Building apps on the FusionFabric.cloud platform – an internal view

I sat down with Technology Consultant Zan Zannettos here at Finastra to learn more about his experience of using FusionFabric.cloud. Here’s what he said.

Mitesh: What is your role is at Finastra?

Zan: I am a technical architect who works with the sales side of our business on solution design and deployment.

Mitesh: Do you have any experience with coding?

Zan: By trade, I'm not a developer. Having said that, I do dabble. For example, I wanted to see how easy FusionFabric.cloud is to use so I decided to create an app prototype.

Mitesh: Did you have a use case in mind?

Zan: A number of clients in Malaysia have been wanting to visualize data from their retail banking system in new ways. The app they’re currently using is quite old and challenging to maintain. So that was the problem I looked to solve.

Mitesh: At a high level, what steps did you take to create your app?

Zan: In FusionFabric.cloud, I connected to the retail banking system app using the Open API. I used the Flow Editor, which is based on Node-RED, to transform the data from the app into a more readable nomenclature. And I used the platform’s user interface design tool, Fusion UXP, to illustrate that data in a very interactive, graphical form. For example, my app gives breakdown of accounts, of different types of clients, and so forth.

Even though I’m not an expert developer, that end-to-end process took just six hours.

Mitesh: What did you find challenging?

Zan: When I was working on the low-level Node-RED part of my app, I had to brush up on some of my Java scripting skills, which is why the app-development-process took six hours, as opposed to maybe an hour or two.

Mitesh: Was anything easier than expected?

Zan: Yes. Fusion UXP has low-code widgets that make it easy to quickly add features to the user interface. So, users of my app can slice and dice data, including viewing it by customer and region—and they can view information on a map.

Mitesh: It sounds like FusionFabric.cloud gives business people a platform for developing their own data models.

Zan: Absolutely. With very limited amounts of coding, they can create very compelling reporting dashboards right away, instead of having to wait weeks or maybe even months for someone else to build it.

Mitesh: What other tools in FusionFabric.cloud did you find helpful?

Zan: The sandbox. It provides access to Finastra’s systems and applications along with test data sets. So, I could test my app in realistic scenarios and see how it works in real time.

Also, I was able to have a colleague of mine in a different region test and validate my app from a business perspective in a matter of minutes. He just had to sign on to FusionFabric.cloud with his account and test the App I shared with him.

All of this is really significant because traditionally in this industry, tests use actual data from a client—not test data from a sandbox. So, to bring in anyone outside of the core team involves getting clearance, which can take a lot of time.

Mitesh: What do you find most exciting about FusionFabric.cloud?

Zan: I've seen a lot in this industry over the past 20 years, and this last year or so has been the most exciting from a technology perspective. Platforms like FusionFabric.cloud are revolutionary. In the past, if our clients wanted to extend our solution in some way, they needed to engage a fintech, who had to go back and forth between the client and us. The process was so complicated. It could take months and many times it wasn’t successful. With FusionFabric.cloud, adding a feature or developing an app can be done in a matter of days. That’s opportunity. That’s innovation.