Building for (and with) citizen developers
Anyone can be a developer. In fact, the term citizen developer implies just that. It’s any user who creates new business applications for consumption by others using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT. And the truth is, it can be anyone. Knowledge workers are the ones living through the highs and lows of their company’s processes. They are the ones who can best speak to the business needs of their teams. Regardless of background or department, every employee can drive change and up-level organizational operations. One of the themes running through the DocuSign Developer Conference is just that: any and every employee can build a compliant workflow that streamlines business processes. What’s needed is the set of tools to enable this collective of citizen developers to solve problems in a simple and fast way, within an approved structure.
By empowering knowledge workers to act as solution architects, you enable them to come up with new ways to drive workplace efficiency. By leveraging click-based and low-code development tools, knowledge workers become citizen developers who can solve their own business problems, all without taxing existing IT and software engineering resources, or adding financial burden to the organization. And, to be clear, we aren’t talking about basic solutions. We’re talking about scale. We’re talking about real change. Whether it's automating a post-signature workflow, creating a process that spans multiple applications, or even building the connection between your software applications, all of these are problems that can be solved outside of centralized IT and development.
Automate post-agreement processes with Agreement Actions
Signatures are in, and the agreement is sealed. Your work is done, right? Not exactly. And depending on your department, those post-agreement tasks may vary greatly. With Agreement Actions, DocuSign Admins can automate post-agreement tasks with predefined actions. By offering a simple way to automate the final steps of the agreement process, Agreement Actions can condense the flurry of time-consuming, post-contractual tasks into a single, easy-to-manage system that promises more efficient and more profitable operations for your business. And it's all click-based, replacing traditional, labor-intensive workflows with an automated, all-in-one solution that’s as easy as “if, then.”
Building with Google Apps Script
A key value in citizen development is that centralized IT can approve processes for the rest of the organization. Google Apps Script is the epitome of this scenario: a low-code language built on JavaScript, designed for citizen developers to self-serve. Apps Script is great for customizing Google Workspace, from adding a custom section to the menu bar to automating complex actions in Sheets. Another amazing feature in Apps Script is a Library that allows you to leverage pre-built code snippets in your Apps Script project. We talked about our journey to building an Apps Script Library with Google Cloud in Google’s Totally Unscripted podcast, and we’re excited to announce that the DocuSign eSignature Apps Script Library will be showcased at the Developer Conference, available upon request by contacting developers@docusign.com. With it, the global community of citizen developers around who use Apps Script can surface DocuSign eSignature API features inside their Apps Script projects, enabling everyday knowledge workers to control how DocuSign and Google Workspace work together.
Creating workflows with Microsoft Power Automate
When you think about the agreement lifecycle, DocuSign eSignature and Microsoft Power Automate is a powerful combination. With this integration you can use Power Automate to automate post-signature tasks based on the metadata in the agreement like the field data. You can synchronize files, get notifications, collect data, and more. Where things get really interesting, though, is when you want to customize your DocuSign + Microsoft automation further, and that’s where Power Automate shines. Today, the DocuSign connector for Power Automate extends all the Microsoft (and partner) products in Power Automate, allowing them electronically to approve, sign, and use many other DocuSign capabilities. Today, there are over 15 different DocuSign actions and triggers available. Learn all about DocuSign and Microsoft Power Automate in the “Accelerating Agreement Workflows” session on October 26.
Designing your extensibility strategy
You probably use Google and/or Microsoft applications in your organization, but we know that you are working in more than just those suites. Zapier’s Zap Templates are a quick path for you to automate your workflows across your business applications. In fact, Zapier’s mission is to do just that: to democratize automation by making it incredibly easy and universal. So when we think back to the value that citizen developers bring to organizations and Zapier’s mission, it obviously makes sense to bring in Zapier to talk about how no-code automation can connect your agreement processes with your work software processes. One great example, which Zapier will highlight in their session on October 27, is when you need to stitch together an envelope being created or sent via DocuSign with your project management workflows such as creating a card in Trello or a record in Airtable.
At the end of the day, development isn't just about code. It’s about solving problems. With the need to solve more problems, in faster ways than ever before, existing developer resources would be overloaded. No-code and low-code solutions democratize how an organization can solve these problems. By empowering employees—those who are the “feet on the street”—to solve their own team’s challenges. The beauty of citizen development is that anyone can be a builder. At the DocuSign Developer Conference, learn about solving your own problems, whether you’re building with DocuSign, Google, Microsoft or Zapier.
