ClaySys AppForms

What the product is

ClaySys AppForms is a no-code/low-code builder for business forms, workflows and applications, made by ClaySys Technologies of Blue Ash, Cincinnati, Ohio. Its main pitch is to give legacy applications a modern web front end without throwing away the databases behind them. The company's own blog describes it as an approach that helps businesses "modernize outdated web applications (as well as build new apps) without discarding the important databases they depend on".

The reader is an enterprise IT team or a business unit with an old internal application, and the business users who would otherwise queue for developers: an HR lead tracking onboarding, a manager streamlining procurement. The company says the product has been "the go-to platform for building forms" since the rise of AppForms in 2010. ClaySys also sells services around other platforms, and a second product called RPA Genie for automating repetitive tasks. AppForms is its builder, pitched on the product form as "Build apps, forms & workflows", "Zero coding required" and "Fast & scalable solution".

What you build and how

The editor is a drag-and-drop designer. The company says the "intuitive interface lets business users" design forms and workflows "with zero coding", and gives two examples of what that means: a help desk ticketing system and a purchase approval app. The line is "simply drag, drop, configure, and it's done". The documentation the blog describes covers a designer section with controls such as text boxes, buttons and dynamic grids, so the building blocks are ordinary form controls and grids that you arrange and then wire to data.

Behind the visual layer, the platform expects developers too. The company says the platform also has functionality for developers to embed complex business logic and validation rules. That makes AppForms a hybrid: business users drag controls into place, and a developer adds the rules that need real logic. The blog calls the result enterprise-grade functionality, which is the company's term.

The data layer is your own. The blog says Enterprise AppForms integrates with data sources such as SQL tables, stored procedures and web services, so a modernized app can pull from or push to multiple systems, and the documentation section on data integration names SQL Server, SharePoint and web services. The company presents this as a way to modernize without disrupting business continuity. The worked example on the page is a decade-old VB.Net application for employee records. The licensed user installs AppForms on a Windows and SQL setup, rebuilds the front end in a short time, and merges it with the existing databases. The result, in the company's words, is a "sleek, new, much more secure web app", with no total overhaul from scratch.

The blog attributes the durability of those apps to a metadata-driven architecture. The company says this "ensures that the applications remain compatible with future updates", which answers the usual worry that a modernized app becomes obsolete. The same architecture is credited with easy installation in a server environment.

Workflow is covered by the documentation too: tutorials on configuring approvals and notifications. Together with forms, that covers the common internal pattern of a request, a review step and a notification.

Scalability is described through multi-tenancy. The company says multiple applications can run on a single server, each partitioned by a unique tenant ID at both the web and data layers. The examples given are an HR team running onboarding forms, an IT department running ticketing, and an operations team automating its tasks, all on the same infrastructure "without performance drops", whether the firm is small or large. For deployment, the documentation includes system requirements and installation steps for both on-premise and cloud setups.

Several product variants appear on the site's contact form: AppForms for SharePoint 2013, 2016 and 2019, AppForms for Office 365, and Enterprise AppForms. The same form asks for the number of users in brackets from 0-50 up to 1000+. The modernization story is told around the Enterprise Edition, which the company says keeps costs low and deployments fast.

Security, licensing and documentation

Security. The blog says the "AppForms Application Browser comes hardened against over 60 vulnerabilities, offering enterprise-grade protection out of the box". It frames this against legacy systems that leave gaps for threats such as SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting. It names no compliance certification.

Licensing and trial. The company says it offers "a free community edition with a 10-user license" for teams that want to try the product. It also offers dedicated resources for Premium users, and a free demo or proof of concept for all clients, plus a free consultation. No price is given for the Enterprise Edition or Premium; cost is discussed with ClaySys.

Documentation. The company says the product has end-to-end documentation: getting started with system requirements and installation, the designer, data integration, workflow automation, and troubleshooting with best practices, configuration examples and FAQs.

Company. ClaySys Technologies is at 4750 Ashwood Dr, Blue Ash, Cincinnati, Ohio 45241, USA. Its site lists services such as robotic process automation, AI, SharePoint, Azure, Office 365, ServiceNow and Salesforce development, and iOS, Android and cross-platform app development, so it is a services firm that also publishes a product. The menu carries a support page, and the blog keeps an AppForms category with posts such as "AppForms: The Game Engine for Enterprise Apps".

Who it suits and who it does not

AppForms suits an organization with a working legacy application and a SQL database it trusts, where the front end is the problem. Keeping the database and replacing the interface is the case the company's own example is built around. It also suits internal-tool builders who work in a Microsoft environment, given the Windows and SQL setup in the example and the SharePoint and Office 365 variants. The free community edition, limited to 10 users, gives a small team a way to test the designer before talking to sales.

It fits a company that wants several departments to share one server. Because each application is partitioned by a tenant ID, HR, IT and operations can each have their own forms and workflows on the same installation.

The caveats are straightforward. The blog describes an installed product on your own server environment, so anyone expecting a hosted, sign-up-and-publish builder with a public template gallery is looking at a different kind of tool. A greenfield startup with no legacy database to preserve may find the modernization angle less relevant than a general app builder.