We are thrilled to announce that BuildFire has acquired Bizness Apps, further cementing our position as the leading mobile app building platform in the industry. This marks a significant milestone in our journey towards empowering businesses with top-notch app development solutions.

The acquisition of Bizness Apps is not only a testament to our commitment to excellence but also a major step in our aggressive growth strategy. By integrating Bizness Apps’ customers, we are poised to provide even better services and user experiences to more and more businesses.

We extend a warm welcome to all Bizness Apps customers, and we are excited to have you join the BuildFire family. Rest assured, we will continue to provide the high-quality service and support that you’ve come to expect.

As we move forward, we are more determined than ever to continue growing and expanding our capabilities.

Stay tuned for more updates, and get ready for an incredible journey together as we revolutionize the world of mobile app development!

The G2 fall 2022 quarterly report has officially been released!

Similar to past reports, BuildFire has once again received 11 total G2 awards and badges for the fall of 2022. 

This includes a “Leader” badge in the Drag and Drop App Builder Software Grid report—which we’ve earned for seven consecutive quarters. G2 also named BuildFire has a “Leader” in the Small Business Drag and Drop App Builder Software segment. Both of these honors are the highest level of recognition in the categories. 

Beyond our new leader badges, BuildFire was recognized as a “Momentum Leader” and “High Performer” in nine additional reports for app development.

Here’s a complete summary of BuildFire’s G2 achievements for the fall of 2022:

Grid Reports

• Drag and Drop App Builder Software — Leader
• Small Business Drag and Drop App Builder Software — Leader
• Mid Market Drag and Drop App Builder Software — High Performer
• Mobile Development Platforms — High Performer
• Small Business Mobile Development Platforms — High Performer
• Application Development Platforms — High Performer

Momentum Grid Reports

• Trending Mobile Development Platforms Software — Momentum Leader
• Trending Drag and Drop App Builder Software — Momentum Leader
• Trending Application Development Platforms — Momentum Leader

Regional Grid Reports

• Asia Drag and Drop App Builder Software — High Performer
• Asia Pacific Drag and Drop App Builder Software — High Performer

Check out our full G2 profile for more information. 

Here’s the latest platform update straight from the BuildFire product team:

Logbook — NEW Premium Feature

• Previously known as our Journal plugin, we renamed this feature when deploying the latest updates
• This allows app users to log their daily moods, activities, thoughts, and notes
• Great for driving user engagement

Media Center Manual

• This plugin goes hand-in-hand with Media Center Manual Playlist
• Added a setting for admins to show/hide “Add All to Playlist” button when connected to Media Center Manual Playlist
• Updated designs for “Add All to Playlist” and “Go to Playlist” buttons
• Added “Play All” button, which starts playing the first item at the top of the playlist

Seminar and Lecture Notes

• Allow admin to lock seminars, which users can unlock sequentially after a pre-set delay
• Improved UX
• Cleaned up UI

Image Library

• Improved UX
• Cleaned up UI
• Follow Standards

Folder

• Added options for customizing iOS safe area
• Facelift to the control panel UI

People

• Improved UX
• Cleaned up UI
• Follow standards

User Profile Action Folder

• Fixed top safe area on iOS

Review and Approve – Premium Feature

• Speed and performance enhancements
• Push notifications deep linking to submissions
• All strings now configurable in the plugin’s Language tab

WYSIWYG Layouts

• Responsive design for tablet and mobile
• Works with BuildFire Image Lib
• Works with BuildFire Buttons
• Ability to insert layouts
• Ability to edit layout
• Ability to copy layout
• Ability to delete layout

Misc. Bug Fixes

• Removed white line that was showing above the Nav Bar
• Fixed “Input Dialog” — portion that was covered by iOS keyboard

Developer Updates and Enhancements

• SDK eSignature enhancements
• Improvements to the BuildFire Stripe SDK (add on charge, purchase, subscribe, and ability to enable automatic taxes)
• Aggregation — Feature on Datastore for appData, userDate, and public Data. Service where developer can easily use it for data processing within a collection. Get analysis results like total number of documents, sum, average, max values, min values, etc.
• CP navigate to tab — Provide users a way to navigate the CP’s tabs through the SDK, with ability to pass deep linking data

Add option to set manual or auto height of Drawer component

Here’s a look at the changes and updates made to BuildFire over the last month:

Free Text Questionnaire

• Deployed new question type — Time
• Time allows you to ask questions like, “what time do you want to…?”
• Deployed new question type — Duration
• Duration lets you ask questions that can be reported in hours, minutes, or seconds

Document Manager Stats

• Ability to set different Free Text Questionnaires for Document Manager Stats
• This allows users to answer a different questionnaire using the same Document Manager Stats each day

YouTube

• Small UI Enhancements
• The YouTube descriptions now support new formatting, including clickable links and clickable hashtags

WYSIWYG Enhancements

• tinyMCE — Context Menu & Toolbar cleanup
• Image Library enhancements
• More context menu actions
• WYSIWYG inherits branding designs

New Plugin — Media Center Manual Playlist

• Companion plugin to Media Center Manual plugin
• Allows users to save media items (like video and audio) from multiple instances of Media Center Manual to a single global playlist

Media Center Manual

• Allow admin to set autoplay delay
• Allow user to add all media to playlist
• Allow user to remove all media from playlist
• Cleaned up UI and animations

TypeForm

• TypeForm made changes on their platform that broke its compatibility with BuildFire
• Our team made updates to fix and maintain the compatibility
• Now TypeForm opens in apps in a new way

Our product team has made some significant changes to our software this month. Here’s a detailed description of the updates:

Free Text Questionnaire and Free Text Questionnaire Geolocation

• Added new question types (list and statement)
• Added the ability to create sections in your questionnaire
• Added the ability to insert videos and images into your questionnaire
• Added new settings (set cooldown time, set start time, set end time, set maximum number of submissions per user)

WYSIWYG Enhancements

The WYSIWYG editor is everywhere throughout our platform. So this was a pretty big update. It can really level up a lot of apps, especially with the updates we’ve been making on deep linking and action items. 

• Ability to add buttons to any WYSIWYG
• Cleaned up the WYSIWYG menu

New Stripe APIs

• Refund payment ability (for captured payments)
• Cancel payment ability (you can cancel authorized payments before the amount has been captured)
• Added new “metadata” option for Stripe Connect

New Feature — Deeplink onUpdate

• Can be used to listen for deep link changes
• For example, push notifications or action items that can navigate to the active feature (ex. launcher)
• Check our onUpdate documentation for more info

SDK — Standards Cleanup

• Improved standards consistency
• Focused on core components like Carousel button and Action Item buttons and links

Here are the latest updates from our software engineers and product development team:

Plugin Enhancements and Updates

Free Text Questionnaire and Free Text Questionnaire Geolocation

• Allow users to provide a numerical value as an answer to questions
• Admins can set up equations to calculate results and outputs based on numerical answers provided by users (example: mortgage calculator)
  • Enhanced the WYSIWYG answer template to resolve Javascript expressions
• Admins can allow users to see their results in a popup after completing a questionnaire

Seminar and Lecture Notes

• Added support for deep linking
• Allow users to share notes with settings to turn off for security
• Added language settings so the app owner can configure text strings within the plugin
• UI fixes and enhancements
• Added an empty state to the main screen

Weight Tracker

• Added language settings so the app owner can configure text strings within the plugin
• Added support for international date formats (date will automatically display based on user’s location)

User Directory

• Added option to navigate to user profiles

Loyalty

• Added support for deep linking to allow app owners to quickly and easily deep link within this plugin – can be used with action items, push notifications, and much more!

Share App

• Added support for deep linking to allow app owners to quickly and easily deep link within this plugin – can be used with action items, push notifications, and much more!

Document Manager Stats

• Admin can turn show/ hide all stats
• Admin can toggle an on/off setting that allows the first answer of a Free Text Questionnaire to be included in a submission preview

Outline Folder

• Facelift
• Allow users to switch back to tree mode (reset outline)
• Auto generate action items for leaf items
• Facelift for the control UI
  • Added more design options
  • Added background image
  • Added background color
  • Added layout
  • Added advanced mode to customize the layout
• Reset outline feature
• Hid custom title bar in the design tab
• Clone row feature
• Minor bug fixes

Premium Social Wall Inbox

• Added language settings so the app owner can configure text strings within the plugin

Journal

• Added configurable mood slider
• Added configurable activity list

Places 2.0

• Added support for metric units conversion

Other Product Updates and Enhancements

• Users can add offers with a coupon code
• Added the “App Marketer” role for the Control Panel. The app marketer role can only access marketed-related info like push notifications, app marketing, etc. The purpose is to avoid accidental app changes, and it can be added/changed from the CP or from the WL/user management.
• App permission enhancements for admins — users can customize the permissions request from their Control Panel. Permissions sections will depend on the features added to your app. This is required for iOS and optional for Android
• User login design enhancements are now available on the settings page
• All BuildFire WYSIWYG now follows the app theme (background color from the control panel’s branding) 
• Show geo permission in BLE plugin for Android

Updates For Developers

• Enabled offline support for apps
• Added support for Stripe authorization
• Added the ability to capture the automatic (full amount) or manual capture from the PaymentIntent, which must be less than or equal to the original amount. Any additional amount will automatically be refunded. Here’s the Stripe documentation for developers.

Image API Updates

• Better image performance
• Upgraded to the latest Image CDN API
• Up to 3x faster rendering
• Up to ~70% size reduction
• Better support and maintenance with new image API
• Fixed home plugin titlebar showing when using custom breadcrumbs

Full Screen Mode Updates

• Added callbacks to appearance title bar show and hide
• Added ability to show/hide the app side menu
• Added ability to show/hide the app nav bar
• Added ability to open/close the side menu programmatically
• Added fullscreen mode that hides/shows navbar, side menu, and title bar, making the plugin take the full space within the app
• Full Screen Mode documentation for developers

We are proud and excited to announce that BuildFire has earned some new badges, top awards, and other notable recognitions in G2’s quarterly reports for the summer of 2021.

G2 is an industry leader and authoritative source in the business software and services space. The reports are generated based on real user reviews, making the badges and recognition so prestigious.

Some noteworthy highlights include being named a “Leader” in the drag-and-drop app builder category and “High Performer” in the mobile app development category. We were also named a “Momentum Leader” in both of these categories.  

BuildFire is an industry leader in the mobile app development space. It’s the easiest way for businesses to create mobile apps for iOS and Android. Our DIY platform allows anyone to create a professionally designed app from scratch. No other mobile app development platform provides such a high level of customization and functionality with limitless scalability.

Here’s a complete overview of the different awards, scores, and achievements we’ve received from G2 for the summer of 2021:

Grid Reports

• Drag and Drop App Builder — Leader
• Mobile App Development Platforms — High Performer
• Small Business Mobile App Development Software — High Performer
• Small Business Drag and Drop App Builder — High Performer
• Mid-Market Drag and Drop App Builder — High Performer

Momentum Grid Reports

• Trending Mobile App Development Platforms Software — Momentum Leader
• Trending Drag and Drop App Builder Software — Momentum Leader

“Momentum Leader” is the highest possible recognition in this category. It’s based on factors like customer satisfaction rating, an increase in G2 reviews, web presence, employee count, and more.

Regional Grid Reports

• Asia Pacific Drag and Drop App Builder Software — High Performer
• Asia Drag and Drop App Builder Software — High Performer

Check our full BuildFire G2 profile page to access all of our scores and reviews.

Here’s a closer look at what our product development team and software engineers have been working on during the second quarter of the year.

Plugin Enhancements and Updates

Community Wall

• Enhanced the ability for admins to ban users
• Enhanced the way that users report posts to the admin 
• Allow the Admin to enable or disable automatic subscription to Community Wall push notifications

Media Center Manual

• Added deep linking support so admins can navigate users to specific media (audio and video) from an action item or push notification
• Added support for updated Dropbox links
• Facelifted Media Center Manual’s BuildFire control panel settings
• Added a “Play all” button to auto-play next functionality for audio files
• Fixed the share button
• Allow admins to sort items alphabetically
• Automatically save the last listening position even after closing the app
• Added a language tab for increased wording customizability 

User Directory

• Added the ability for admins to show or hide email and phone number of users
• Updated the integration between User Directory and Community Wall 

Places 2.0

• Added the ability for the admin to change units from imperial to metric (kilometers vs. miles) for global support
• Enhanced deep linking to allow admins to quickly and easily deep link into specific location detail pages from action items and push notifications

Free Text Questionnaire and Free Text Questionnaire – Geolocation

• Allow admin to toggle on or off required login (users can now answer questions without logging in)
• New Language tab for increased configurability
• Added a new question type: Location. Users can provide a location as an answer to a question by typing an address, providing their current location, or dragging-and-dropping a pin on a map

Dynamic List

• Allow admin to sort items alphabetically 
• Updated the integration with Community Wall 

Coupons and Deals

• Enhanced deep linking to allow admins to quickly and easily deep link into specific coupon detail pages from action items and push notifications

People

• Enhanced deep linking to allow admins to quickly and easily deep link into specific people detail pages from action items and push notifications

Weight Tracker

• Added a language tab for increased configurability

Other Product Updates and Enhancements

• Enhanced Android APK delivery automation 
• Added app icon transparency for Android
• Added new splash screen design with loading screen previewer to show different devices
• Updated iBeacon Google Play Permission Declaration
• Updated declared permissions and in-app disclosures for Google Play policy
• Enhanced show/hide password icon visibility
• Created a new reports page for white label users (view canceled apps, pending requests, and revoked cancellation apps)
• Added a customizable access code placeholder 
• Fixed compatibilities with release of iPhone 12
• Added support to handle apps with two signing passwords during the publishing process
• Enhanced the UX/UI of the marketplace
• Reduced several friction points for building an app
• Improved ability to search for features by name or feature type
• Enhanced change password feature

Updates For Developers

• Updated the BuildFire SDK which can be found at https://sdk.buildfire.com/
• Created a new feature diagnostic tool enabled when dev mode is turned on (used for diagnosing features, checking what’s enabled, diagnosing native plugins, retrieving plugin versions, running tests, viewing logs, and more)
• Updated in-app dialogs
• New drawer component
• Facelift, bug fixes, and enhancements to rating component

Updated Marketplace Icons

• Community wall
• Media Center Manual
• Contact Us
• Media Center RSS Feed
• On Demand
• Share App
• Events Feed
• On The Go Push
• Home Page Grid Layout
• Places 2.0

Updated Knowledge Base Articles Linked to Marketplace Plugins

• Free Text Questionnaire
• Free Text Questionnaire – Geolocation
• Action Items Folder
• Weather
• Shopify 2.0
• Menu Order System
• Container Folder
• WebView
• User Directory
• Catalog and Promote Folder
• Digital Member ID
• QR Scanner
• File Manage
• Flashcards
• Purchase Order System
• Dynamic List
• Document Manager Lite
• Drip Notification
• Document Manager Stats
• Customer Feedback
• Weight Tracker
• Up Vote
• On Demand
• Card Manager
• User Profile Action Folder

Topic of the Month: Ecommerce & Shopify Integration

The ecommerce industry is booming. Online shopping has been trending upward for years, but the pandemic has caused these trend lines to spike exponentially. For example, the number of Shopify merchants have tripled since the COVID-19 outbreak. 

If you’ve recently launched a new ecommerce site to generate sales, you’re just barely scratching the surface with the opportunity in this space. To take your ecommerce business to the next level, you need an ecommerce mobile app.

BuildFire seamlessly integrates with Shopify. So driving mobile sales with our platform is a breeze for anyone.

Don’t think you need an app for your online store? Think again. Check out this data-driven article that explains why every ecommerce site MUST HAVE a mobile app.

• 11 Reasons Why You Need an Ecommerce Mobile App

COVID-19 has forced businesses to adapt or die. Launching an ecommerce site is a step in the right direction, but an app will take you to new heights. 

November App Spotlight: Courses and Educational Apps

Our team has seen a huge demand for educational apps over the last month. Again, this is directly tied to the pandemic. 

So many classes across all education levels have gone virtual. Some specific verticals that we’ve seen utilizing mobile apps for online learning include:

• Cosmetology Courses
• Work Seminars and Webinars
• Life Coaching
• Cooking Classes

Businesses and educational institutions need a way to get learning materials into the hands of users. This can be anything from video lessons to Zoom meetings. 

In addition to the simple way of displaying and organizing educational content, BuildFire also makes it easy to monetize courses with in-app purchases or subscriptions. You can set up a paywall, so users are required to purchase your learning materials.

We recommend the following plugins for educational apps:

• Video Note Taker
• Drip Content (for new courses every day or week)
• User Created Checklists
• Free Text Questionnaire
• YouTube and Vimeo

Lots of businesses already have a database of users. You can seamlessly grant access to your current database by using our Zapier integration or SSO to translate purchases. 

Product Updates and Enhancements

Our developers and engineers have had a busy month. With the new iOS 14 release, we had to perform all of the compatibility checks for the platform, apps, and plugins. We also addressed some minor bug fixes and made enhancements to the following 14 marketplace plugins:

• Free Text Questionnaire
• Review and Approve
• Loyalty 
• Coupon and Deals
• Folder 1.0
• Media Center Manual
• Image Carousel
• Journal 
• Home Page Grid Layout
• Media Center RSS
• Outline Action Item Folder
• Dynamic List
• People 
• Questionnaire

Another noteworthy enhancement was made to the Image Previewer. Some users reported that they were unable to zoom on PWAs with this feature. We made a quick fix, so now you can zoom without any problems. 

Two new premium templates were released last month. We also have four brand new features that are currently in the works (so keep an eye out for next month’s newsletter for details).

Bluetooth and iBeacon Integration

We’re excited to announce the addition of Bluetooth and iBeacon to the BuildFire SDK. 

This really opens up the capabilities for IoT and smart devices. These integrations will allow us to create apps that interact with hardware and firmware in real life (use apps to control things in the physical world). 

There are tons of potential use cases here. Some examples include fitness, people tracking, device control, and so much more. 

I’m sure we’ll be keeping you updated with more on this subject as we start building more apps that leverage these integrations. So stay tuned to upcoming newsletters. 

Places 2.0 Enhancements

Places 2.0 got some seriously cool upgrades. Here’s a quick run down of everything we’ve done : 

• Create a private chat directly with an individual business or location 
• Add CSV Merge
• Added import CSV loading bar
• Added import CSV error log
• Add Language Tab for configurability of buttons and wording  
• Allow admin to turn on/ of “Get Directions” and “Contact Us” button

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Search Bar for the Control Panel to help navigate to your plugins faster 

We have introduced a search bar for the Control Panel! You can search directly for your plugins by name, search by all the instances of a new plugin type, and even add new plugins directly from the search bar without having to navigate to the Marketplace.

It will even remember the last three plugins that you were working on for quicker navigation!

BuildFire Plus

BuildFire Plus is our newest service offering. It’s something we’ve been working on for a long time, and I’m super excited about its value to our clients.

This is perfect for anyone that is looking for a strategic partner in an app development project.

The service includes white-glove services that go above and beyond basic consultancy and development. Some of the noteworthy highlights of this service include:

• Competitive analysis
• Wireframes, design, and prototyping
• App strategy sessions
• User engagement reports
• App store performance reports
• Content updates

Here at BuildFire, we strive to be more than just a development platform. We consider ourselves a partner in your success. Click here to learn more about BuildFire Plus.

BuildFire webinars and new weekly trainings and refreshers

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We are excited to announce that we have launched weekly Q&A training workshops! Monday through Wednesday we’ll have in-depth trainings on the Control Panel, what features you get with your subscription, publishing. 

We also have dedicated trainings and refreshers each week for our White Label partners.

Check out the replays of our most recent webinars:

• How to set-up In-app Purchases and In-app Subscriptions

• How to use Zapier to make your app more powerful and automate tasks! 

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Check out all of our past webinars →  

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FAQs of the Month

Any time our customer success team gets lots of similar questions, we want to provide resources with solutions. 

The past month we fielded a significant amount of inquiries related to in-app purchases. So I want to quickly highlight our top support resources related to those questions:

• How To Apply An In-App Purchases & Subscriptions Using the Purchase Tab
• How to Set Up Your Account For In-App Purchases in your Google Developer Account for Android
• How to Set Up Your Account For In-App Purchases in App Store Connect for iOS

These self-help guides will walk you through everything you need to know about in-app purchases. As always, feel free to reach out to us if you still have questions or need assistance (about in-app purchases or any topic).

It’s impossible to have a discussion about 2020 without bringing up the global pandemic. 

First and foremost, allow me to take this opportunity to say that I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. I also hope that your businesses have been able to survive these unprecedented times.

With that said, we’ve seen certain app features being utilized today, more than ever before, as the result of COVID-19. Mobile apps have become a necessity for businesses of all shapes and sizes as our society shifts away from in-person contact.

I’ve highlighted a few different categories below:

Internal Business Apps

Most businesses have been forced to move out of the office (we’ve experienced this first hand here at BuildFire). With remote employees working from home, I’m sure your resources are all over the place. 

But a mobile app can drastically improve your internal business communications. You can add features for employee self-help tools, document storage, training resources, PDFs, and more. An app is a great place to add an employee directory feature as well, so your staff can easily communicate with their co-workers. 

We’ve also noticed that lots of businesses prioritize a secure login for internal apps. With BuildFire, we allow you to set up lots of different ways for who can log into your app (tags, SSO, Zapier integrations, codes, etc.).

As some businesses are returning back to the office and in-person activity, most of these organizations need a way to distribute COVID screening questionnaires for symptoms. Our Free Text Questionnaire plugin is the PERFECT way to facilitate this. Employees can answer questions from their own devices and get a score to see if it’s safe to return to work. Admins can see the scores, answers, and track results as well.

We’ve even seen businesses using this type of process for a physical check-in, as employees or customers are entering the doors to a building. The questions can be completed directly from an app.

Gym and Fitness Apps

Gyms, personal trainers, and other businesses in the fitness industry have been impacted hard by COVID-19. Some locations have been forced to close for months, and some of you might still have your doors closed. 

For the lucky ones that have been able to re-open, most states are enforcing a reduced capacity. Plus, some of your customers might be hesitant to come back in-person.

But with a fitness mobile app, there are lots of ways that you can make improvements to your existing business model with new monetization strategies. 

You can create workout programs, videos, meal plans, and sell them directly through your app. It’s also easy to sync your app with your YouTube channel and monetize those videos as well.

We’ve even seen gyms use BuildFire so their customers can book training sessions or schedule times to visit physical gym locations. 

White Label Apps

Agencies and white label resellers can also improve their services during the pandemic. 

All of the strategies and examples (for internal apps and fitness apps) listed above are great pitches for your customers. 

For starters, you can reach out to all of your current business clients and discuss the idea of creating an app for internal purposes. Next, you can reach out to any gyms and personal trainers in your region to provide them with app development services. 

You’ll be offering them with solutions to problems that they’re experiencing in real-time, so you should get a great response to this outreach approach. 

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll be dealing with the ramifications of COVID-19 for the foreseeable future. 

The businesses that learn to adapt by going digital and leveraging tools like app development are more likely to survive these tough times.

To say that 2020 has been a crazy year would be a drastic understatement. But here at BuildFire, our team has stayed busy working around the clock to improve our software and services.

In the midst of all our hard work, it recently dawned on me—we haven’t really announced any of these updates.

I initially planned to send out a newsletter highlighting our achievements, but quickly realized there was just way too much information to cram into a single email. To keep our customers in the loop with what’s happening here at BuildFire, I decided to blog about what we’ve accomplished this year.

This article contains tons of useful information about our product updates, service resources, and even information about improving your business during COVID-19.

I’m really excited to share these updates. Hope you enjoy!

New Product Updates to the BuildFire Platform

Improving our software is something we do on a daily basis. We’re always listening to feedback from our customers and finding new ways to enhance your experience. This year, we’ve made dozens of noteworthy updates. From simple UX/UI enhancements to completely new marketplace features, these updates will make your life much easier and improve the quality of your app.

With so many updates to cover, I’ve segmented them into various categories that you can scan through below.

New Marketplace Features

Our marketplace is growing. This year alone, we’ve added 15+ new features. If you haven’t noticed, make sure you log in and check out these brand new plugins:

• User Profile Action Folder

• Container Plugin

• Card Manager

• QR Code Scanner

• Menu Order System

• Folder 2.0

• Customer Feedback 2.0

• Weight Tracker

• User Directory

• Premium Social Inbox

• File Directory

No matter what type of app you’ve already launched or you’re in the process of building, I’m confident that you’ll find a good use for at least some of these new features.

Enhanced Marketplace Features

In addition to the completely new features listed above, we’ve also made some improvements to our existing marketplace plugins that you already know and love. Some noteworthy examples include:

• Free Text Questionnaire — Facelift
• Places 2.0 — Facelift
• Folder — Facelift
• Premium Social Wall — Facelift
• Media Center Manual — Deep linking support added
• Loyalty Plugin — Added the ability to earn points via products; Added results tab and language tab; Facelift
• WYSIWYG editor — Created a new theme (White Modern) and set it as the new default; Added action items functionality and image library functionality; Made all plugins available by default

Again, all of these enhancements were inspired by real feedback from our customers. So if you have any suggestions, please continue to reach out and let us know.

Control Panel Enhancements

We’ve also made lots of changes to the control panel to improve the experience for app owners and admins. Here’s a quick overview of those improvements:

• Added the ability to set or change home feature from the control menu
• Added the ability to clone features with or without data
• Utilized more space (totally updated and facelifted UI) to allow easier control of an app
• Added a new search bar in the control panel header
• Added the ability to search for marketplace features from the new search bar
• Added the ability to search for last added and last visited features from new search bar
• Made enhancements to the Image Library, including:
  • Increased image grid area
  • Added ability for drag & drop image uploads into the whole grid
  • Added option for small or large view of images
  • Added image search (giving the ability to find images by name)
  • Added functionality for image name to display on hover
  • Added ability to rename file upon uploading
  • Added ability to upload GIF and SVG images

Overall, we’re confident that these control panel enhancements will really make your life much easier as you’re building and making changes to your app on the backend.

2 Factor Authentication Automation

The 2FA automation to the publishing process is an update that we’re proud to announce. This in itself was a multiple month epic project on our end.

As a result, our customers can now get up and running in a matter of seconds, as opposed to potentially waiting days to get scheduled with someone on the BuildFire side for authentication.

Not only does this add an extra layer of security, but it also helps get your app to market faster.

Action Item Changes

We also made several significant changes to the action item functionality on our platform. All of these updates were made to reduce friction points on the admin side whenever you’re setting up a new action item.

In fact, we even ran a click-through analysis to see exactly how many clicks it takes to set up a new action item. Compared to the old system, we drastically reduced that number, so it will save you a ton of time as you’re going through this process.

As for the specifics, a handful of noteworthy action item changes include:

• We made “link to app content” the default option
• When “link to app content” option is selected, you can import plugin image, name the image icon, and add action button text
• We updated and amended the names of all action item options
• We increased the action button text limit
• We fixed button colors to match the style guidelines

All of these changes make the action items more intuitive from the admin side. You’ll notice these benefits almost immediately, the next time you create a new action item.

Other Misc. Changes

There are a few other updates I wanted to address, but they don’t really fit into any other category. The following enhancements ultimately benefit the end-users for your app:

• Intro screens — Added animation to background images and text elements
• Login screen — Added animation to background images, input elements, and buttons
• User profiles — Added animation to profile and cover images
• Navigation between plugins — Modified slide in animation with different easing and timing for a smoother feel

Think of this as the foundation for your app. These simple and subtle changes will make your app more appealing to its users.

We’ve been working hard to bring you some incredible new features. Features that are sure to give you more insight into how users are utilizing your app and give you additional customization options for your app’s management, design, and accessibility.

Check it out below and let us know what you think 🙂

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​Customize What Your Users See in Your Side Menu Based on Your Plugin’s Security Access Settings

We’ve created a new feature where you can choose to enable (make them visible and clickable), disable (make them visible but not clickable), or completely hide the features in your side menu based on your plugin’s security settings and your users’ tags. Want to learn more? Check out our updated Side Menu Tutorial article here.

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Advanced Plugin Analytics

As you saw on our last release, we added some new advanced analytics for push notifications. In this release, we’ve enhanced our Marketplace feature (aka plugin) analytics as well. You can now see how many people accessed a particular feature, who your top registered users are who accessed the plugin (how many times they accessed it), and even details about when they did so and on which type of device. Learn more about plugin analytics in our dedicated article here.

Note: Advanced plugin analytics are available under our Business plan, so be sure to upgrade if you haven’t already.

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Publishing Information and UX Cleanup

We’ve made the publishing information even easier for you to fill out. For example, when you enter the store name and description for the App Store, it will automatically populate the Google Play information. Of course, if you want to still make the information distinct for each store, you can.

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Choose the Stores to Which You Publish Your App

You now have the ability to determine whether you want to publish your app only to the App Store for iOS, only to Google Play for Android, or to both. Simply turn on or off the toggle next to that store and you’re good to go.

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The “Add New Feature” now includes all of the plugins in the Marketplace

Previously, when you clicked on “Add New Feature” in the side menu, folder, or other places, it would only show you Marketplace features you already had installed in your app. Not anymore! Now you can add all of the Marketplace features that are available to you in the Marketplace.

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Default Domain for Custom Login Screen

In the last release, you learned all about how to customize your app’s login screen. In this release, we’ve added a feature in it where you can determine your domain. This comes in handy and makes it easier for your users for internal apps when they will all have the same email domain. For example, if you add your domain, then “cool.guy@yourdomain.com” can login with just “cool.guy” since your domain will be automatically attached. Learn more about this feature in our side menu tutorial here.

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Android 8 Push Notification Support

Google has released Android 8 and along with it a new way of making your app compatible with its Push Notifications. To help you ensure that all your Android 8 users are receiving your awesome notifications, we’ve put together a step-by-step article on how to set this up.

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Developers can Include Custom Analytics with Advanced Analytics

By default, every Marketplace feature will include analytics for how many times it was accessed. If you’re creating a custom feature, however, you can add additional analytics to take it a step (or several steps, further. Check out our documentation on how to add analytics here.

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In addition to the awesome features above, here are (some of) the new features we’re working on for you.

Push Notification App UX Cleanup

Push Notifications are a big part of why mobile apps are so successful, which is why we’re doing some awesome cleanup to the app side of our Push Notification experience.

Drip Push Notification Plugin

As all marketers know, drip messages are a great way to keep your users engaged, informed, and coming back for more. The Drip Notification feature will let you automatically send out push notifications, or a sequence of them, to users when they have been away from your app for a determined period of time.

Push Notification Plugin

Send Push Notifications on the go? Yes, please! You’ll soon be able to do exactly that.

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Thanks again for choosing BuildFire! We’re excited to see how you implement these features to take your app to the next level.

Let’s continue to build something great together 🙂

Welcome to BuildFire 3.0!

We’ve worked hard to make the world’s best app building platform even better.

So what’s new? I’m glad you asked 🙂

CP Redesign

With BuildFire 3.0’s improved intuitive interface, you can now spend less time in the control panel and more time engaging your users. We’ve added several new features to give you more customization and have enhanced the user experience to make building and managing apps even easier.

Plugin Marketplace

What sets BuildFire 3.0 apart is the Marketplace; a worldwide ecosystem of developers, DIYers, and resellers all working together to crowdsource real solutions to common problems. Over time, you’ll continue to see more developers take part to provide even more solutions.

In fact, if you’re developer with a great idea for a plugin, just download BuildFire’s new SDK, code it up with languages you already know, and submit it to our marketplace where millions of users can include it in their apps.

Media Library Photo Editing

You can now speed up your graphical management and editing process with BuildFire 3.0’s native and embedded image editor, where you can drop them right into the system and edit, enhance colors, adjust lighting, add custom text, and much more.

Feature (Plugin) Duplication

You can now instantly copy each feature (aka plugin) as many times as you’d like to build and manage your app that much faster.

Design Enhancements

One of the most exciting improvements of BuildFire 3.0 from an aesthetics and app user experience standpoint is our completely updated design feature set including over 50 new modern and popular fonts.

Side and Footer Menu

We’ve revamped our side menu to make it more user-friendly and include design options such as positioning, icon selection, and more.

We’ve also added a “sticky” footer menu so that you can give your users different navigation options.

Progressive Web Apps

The way your clients access your apps is changing for the better.  Skip the app store completely and deliver your app directly to your users with a Progressive Web App (PWA). PWAs provide the look and feel of native apps, but are easier for users to access, are more reliable, and have higher engagement.

 

We’re excited to get this in your hands (literally) and would love to hear what you think!