Alpha DevCon 2020

Day 1*

Day 2*

Day 3*

Training Sessions

Training Sessions

Conference Sessions

Welcome to Devcon Training 2020

9:00 - 9:45am

Welcome to Alpha DevCon 2020! In this session, we'll go over the logistics of our 3-day event, show where to get webinar and live stream links, and introduce you to the presenters and sessions you'll encounter in the next few days.

 TransForm Advanced 

9:00 - 10:00 am

Go beyond simple data applications with TPL programming and on device assets. Look up products from an on device databases, make AJAX callbacks, and refer to images, PDFs, and more. Presented by Greg Bohling, VP Sales & Customer Success.

DevCon Overview and Keynote

9:00 - 10:15 am

A lot has been added to both Alpha Anywhere and Alpha TransForm since our last DevCon. In this session, President and Co-founder Selwyn Rabins reviews new Alpha Anywhere Features. He is joined by Dan Brickllin, CTO, who will review what's new in Alpha TransForm.

App Building From Scratch

10:00am - 11:15 am

This beginner's level session will show you a straightforward method to build a b2b ecommerce application that works on both web and mobile devices. Watch as we create a login, product catalog, shopping cart, and an interactive map. Hosted by Sarah Mitchell (Documentation Manager) and Scott Allen (Senior Visual Designer).

Working in Teams With GitHub

10:15am-11:15am

A big project goes faster when multiple people can work on the project at the same time. Thanks to Git integration, Alpha Anywhere makes this easier by tracking your project's source files. In this session, Sarah Mitchell shows you how to use Github and the Git integration in Alpha Anywhere to keep your source files accessible and up-to-date - so multiple people can work together at once without getting in each others' way. 

Key Features 2020

10:30am-11:30pm

A lot has been added to both Alpha Anywhere and Alpha TransForm since our last DevCon. In this session, President and Co-founder Selwyn Rabins reviews new Alpha Anywhere Features. He is joined by Dan Brickllin, CTO, who will review what's new in Alpha TransForm.

Debugging Your Applications

11:30am - 12:30pm

It can be maddening when your application throws cryptic errors or doesn't behave as you expect. In this session. Dion McCormick will show you how to keep your cool, and track down bugs using a variety of client and server methods. We'll also show you how to get help when you're really stuck.

Building PhoneGap/Cordova Apps

11:30am-12:30pm

Adobe's PhoneGap Build service is all but defunct, but Phonegap (a.k.a. Cordova) is still a popular, actively developed open source project. In this session, our mobility experts Bob Moore and Chris Martin will show an alternative to PhoneGap Build for creating native running mobile applications that take advantage of Phonegap/Cordova plugins.

Product Roadmap

11:45am-12:45pm

What's on the horizon? Find out what new features our development team are working on, and how they can benefit you. Selwyn Rabins covers upcoming Alpha Anywhere features, and Dan Bricklin covers upcoming TransForm features.

 TransForm Overview 

1:00pm - 1:45pm

Alpha Anywhere and Alpha TransForm are both powerful platforms for building offline-capable mobile applications. In this session, Solutions Engineer Nikos Kazantzis highlights the differences between these platforms, and shows you when to use one over the other.

Step-by-Step Cloud

1:00pm-2:00pm

Alpha Anywhere developers are choosing to deploy applications to the Alpha Cloud now more than ever before. In this session, Kurt Rayner (Sr VP Development) and Dave McCormick (VP Products and Services) will show you the best way to get your applications deployed, and how to adapt applications you already have so that they are cloud-compatible.

Customer Showcase

1:00pm-2:00pm

Developers Jaime-Ben David and Glen Schild demonstrate their apps and answer questions.

Designing and Styling Apps

2:00pm - 3:15pm

In this session, Sarah and Scott are back to take the application they built to the next level by adding aesthetic design and styling. Using a combination of UX containers and and built-in styling tools, you'll see as the application goes from plain to Wow!

UX Techniques for Prompting Users

2:15pm-3:15pm

Messages boxes, disclosures, popups, and javascript dialogs are just a few of the ways you can alert a user to an event or to prompt a user to take an action. In this session, solutions engineer Dion McCormick, Dion takes you through the various options in Alpha Anywhere, with an eye towards best UX practices. 

Dev Team Q&A

2:15pm-3:15pm

Ask us anything. Join the Alpha Software development team in a panel discussion.

Designing For Multitenancy

3:30pm-4:45pm

You've built the perfect app for your industry and you're ready to sell it multiple customers/clients. How do you do it? Do you set up servers (or cloud accounts) for each customer and deploy a copy of your application? That's one way. But a powerful alternative is to instead deploy a multitenant application, where each customer gets an app that feels like their own, even though the hardware, codebase, and sometimes databases are shared. In this session, Solutions Engineer Dion McCormick will take you through the ins and out of building for multitenancy.   

Training Wrapup and Q&A

3:30pm-4:15pm

Join Dave, Dion, Greg, Chris, and Sarah as they answer your questions about subjects covered in the training and other Alpha questions.

Customer Showcase 2

3:30pm-4:30pm

Developers Robin Bennet and Darol Harrison demonstrate their apps and answer questions.

Final Remarks and a bit of Fun

4:45pm - 5:15pm

As we wrap up DevCon 2020, Greg Bohling (VP Professional Services) takes you on a lighthearted journey through some of the fun (and sometimes silly) things you can do with Alpha.