Getting Started

Overview

Builders new to the Kinetic Platform often ask, "Where is the best place to get started?" This guide discusses Kinetic's recommendations for determining the best method to bring your projects to fruition.

What Do You Want to Do?

Rather than focus on mastering forms, workflows, and integrations, consider what you're trying to accomplish with your project. Knowing what you want the end result to look like will help you hone in on the parts of the Platform needed to make it happen. Here are a few examples:

• Talent Management Application: Your application will probably need forms for job listings and applicant data. It might also need a workflow that triggers an email to the hiring manager telling them to review a newly submitted application.
• Request Portal: Your application might include forms that let users request items by category and workflows to handle approvals and rejections. You could even create a customized front end to match your company's branding.
• Service Catalog Ticketing: Let's say your organization uses different department back-end ticketing systems. Rather than manually synchronizing data between these systems, you could assign one tool as the source of record and leverage Kinetic to pull information from that system and push it into the other system using a combination of forms, workflow, integration handlers, and a front-end portal that gives every department the same user experience.

Speak the Languages

The Kinetic Platform was built using common frameworks, but it's a good idea to know which components use which development languages.

• Ruby: Used in the Workflow Builder parameters and connector expressions. The Ruby Documentation and Materials page provides several resources for learning and testing Ruby code.
• HTML and CSS: These are used in the Form Builder and may also be used in front-end code.
• JavaScript: JavaScript is used across the Platform. Basically, if a code field doesn't take Ruby, HTML, CSS, or a specific template string, then it uses JavaScript.

Orientation Videos, the Training Platform, and Documentation

With your project more clearly defined, your next step is to visit the orientation series on our YouTube channel. This series gives you a visual introduction to the Platform and covers several high-level concepts.

From there, you'll want to visit the Kinetic Data Training Platform. The "Builder - Foundations" learning path is an interactive series of videos that will familiarize you with the basics of building in your own environment.

Finally, with the basics established, you can return to the Documentation Library as needed to find detailed explanations of individual components and how-to instructions for specific tasks.