects and applications in a shorter period of time with hand coding and the normal programming headaches of PHP, C#, Angular, etc.
You can afford to take on more and smaller projects since they will require far less time to complete than more traditional development environments.
Alpha Anywhere is continuously updated coming out with new features and capabilities on essentially a daily basis. Continuous improvement and frequent updates allows you to always stay ahead of the curve and competitors.
Alpha Anywhere allows you to offer lower cost solutions that will be completed in less time and that will be much easier to support and maintain.
We have saved our company thousands of dollars by creating our own customer support system rather than using a 3rd party tool.
The ability to generate documents/PDFs in workflows has solved a great number of process issues for us and groups who had previously been using paper documents.
Automating many permissions updates through workflows has been a huge time saver for repetitive processes.
