Intuit Partner Platform team blog

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.

Announcing IPP Dev Voice - Enhancement Voting and Tracking System

I’ve been fortunate to speak with many of you over the last several months as the Intuit Partner Platform gains momentum. The progress we’ve made together in the last 90 days alone is ASTOUNDING! We released a new App Center with QuickBooks 2010 to let small business customers easily discover your great solutions; we’ve seen a dozen new apps launch, and we’re putting the finishing touches on a whole host of new platform capabilities and data services.

One thing I really appreciate is all the great ideas and thoughtful recommendations you’ve provided on how to make IPP even better. You can see many of your ideas put into action as we roll out new releases. But what about that other suggestion you asked us for? What’s coming up?

To make it easier for you to provide feedback and for us to share the status of things, we’re trying out a new service - IPP Dev Voice. This service will let you:

• Add your own suggestions
• Review the great suggestions posted by other partners (there are 8 different enhancement groups, ranging from Data Services, to Marketing and Selling, to App Management and Support)
• Vote on the enhancements you’d find most valuable (you can place up to 10 votes in each group!)
• Subscribe to RSS feeds for any of the groups to monitor new ideas and track the status of your suggestions.

IPP Product Management will review all the suggestions regularly. We’ll flag the ideas we’re actively reviewing, planning, and working on, so you’ll always know the status of your favorite enhancements stand.

IPP Dev Voice is available to all registered IPP development partners. To access it, go to http://voice.developer.intuit.com. We’ve also integrated the service into the IPP and Workplace Discussion Forum. Look for the FEEDBACK widget on any IPP forum listing pages or postings. Click on this widget to view the IPP suggestions with the highest number of votes, or go directly to IPP Dev Voice to add a suggestion and see what other developers are thinking about.

Do you have an idea? Do you recognize a good idea when you see one? We want to hear from you!

~Bill Phelan
IPP Product Management

New Promo Video - Intuit Workplace App Center

Below is the new promo video for the Intuit Workplace App Center, featuring some of the great web apps that help Small Business owners boost their bottom line and get connected to a wider array of powerful online services. We'll be updating the video with other new apps as they come online, but this is our first public version.

A quick note to developers new to the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP): the apps shown here are either fully built on IPPs platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or federated, then packaged and sold (as SaaS apps) using IPP. Either way, the App Center is where end-users find, try, but and use those applications.

You like?

 

QuickBooks Pro and Premier 2010 Feature the All-New Intuit App Center

We’re very excited to announce that the Intuit App Center, a new feature of QuickBooks Pro and Premier 2010, is now live. The all-new Intuit App Center provides QuickBooks customers with direct access to web-based business applications that help Small Business owners boost their bottom line and get connected to a wider array of powerful online services.

The apps available on Intuit App Center have been developed by Intuit and members of the Intuit Developer Network to further expand the value of QuickBooks. Today there are over 20 3rd party apps live on the Intuit App Center with a very healthy pipeline of more high-quality 3rd party apps in the works.

Free Trials Available On Intuit App Center

The Intuit App Center is a key channel for 3rd party web apps (built on the Intuit Partner Platform by IDN members) to reach QuickBooks’ 4 million customers. IDN members can check out free trials to the apps available today. Here a some great examples:

• Fuel Station - Track and manage marketing campaigns and sales leads while synchronizing customer information with QuickBooks 2009 and 2010.
• Central Desktop - Share files, create wiki pages and more in minutes! Anywhere Anytime.
• Pixily - Simplified paper and digital document management and document scanning. Automatically look-up clients' and vendors' email addresses from Quickbooks 2009 or 2010 contacts.
• Dimdim - Set up web conferences or deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages while sharing your voice and video online.
• Rypple  - Helps your employees learn and execute faster by getting honest feedback from colleagues, clients, and advisers.
• Setster - Gives service providers and teams of professionals the ability to accept appointments online using a widget that can be embedded on any website.
• VerticalResponse for Intuit® Workplace - Create, launch, and track professional emails, newsletters, postcards and more. And, if you have QuickBooks 2009 or 2010, you can directly import your customer contacts.

What Intuit Apps Are Live on Intuit App Center?

Another exciting aspect of the Intuit Partner Platform is the fact that Intuit’s own product teams are also building and launching new web apps available on the Intuit App Center. Again, free trails are available for each of these apps, so try them out now:

• Intuit Green Snapshot - gives you recommendations on how to save money by reducing your carbon footprint and lets you share progress with your customers.  And since it’s based on your QuickBooks data, there’s no extra work for you.
• ViewMyPaycheck Beta - gives employees of Small Businesses easy access to payroll information.

How Can You Get Your Apps into the Intuit App Center?

If you want your web apps become available on the Intuit App Center then check out the IPP Developer Center to learn how you can build your apps from scratch as “Native” apps or “Federate” existing SaaS apps that integrate with QuickBooks data and then sell them on the Intuit App Center.

Links

• Official Intuit QuickBooks 2010 and Intuit App Center Press Release
• Intuit App Center
• Intuit Partner Platform – IPP Developer Center
• What’s new in QuickBooks 2010 (Intuit site)
• 5 minute YouTube Video w/ new features
• Intuit Small Business United Blog - QuickBooks 2010 is Here!
• Youtube: IntuitQuickBooks

QuickBooks 2010 Press / Blog Coverage

• VentureBeat article: Intuit’s small business software QuickBooks 2010 gets an app store  
• PCMAG.COM article: Intuit QuickBooks 2010 Includes App Store
• accountingweb: What's New in QuickBooks 2010
• bMighty (Information Week):Intuit's New QuickBooks 2010 Eases Installation, Improves Reporting (and Gets Webbier)

Federated Applications on Intuit Partner Platform

Today, we are pleased to announce the release of “Federated Applications” on the Intuit Partner Platform. It’s been a blast to work with our Rock-Star team to deliver this and I want to personally welcome our five new developers, VerticalResponse, DimDim, Rypple, Setster, and ExpenseWare, that have gone through federation already.  It’s always scary going first, but these folks have been great partners and I look forward to their awesome success!

Here is some more information on the details of federation and how you as a developer can get started.

Advantage SmartRoutes Now Live!

Advantage SmartRoutes, built on the Intuit Partner Platform is now live and fully available at the Intuit Workplace! From the FoxBusiness.com article:

"TomTom, the world's leading navigation solutions provider, today announced a strategic partnership with Advantage Integrated Solutions, a premier Intuit QuickBase consultant-developer, to optimize business fleet organization and itinerary planning on TomTom PRO Series navigation devices. TomTom PRO Series, a new line of navigation devices developed specifically for businesses with mobile workforces, offers best-of-breed GPS navigation, a free map update and premium support services.

Coupled with the Advantage SmartRoutes rich internet application, the TomTom PRO Series now offers a way for fleet managers and route dispatchers to organize, plan and optimize routes. This solution also gives drivers detailed mapping information about the locations to which they are navigating."

Features include:

• Copy-and-paste your customer data from Excel into the program for geo-coding, mapping and route creation, or import complete routes you've already created by other means.
• QuickBooks users - Get Going Quickly using SmartRoutes' built-in sync to your QuickBooks desktop Customer data. SmartRoutes is a certified Intuit Workplace application and QuickBooks add-on.
• Maps all of the locations your people need to visit, lets you visually create efficient routes, and easily push them to TomTom devices or save them for future use.
• Download your routes to TomTom devices as complete itineraries from any pc with web access.
• Microsoft MapPoint users - export your contacts in an Excel format that you can import into MapPoint for additional data analysis.

You can find out more about the new IPP app at the Intuit Marketplace.

Advantage SmartRoutes went into beta in January 2008, so a big congrats to Scott and his team at Advantage to go fully live!

Updates to Intuit Marketplace!

Driving lots of small business users to Intuit Marketplace is important to us and to our developer community.  Making it easy for them to discover and purchase applications that solve their needs is critical, and one of the things that makes the Intuit Partner Platform offering special. 

After conducting focus groups with a number of small business users and with the emphasis on improving the user experience and increasing adoption, we’ve just launched an updated Intuit Marketplace:

• new search and app discoverability from the homepage
• new micro-sites to provide users with a deep-dive into the features and benefits of an application
• enhancements include product videos, screenshots, detailed information, more explicit pricing, and prominent buy/try calls to action

With these changes in place, we hope to increase customer awareness and make it as easy as possible for users to make informed decisions. 

This is just step one of our re-design of Marketplace.  By engaging with small business users and our developers, we think we are well on our way to creating a great destination for Small Businesses.  

Check out the the updates to Intuit Marketplace and let us know what you think!