Creating an app for your portal?

Rosemary Davis
Rosemary Davis
Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud K–12 Education Solutions™ General Discussions
Hello! I've been going down a rabbit-hole exploring progressive web apps, and I would love to implement something like this for our myschoolapp portal. We already have the built-in ability to add a homescreen shortcut, but I would want to create a wrapper that would open our portal in a completely separate window/session, ideally without a URL bar and the usual browser controls.


I've been referencing this article: https://medium.com/appscope/designing-native-like-progressive-web-apps-for-ios-1b3cdda1d0e8


BB Support was not able to add any custom code to our portal header, unfortunately (I've gone through and voted for a bunch of Ideas that requested something similar). Has anyone had any luck with a workaround or building their own? I would love some guidance—I am admittedly fairly (extremely) new to app coding, but I'm open to learning more.


Thanks!

-Rose

Comments

  • Amanda Polson
    Amanda Polson
    Third Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Rosemary Davis hi! I'm interested in learning more about what you have done with this? Has anyone else figured out how to use the blackbaud portal as an app? I would love if our families could access the portal on their devices without having to sign in every time.

  • Rosemary Davis
    Rosemary Davis
    Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Amanda Polson
    Unfortunately nothing - you're the first response I've gotten! To be honest, I abandoned the project…it ended up seeming like more trouble than it's worth. Sorry!

  • Ruben Perez
    Ruben Perez
    Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary Facilitator 1

    Hi there….

    Progressive web apps are a great way to (in some cases) shortcut mobile app development using more web-like tools, but you are still building a mobile app that needs to be deployed to app stores, etc.

    Since, like you said @Rosemary Davis in essence you'd be trying to “wrap” Blackbaud's portal in this new app, there is not much benefit here versus just creating a browser shortcut on your mobile, without getting BB to change some things on their end.

    Apologies for the self-promotion, but our app (here in the BB marketplace) is a good solution for mobile access to many core BB SIS features. Since it's API-based we can create our own custom user experience. We're in “Early Access” and happy to demo it for you. We're seeking those for forward-looking schools that want to add a great BB mobile-first experience to their community.

    (Amanda, I know we're talking tomorrow but I wanted to answer here, in case it helps others too…)

    -Ruben

    @Amanda Polson
    @Rosemary Davis

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