Anjali Deore, Anupama Meena, Laxmi Ragi, and Madhura Bhad discuss how Persistent facilitates growth for their healthcare, finance, and insurance clients
As an Unqork solutions integrator (SI) partner, Persistent has been at the forefront of cutting-edge technology, encouraging their clients to tap into the value of no-code development. That’s why we spoke with Anjali Deore* (Lead Software Engineer), Anupama Meena* (Lead Software Engineer), Laxminarsaiah “Laxmi” Ragi* (Lead Software Engineer), and Madhura Bhad (Engineering Lead) of Persistent’s Intelligent Business Automation team.
With over 26 years of coding experience combined, why are these four engineers such fierce advocates of codeless development? Read the interview to learn more about the cutting-edge projects they have been working on to find out.
Let’s start with some introductions. What are your coding backgrounds?
Anjali: As Lead Software Engineer, I have over seven years of experience. I’ve been working with Unqork since December 2020, and it’s a really good experience so far.
Anupama: I’ve been working with Persistent for a long time. I had over five years of experience as a .NET backend developer before I decided to take a career break. When I got back in the field, I chose to work with Unqork’s no-code platform. After three weeks of training, our team was onboarded. It’s a really great learning experience and it was actually a quick one. If I had to recall all those coding concepts I learned before my break, that would have taken more time to relearn, so it was a nice experience for me.
Laxmi: I have about seven to eight years of experience in coding, mainly Java and Python. When I was working with Python about two years back, I was focused on Angular concurrent-based languages. As Anupama said, we were trained in Unqork for only three weeks. I am currently working on my second project with Unqork.
Madhura: I’ve been with Persistent for about three and a half years, with over seven years of experience in the IT industry. I was a full stack developer, so I worked on the server side of technology like .NET and SQL. I also have front-end experience—Angular, UGS, ReactJS, HTML CSS. I was working on all these technologies when I made the shift to Unqork last year!
When you are a traditional coder, it’s usually difficult to limit or control yourself to a specific no-code platform and bind yourself to not use any scripting. But this has actually been a great experience because Unqork’s out-of-the-box UI components make building easy. Within one or two days you can build a true end-to-end application—it’s actually possible. I have the opportunity to work in different domains—like healthcare, banking, and finance—all while using the same Unqork platform. It makes for a great learning experience, and sharing and learning things in Unqork Community is the best part.
What project are you working on with Unqork that you’re proud of?
Anjali: The first project I worked on was a patient registration portal with Anupama. We learned a lot from the project and formed some configuration best practices. Later on, we started working on an insurance application with Laxmi and Raj Palireddy (Persistent’s Sr. Solutions Architect) using the rate-quote-bind workflow.
Anupama: That first project took four to five months. It’s partially implemented and we are now providing a few enhancements to the registration system.
Anjali: Oh, and we delivered the project bug free! The client mentioned that the performance was really good, particularly the loading times. Whatever requirements the client gave were met, so our first-ever project on the Unqork platform was implemented very well in under five months.
Laxmi: I started with the Maimonides Medical Center (MMC) implementation project, which has two main parts: the digital front door and Amwell’s integration for virtual primary care. It allowed me to learn how to integrate with external services within the Unqork platform. Normally, I am a little inconvenienced by the data workflows, but I was able to pick it up easily.
Madhura: My first project was also for healthcare. Unqork was evolving at the time and my team needed to search for many things, like a batch looping config. Thankfully, there were so many great out-of-the-box UI components and data workflows that we leveraged for custom logic and data transformation. I really felt proud of being able to implement all these complicated requirements. It was possible and it was easy to implement complex logic into the application.
I worked on an insurance project for a small period, but even still I could see its whole architecture and its implementation. And when I was working on a finance project, the first phase that we delivered was also bug free! The Config Analysis Tool is a really great thing about Unqork because it is easier to unit test the components and find any bugs.
Anupama: Yes, I agree. Another thing I want to add is that with no-code, you have speed to market, which is a key metric for our clients. Our current client already has an application built in Angular, and they actually want to migrate it to Unqork! Why? They want that speed to market.
Every time they launch a new product, the Angular team is saying that it will take about three to four months to introduce that product into the existing application. We suggested that we can do this in one or two sprints since applications in the Unqork platform are so easily configurable. Flexibility is also key. The client just wanted the front-end functionality to be implemented with Unqork. So we said that we can use the APM feature to integrate their APIs, and then just provide the front-end to them. So they are really happy with the progress on their application migration.
“When we are working on any other technology, the most important thing everyone needs to be concerned with is cross-origin compatibility. When you work with third-party integrations, it is seamless on Unqork. Even if you are migrating, your back-end is not hampered much and you can make use of your APIs.”
Madhura: I was working with Anupama for that same project and what she said reminded me of something. When we are working on any other technology, the most important thing everyone needs to be concerned with is cross-origin compatibility. When you work with third-party integrations, it is seamless on Unqork. Even if you are migrating, your back-end is not hampered much and you can make use of your APIs.
Laxmi: Another thing I’ll add is that a no-code platform is great when a client keeps making changes. If they say one thing in the morning and then change their mind at night, it wouldn’t be possible to keep up with these changing requirements with code.
Laxmi beat me to it. Once you make an application, it’s never really done, right? How does developing and handling iterations with no-code compare to traditional coding methods?
Madhura: It’s much easier. You can implement features in less time, which is really important for when we remodel applications. Building schemas with MongoDB is easier—there’s no SQL to worry about—and we love the MongoDB support. The robust data workflow allows for custom logic implementation and data transformation. Unqork has a great future because of these features. I tell clients they should consider moving to Unqork for growth.
Anjali: Other programming languages will take more time to learn. Another feature of Unqork is that we have more ways to troubleshoot errors, like with the Config Analysis Tool Madhura mentioned earlier. We get the report telling us what and where to fix, so we can easily address it.
Laxmi: Yes, config analysis helps teach best practices.
Anjali: I used a no-code/low-code tool to design a chatbot, and I needed to write and learn another scripting language. We don’t have to write a separate scripting language, or any other language for that matter, with Unqork.
“The robust data workflow allows for custom logic implementation and data transformation. Unqork has a great future because of these features. I tell clients they should consider moving to Unqork for growth.”
Anupama: And because of that, any configurator— front-end, back-end, or full strap—can create microservices, work on UI models, focus on DevOps, and even promote to the QA environment. Only two or three teams can carry out a full project, which is great.
Do you use the Unqork Marketplace?
Anupama: Yes! There are so many integrations readily available, and the snippets are implemented with the best practices already in place so you know you are incorporating these features properly.
Do you have any best practices for Creators beginning their codeless journeys?
Anupama: Following specific naming conventions is very important. Your application will grow, and you will have to continue importing more modules, so getting the naming conventions consistent from the beginning will keep everything organized. I would also recommend regularly using the Config Analysis Tool to lead to greater performance later on. Don’t save it for the end of your build!
Laxmi: I would recommend reusing your modules. Unqork supports modularization. If you want a search box to look the same globally, for example, create that for one module and simply reuse it. Also, use the API specification to enable that particular API to run as a source of execution. The separation and pagination snippets available in the Marketplace are useful for UI capabilities
Anjali: I have two recommendations. “Store to database” will increase the load on your module. All of your data gets stored in the cloud anyway, so I would not mark the “store to database” feature unless it is absolutely required. So my first recommendation would be to not store data in your module. My second recommendation is plugin filters. Put a filter query in your plugin to help improve the performance.
* At the time of the interview, Anjali, Anupama, and Laxmi were Persistent employees. They have since left the company for new endeavors.
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