Intuit Partner Platform team blog

Announcing IPP v2.7

The Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) team is excited to announce that IPP v2.7 is now live and available for IPP development partners and includes the following updates:

• New Workplace App Center application toolbar
• New BETA-quality extension to Intuit Data Services
• AppCenter enhancements to improve the application shop and learn experience
• A variety of platform and IDS issues / defects

NEW INTUIT WORKPLACE APP CENTER TOOLBAR 

A new Intuit Workplace App Center toolbar will be introduced to customers in production in the 2010 Q3 timeframe.

The new toolbar allows partners greater control over the look and feel, and provides greater configurability while still providing users easy-to-use navigation between App Center apps and services.

Access to the new toolbar capabilities are being provided to IPP developers in this v2.7 release and are asked to test the new controls and configure their applications to work correctly with the new toolbar by July 31, 2010.

Benefits include:

• App Center application footer is removed 

  The new version of the toolbar will replace the function of the current standard Workplace application footer. This will reduce the real estate dedicated to Workplace navigation elements by more than 50 percent.

• Option to have toolbar scroll with the application interface 

  Developers can configure their application to allow the new toolbar to scroll with their application window contents. The default behavior is for the new toolbar to remain fixed at the top of the application window (for backwards compatibility).

• Control over application brand / name and toolbar background color 

  Developers can include a custom logo in thae toolbar, as well as control the background color of the interface.

• Greater control / configurability over stand menu options 

  Developers can include custom links to a variety of standard menu options, including options for HELP, FEEDBACK, ADD USERS, and MANAGE USERS.

• New Expiration Messaging for Applications 

  New dialog boxes have been added to each of the different plan expiration scenarios. Users are now presented with messaging that more clearly indicates which expiration scenario has been triggered:

  • Beta period expired: The application is no longer available for beta testing.
  • Trial period expired: Free trial period has ended; user is prompted to purchase a subscription.
  • Application subscription has been cancelled: Application is no longer available for use.

To access and test against the new toolbar, please submit an IPP Support Incident.

NEW BETA-QUALITY EXTENSTION TO INTUIT DATA SERVICES 

A number of new data sets, enhancements and improvements to IPP Intuit Data Services (IDS) are now available in BETA-quality.

Production-quality versions of these services—along with Flex tool updates that support these services—will be delivered in IPP v2.8, scheduled for release later in May.

Developers must use v2 of the IDS API to utilize these new services. Previous IDS versions (e.g. v1) is currently supported but will not include these new objects/behaviors; developers are strongly urged to migrate to the latest API version at their earliest convenience.

The following data elements and methods have been exposed in BETA quality. 

New IDS Objects / Methods

• LISTS
• Create Method for SalesTaxItem, Item Discount, and Item Fixed Asset
• Create and Update method for Payment Item
• ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE
• Update method for Invoice, Estimate and Sales Receipt
• ACCOUNTS PAYABLE
• Create method for Bill Payment Check, Bill Payment Credit Card, and Vendor Credit

Other IDS Enhancements available in BETA with IDS v2.7 include:

• Developer control over customer data connectivity options 

  Partners can now configure which IDS connectivity options their application subscribers can select from. Options include: Enter Data Directly, Use Sample Data, and Use My QuickBooks Desktop Data. By default, users are presented all three of these choices for any IDS-enabled application.

• Reporting data services beta 

  Developers can now access QuickBooks summary report data via IDS services for the following reports providing a summary view of data:

• Profit and Loss
• Balance Summary
• Sales Summary
• Account Balances
• Customers Who Owe Me
• Income Breakdown
• Top Customers by Sales

Methods are also available that allow developers to request reporting data for specified time periods or predefined subset (e.g. top 20).

• Enhanced query and sorting filters 

  IPP v2.7 introduces a variety of expanded sorting and filtering options. Developers can specify sort order, filter results by the synchronize flags, and get the number of objects returned by a query for all IDS objects. Name, Accountant, and Item objects can also be filtered by the active flag.

• Additional data validation rules for IDS operations 

  IPP v2.7 adds new validation rules to improve IDS data quality / consistency as well as to improve QuickBooks desktop sync reliability.

Partners should review their application to ensure their products conform to the following rules and properly handle the following error conditions when storing data to Intuit Data Services.

Examples of these new validation rules include:

• Names must be unique across names objects (Customer/Employee/Vendor/other names objects).
• Transactions (Bills, Invoices, etc.) must have at least one line.
• Email address must be in standard Internet format.
• Cannot reference both an Accounts Payable object and an Accounts Receivable object in a single General Ledger Journal Entry.
• Journal Entries must be in balance (Sum of Credits equal to Sum of Debits).
• For Accounts Payable transactions, a vendor must be referenced in the header.
• For Accounts Receivable posting and non-posting transactions, a Customer reference must be provided.

Other IDS enhancements include

• View-only User Roles 

  We’ve added new application roles that allow developers to provide read-only access to different classes of IDS objects. A new Confidential Reporting role has also been added to support the new reporting data services.

• Improved initial sync performances for customers 

  Performance of initial synchronization has been improved by 20 percent for improved customer experience.

For more details, including data validation rules and known issues please refer to the v2.7 IDS release notes and IDS Programmers Guide.

INTUIT WORKPLACE APP CENTER IMPROVEMENTS 

There are a variety of enhancements and modifications to Intuit App Center to improve the overall shopping flow and experience.

• New “All Apps” Page 

  A new “All Apps” page to the site providing an easy way for users to see a comprehensive list of all available applications. An “All Apps” link has been added to the top blue menu bar for easy access to the new page. The list of applications can be sorted by a particular column by clicking on the sorting triangles and multiple columns can be sorted by holding down the shift key while clicking a sort triangle.

• Clarifying Default Sign-Up Options for Applications 

  The Sign-Up Options for applications have been clarified through new terminology and graphics. Users are now presented with clearer messaging and graphics which indicate what evaluation option a particular application supports:

  • “Get it Free:” Application offers a free baseline subscription plan.
  • “Try it Free:” Application offers a free trial period; a purchased subscription is then required.
  • “Buy it Now:” Application does not offer any free trial or baseline plan and requires a purchase.

• Additional Help for QuickBooks Sync Manager Issues 

  Additional links have been added to the Frequently Asked Questions page in the top blue menu bar for issues with QuickBooks Data Synchronization. Users can now link directly to resources focused on QuickBooks Data Synchronization issues.

• Design improvements to Solution Category Pages 

  Design improvements to the Solution Category Pages (Run My Business, Manage My Work, Grow and Manage My Customers, Reduce My Costs) to simplify user navigation. The information presented has been streamlined and issues with lists scrolling have been addressed.

SOFTWARE UPDATES / FIXES 

For a complete list of software updates / fixes included in IPP v2.7, see the release notes.

--

The Intuit Partner Platform Team.

Ruby web apps and the Intuit Partner Platform

Editor's note: The following is a guest post by Zack Chandler who has been active in the Ruby on Rails and Intuit developer community for a number of years.

As recently as five years ago the majority of developers considered the Ruby programming language arcane and obscure. Then the Ruby on Rails web framework burst on the scene and seemly overnight became a must-consider choice when building web apps.

I began working with Ruby on Rails before the 1.0 release and have been amazed at the progress of the framework and growth of the community. Not long after that I began developing integrations between Ruby web apps and QuickBooks via the QuickBooks Web Connector and QuickBooks Online via the QBO API.

New to the QuickBooks ecosystem, I quickly learned there were additional benefits beyond simply adding the “QuickBooks integration” checkbox on a feature tour. Specifically the QuickBooks Marketplace quickly proved itself to be a valuable channel for lead-generation.

Fast-forward to 2010 and Ruby developers have even greater reason to be excited with Intuit’s current integration opportunities.

Ruby web apps apps targeting small to medium-sized businesses are launching daily. Humm… guess which accounting system most small to medium-sized businesses use (hint: rhymes with “fast cooks”)?

Meanwhile Intuit has re-imagined their entire developer offering and launched the ambitious Intuit Partner Platform. To a Ruby developer with no former experience with QuickBooks integration I would simply say that the most exciting parts of IPP are:

• Intuit Data Services - a cloud-based API for QuickBooks data
• Intuit Workplace App Center - an online portal where your web app can be marketed and sold to millions of Intuit customers

I recently did a deep-dive into IPP and came away thoroughly excited. I’ve posted a quickstart tutorial entitled Intuit Partner Platform for Ruby Web Applications on my Depixelate blog which will hopefully help other Rubyists get started with IPP.

The future is indeed bright for those Ruby developers wishing to both co-market and integrate with Intuit data through the cloud.

How to get Flex to produce a PDF file using Flash Player 10

Hi. My name is William Lorfing and I a Development Support Engineer for the Intuit Developer Network.

I have been with Intuit for over a year now and one of the questions that comes up from time to time is to show an example of how to get a Flex app to produce a PDF file.

My thoughts were, "that shouldn't be too hard!". Now where do I find that code on Google? Ok, it was a little harder than I thought. I am new to Flex, so I had to work through getting the environment set up and figuring out how to load the external libraries. Another problem was that if you were using Flash Player 9, you couldn't create the PDF on the client, but had to use the server to do this. With Flash Player 10, they allowed you to write files locally, so this was the way I went.

Well, Google was helpful and took me to Holly Schinsky's Devgirl's Weblog where she created a Flex script for creating a PDF file for Adobe's Tour de Flex. So, this is where I will begin my journey.

I started by creating a new Flex Project and importing the Open Source AlivePDF library from http://code.google.com. (This might not have been the correct way to do it, but it worked for me.) I tried using the RC version, but for some reason it didn't work, so I ended up downloading the latest SVN version and that worked.

I wanted to start simple, so I created a basic UI with a multi-line text box and a save button. The save button then called a couple of functions from the AlivePDF library to create the PDF pages and then a call to the FileReference save method and poof you have a PDF file.

Building a PDF file using the AlivePDF library, is much like designing a graphical interface. You put your text fields and graphics at certain positions on the page and the library takes care of the rest. I am not good at UI's so I stuck with the basic and just put the text from the Flex text box into the PDF.

Here is what the I came up with.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" >

    <mx:Script>
        <![CDATA[

        import flash.display.*;
        import flash.events.*;
        import flash.net.*;
        import flash.text.*;
       
        import org.alivepdf.pdf.PDF;
        import org.alivepdf.layout.Orientation;
        import org.alivepdf.layout.Size;
        import org.alivepdf.layout.Unit;
        import org.alivepdf.saving.Method;
       
        import flash.utils.ByteArray;

        protected var frPDF:PDF;

        private function onSave(e:Event):void
        {
            frPDF = new PDF(Orientation.PORTRAIT, Unit.MM, Size.LETTER);
            frPDF.addPage();
            frPDF.addMultiCell(200,5,desc.text);
            var bytes:ByteArray = frPDF.save(Method.LOCAL);
            var f:FileReference = new FileReference();
            f.save(bytes,"sample.pdf");
             
        }
        ]]>

    </mx:Script>   

    <mx:Label top="10" left="10" text="Enter text, then press Save to PDF." />   
    <mx:HBox width="100%" height="100%" top="40" left="10" >
   
        <mx:Canvas top="10" left="10" width="300" height="100%">
            <mx:Label text="Description:" y="2"/>
            <mx:TextArea id="desc" y="18" height="133" width="205"/>   
        </mx:Canvas>
    </mx:HBox>
   
    <mx:HBox top="205" left="50">
        <mx:Button horizontalCenter="0" click="onSave(event)" label="Save to PDF" id="savePDFBtn"/>
    </mx:HBox>
   
</mx:Application>

There are a lot of different methods in the AlivePDF library, so have fun and play around with some of them.

Thanks,

William

Welcome Flex 4 (And for IPP Native Developers...Now What?)

Hello!!  My name is Anjali Kucheria and I’ve recently become a Developer Relations Engineer at the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) team.  I’ve been a Flex Developer for some time now, specifically focused on the user-interface, styling and skinning aspects of development. I’m super enthused about my new role.  I’m also very excited about the launch of Adobe's new Flex SDK. I’m sure Flex developers will rejoice in  the enhancements in this new release!

Recently, Adobe released its much-awaited  version of the Flex Framework (Flex 4). Developed under the code name ''Gumbo", Adobe has enhanced the framework in several ways (Note: The Flex 4 development environment will be known henceforth as Adobe Flash Builder (previously known as Adobe Flex Builder):

•    Bridging the gap between designers and developers.  Adobe has built a new, comprehensive UI framework known as Spark.  Spark lies on top of the existing MX architecture, allowing the MX components to easily integrate with the new Spark components.  Spark also carries with it a new approach to skinning.  At a high-level, the new framework provides a clear delineation between the “look” of a component and the wiring behind a component.  For more information see  brief overview of the Spark architecture and component set".

•    Did you find yourself constantly struggling with the idea of States in Flex 3? Have no fear, With Flex 4, Adobe promises to unravel some of the complexities surrounding this often confusing, but also useful concept.  No longer will you need to use the <mx:SetProperty> for changes to button properties; Flex 4 denotes states simply by a dot notation   within the original component. For a more detailed explanation see: Flex 3 vs Flex 4 State Management.

•    Flex 4 allows you to connect to data services seamlessly.  For those who’ve done this with prior Flex releases, you will be pleasantly surprised with the new simplicity and intuitiveness.  The provided wizard interface eliminates common errors and misunderstandings and allows you to simply enter the required URLs.  To learn more, see Flex 4 & Data Wizards Make Life Easy.

•    Flex 4 allows for far more flexibility with layouts than in previous versions. Flex 4 introduces   layout objects which separates the layout logic from the component itself,  allowing far more design ingenuity. 

•    Flex 4 simplifies 2 way binding greatly.  All that a developer needs to do is add the ‘@’ character to the property that is to be bound.  For example to bind the text property of one Text areato another,  it can be done like this:

<mx:TextArea id=”textArea1”/>

<mx:TextArea id=”textArea2” text=’@{testArea1.text}’ />

What does this mean to IPP "Native" Developers?

We’ve developed a two-phased approach to transition our developers to the Flex 4 SDK and Adobe Flash Builder 4. What you can expect in the coming months:

•    We will be supporting Adobe Flash Builder 4(FB4) with the IPP SDK tools.  Initially, we will support FB4 with the Flex 3 SDK only.  If you choose to upgrade to FB4, you will automatically be upgraded to JVM 1.6.  For those who develop on a Mac and choose to upgrade to FB4, please be sure you run, or upgrade to, Snow Leopard.  Your application will not be backwards compatible.   Our recommended install is during this phase is Eclipse (Ganyanede 3.4/Galileo 3.5) with Flex 3.4 SDK and the Flash Builder 4 plugin.

•    Subsequently, we will support the Flex 4 SDK.  Once this upgrade occurs, your application can fully utilize the Fx and Spark component architecture (along with the existing Mx components) along with the state, layout and other Flex 4 SDK enhancements.

More details about IPP’s integration and support of the new Flex tools and SDK will be furnished upon the IPP tools 2.7 release.

In the meantime, we invite you to comment, ask questions/concerns you may have with regards to the Flex 4 and we will provide the necessary guidance. Also, please visit the forums IPP developer forums which is a great resource to post your questions as well as see other developers concerns and questions and the solutions. 

thanks!

Anjali.

Are you near Boston and into Windows Azure?

Are you near Boston and into Windows Azure? Then you should know about the Boston Azure User Group - food, drink and lots of Azure provided! 

Tomorrow night (3/5) 3/25 I'll be joined by Jarred Keneally to discuss the Windows Azure SDK for IPP and how easy it is for developers to:

• federate Azure-hosted SaaS apps into IPP
• integrate those apps with QuickBooks data using IPP's Intuit Data Services API
• and sell those apps to millions of Intuit customers on Intuit Workplace App Center.

Hope to see you there!

Getting real with code.intuit.com

Last June when we launched code.intuit.com, we had a big vision but we really didn’t know what would happen. Open Source is new to Intuit and isn’t fully ingrained in our DNA yet. It has been a fun project and over the last couple of months we are starting to feel that we are approaching an inflection point in terms of adoption and utility.

We recently launched our Azure IPP SDK project as an Open Source project, we are seeing more contributions from Intuit teams, and we are seeing more of the components used in production (or moving their way toward production). One example in particular makes us confident that we are on the right track.

Tim Hobson and I are the primary maintainers of the IPP Java Developer Toolkit on code.intuit.com. The IPP Java toolkit provides Java client bindings to the IPP APIs. Toward the end of last year, Tim took a first cut at adding support for Intuit Data Services (IDS) support to the toolkit.  He laid out the patterns and implemented an initial IDS Sanity Test. If you don’t know, IDS is a set of REST services that integrate with QuickBooks data.

A few weeks later, on our mailing list, we see this discussion topic posted by Brian Harper of smartsheet.com. Brian is the VP of Development at Smartsheet (and yes he codes too). Smartsheet has a really cool collaboration and work management app that they were federating to the IPP cloud. Brian wanted to use our IDS integration but he thought the Exception Handling was, well, kind of weak. He also quickly realized that we really only had the basic framework for IDS support in place.

Brian could have walked away, but he didn’t. He joined the project and with some pointers and direction from Tim and I, fleshed out the initial IDS implementation. Here is a verbatim quote from Brian:

“Having access to the source code for the IPP Java Devkit enabled us to quickly identify areas of functionality that were missing or incomplete, and thanks to a good tool set and the incredible responsiveness of the IPP development team, we were able to fill in the missing pieces with a minimum of effort and schedule impact.”

Long story short, smartsheet went live on the Intuit App Center in February, the IPP Java Toolkit is more robust and the next team to use it will have a smoother path. That is the way it is supposed to work.

Announcing IPP v2.6

The IPP team is excited to announce that IPP v2.6 is now live and available for IPP partners which includes:

1. INTUIT DATA SERVICES ENHANCEMENTS
We’ve made a significant number of enhancements and improvements to Intuit Data Services.

All of the new objects and behaviors listed below work with v2 of the IDS API. Developer must use v2 of the IDS API to utilize these new services.
Previous IDS versions (e.g. v1) are supported but will not include new objects/behaviors; developers are strongly urged to migrate to the latest API version at their earliest convenience.

The following data elements and methods have been exposed via REST API as well as added to the IPP Flex framework:

New IDS Objects

• ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE
  • Read access to Item Assemblies, Item Groups, and Sales Tax Groups
  • Read access to Customer Message, Customer Type, and Job Type
  • Read access to Deposit and Item Fixed Asset items
  • Read access to Credit Card Charge, Credit, and Refund transactions
  • Create methods for Sales Receipt, Terms, Payment Method, Sales Rep, and Class
• ACCOUNTS PAYABLE
  • Read access and Create methods for Item Receipt transactions
  • Read access to Bill Payment Credit Card transactions
  • Read access to Vendor Type
  • Create methods for Bills, Checks, and Class
• GENERAL LEDGER
  • Read access to Payroll item (to identify a wage item to apply to a time activity)
• LISTS
  • Read access to Other Names and Customer Message
  • Ability to reference entities by ID in addition to Names
• OTHER
  • Read, Create, and Update access to Time Tracking with Payroll Item reference

Other IDS Enhancements available with IDS v2.6:

• Custom Field Support
  Partners can define custom attributes associated with any IDS object. Partners have full Create, Read, and Update access to these attributes from within their applications.
  
• Query Optimizations
  All IDS queries have been enhanced to allow partners to specify the exact list of attributes they want returned; this enhancement improves query performance and reduces network traffic.
  
• “Draft” Flag on Updated IDS Records
  A new Draft flag has been added to IDS objects that support Update methods. Setting this attribute on a modified data element tells IDS not to sync the data to QuickBooks desktop. This attribute enables partners to allow their customers to create and revise IDS data in the cloud before committing these changes to QuickBooks desktop.
  
• Update Optimizations
  IDS now supports update methods that supply only a subset of field values. Only the supplied fields will be modified, while all other fields are untouched. This enhancement compliments the query optimizations mentioned earlier and can improve update performance.
  
• Changed Data Query
  Additional IDS capabilities have been included that allow partners to query for data changed or modified after a given timestamp. This capability can significantly improve the performance of applications that want to maintain an up-to-date list of data; allowing only new or changed data to be retrieved after the initial list is queried.
  
• Sync Error Handling
  Partners can now query for “errored” IDS objects, that is, all objects that failed during a sync with QuickBooks desktop. Objects that failed to sync can be reverted to the version last successfully synchronized with QuickBooks.
  New methods have also been added that allow developers to request that specific object instances in DRAFT state in the IDS data store be overwritten with data from QuickBooks Desktop. These methods allow partners to handle Sync failures and revisions more elegantly.
  
• Initial Sync Performance Improvements
  The performance of syncing a customer’s QuickBooks desktop company file to the IDS online data store the first time has been improved by about 50 percent.

Follow this link to more information on these and other new Intuit Data Service capabilities.

2. STREAMLINING THE APPLICATION SIGN-UP/SIGN-IN EXPERIENCE
We’ve added several minor enhancements to the IPP SUSI experience.

Note: All changes are upwardly compatible. New developer-facing enhancements are optionally configurable. The end-user changes to make the SUSI process clearer and easier will be immediately available for new users signing up for Intuit App Center applications.

Enhancements include:

• Streamlined Terms of Service Process
  When signing up for free, trial, or beta subscriptions for third party applications, customers now agree to the partner’s Terms-of-Service and Privacy Policy as an integrated part of the sign-up process; this is no longer a separate step.
  
• Preselected Business Profiles
  Users signing up for App Center applications directly from the QuickBooks Desktop browser will have the Business Profile with their QuickBooks file automatically selected.
  
• Customizable Help Links on Application Sign-In Page
  Partners who choose to customize their application login page now have the ability to customize the help links associated with that interface.
  
• Better Help for Customers Changing or Cancelling an Application Subscription
  Under certain circumstances, users may encounter problems using the App Center interface to upgrade, downgrade, or cancel their application subscriptions. Users who encounter this issue are now presented with a clear help dialog explaining the issue and directing them to call the support phone number related to the specific application team.

Get more information about these and other new IPP SUSI capabilities here.

3. INTUIT WORKPLACE APP CENTER IMPROVEMENTS
We’ve made a variety of enhancements and modifications to Intuit App Center to improve the overall shopping flow and experience.

Customer Enhancements

• Streamlined Learn More page design
  Learn More pages in Intuit App Center (aka AppCards) that describe the specific benefits, capabilities, requirements, and support policies for each IPP application have been simplified. Page elements that showed other New and Most Viewed applications have been removed. A new Support tab as been added, along with a new Requirements/Dependencies section on the Technical tab. (See below.)
  
• Enable Users to Edit Their Business Profile Names
  Application users with Admin privileges can now edit the name of their business profiles as well as update other profile attributes. This capability is included in the My Account section.
  
• Access to support for users with QuickBooks Sync issues
  The HELP option on the App Center application toolbar has been updated. For admin users accessing an application that syncs with QuickBooks desktop, a new help option has been added to submit a support incident related to QuickBooks sync.

Developer Enhancements

• New Support Tab on Learn More Pages
  A new Support tab has been added to the Learn More page (aka AppCard) for each IPP application. This tab will include the details on a particular application’s support policies as well as a link to the application’s online help services and the Support phone number for that application team.
  

• This information was previously available in App Center on the Technical tab within an application’s Learn More page. No additional work is required by partners to enable this tab.
  Note: Partners are required to provide this information before their application is published into production.

• New Technical Requirements/ Dependencies Info on Learn More Pages
  A new section has been added to the Technical Tab on the Learn More page for each IPP application. This section provides users with information regarding minimum machine requirements, supported browsers, and supported QuickBooks versions to run a particular IPP application.
  

• We urge partners whose applications have specific minimum requirements for browsers, QuickBooks connectivity, machine resources, etc. to update their AppCard data so that this info can be properly presented in App Center.Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Help Instructions

• Additional help instructions have been added to IPP’s Publish Application interface that provide partners with suggestions on how to best tag their Learn More application pages so that search engines can index these pages in an optimal fashion. 

• Google Analytics Tracking Codes
  Google Analytics tracking codes for the Learn More pages will be modified as part of v2.6. Developers who have written reports to track data flow on the Learn More pages (i.e. “Funnel Tracking”) will need to modify their tracking codes. See documentation for Google Analytics for IPP / Workplace App Center

Follow this link for more information on these and other new App Center capabilities.

4. SOFTWARE UPDATES / FIXES
For a complete list of software updates / fixes included in IPP v2.6, please review the release notes here.

Thanks,
—The Intuit Partner Platform Team

IPP - Alterity's Story: From the Desktop to SaaS

It’s always exciting when a new app goes live on the Intuit Workplace App Center, and especially so when it is has been developed by a long-standing member of the Intuit Developer Network.

Brian Sweat of Alterity had good conversation (full recording as an mp3 here) with Redmonk’s Michael Coté to talk about the new Easy Analytics for Inventory, and why - as a 10-year-long member of IDN developing "traditional" desktop applications - Alterity is adopting IPP and the SaaS delivery model for the next generation of its products that integrate with customers' QuickBooks data.

Show Notes:

• Brian tells us about Alterity and their new offering, Easy Analytics for Inventory.
• I ask Brian to tell us how they started getting interested in using IPP and what the process was like getting up and running.
• We talk about the use of Flex and how the IPP platform integrates with the UI layer.
• Brian tells us about the ability to more closely track what users are actually using and doing (or not using) in a cloud-based application.
• While customers don’t seem to be overly concerned with cloud vs. desktop deployment – at this early point – Brain says the support and even install time on cloud seems much smaller than for traditional deployment options.
• This leads to a discussion about the other effects a PaaS, like IPP, has on a company’s structure: namely not having to worry so much about billing and other back-office concerns. And then there’s all the marketing Intuit does for them in the App Center.

The full recording as an mp3 here.

Intuit Partner Platform + Windows Azure = Win for Small Businesses

When we started the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) last year, we envisioned a destination where Small Businesses could pick from a variety of quality applications to solve their critical business pain points – and we wanted those apps to work together!  A big ecosystem of Apps – from a variety of developers and pre-integrated – solving for the needs of Small Businesses.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce an alliance between Intuit and Microsoft, that brings IPP a giant step closer to our ecosystem vision. Starting today, SaaS developers can access the beta of the Windows Azure SDK for IPP - a set of tools, code samples, and services, designed to make it easy for developers of SaaS applications developed on Windows Azure to federate those SaaS apps on to IPP and sell them to millions of Small Businesses in the Intuit Workplace App Center.

Today’s news about Intuit and Microsoft’s relationship has two converging themes:

1) More developers + great tools = more great apps for small businesses

• The Windows Azure SDK for IPP (when fully delivered) will enable developers to build a great application on the Windows Azure platform while leveraging the go-to-market services (i.e. single sign-on, billing and data web API’s, user management, etc.) of IPP and publish their app to an existing marketplace in the Intuit App Center.
• In addition to the third-party developer apps, Microsoft will also be working closely with us to offer their Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) via the Intuit Workplace App Center.  While it will take a little while to get the integration just right, we think the addition of BPOS, to the Intuit Apps, and third party apps, creates a strong suite of apps for Small Businesses to choose from.

2) Broader channels = more customers for developers

• By reaching out to our respective Channel partners (VAR’s, Solution Providers, etc.) and introducing them to the Intuit App Center, we further expand the ecosystem of Small Businesses that developers can target. Through our product channels (via QuickBooks) and our partner channels, we have an opportunity to build a large customer base using connected applications.

The reason we’re so excited about this alliance is very simple: More Quality Apps + More Targeted Customers = Vibrant Ecosystem (and a strong network effect)!  By joining the development and channel forces of two of the leaders in the Small Business Market, I think we have a great opportunity to delight SMB’s, Developers, and VAR’s. Win-Win-Win!

Alex Chriss
Director, Intuit Partner Platform

IPP Podcast Now Available by Michael Cote (RedMonk) and Jeff Collins

This new RIA Weekly podcast talks about what IPP is, and the opportunity it represents for developers.

Enjoy!