Can we useForest admin in a standalone enviornment ( without internet )?

Help me!
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1

We have a few use cases for our customer could you please answer the below questions, so that we can evaluate forestadmin

  1. Can we use Forestadmin as standalone product ? ( we cant not have internet connection) is there any offering other than SaaS
  2. Can we customize the forestadmin UI to communicate with the custom backend (i.e., can we use only forest admin UI )
  3. Can we add/modify the controls that are part of existing forestadminUI ?
  4. Can we use Forestadmin similar to form.io ? or is this a Dashboard/Visualizer kind of solution
  5. can we have multiple data sources, add new data sources after deployment ?
2

Hello @Aravind_Alapati and welcome to our community :slight_smile:

Here are the response to your questions:

  1. Can we use Forestadmin as standalone product ? ( we cant not have internet connection) is there any offering other than SaaS

Forest admin requires that:

  • your users have access to the internet, because the frontend is only hosted on our server
  • the agent that you are deploying can make calls on the internet, to access our own servers. They don’t have to be exposed on the internet.

For security reasons, your data can be kept inside your local network. The server that is deployed for Forest Admin does not need to be accessible on the internet.

  1. Can we customize the forestadmin UI to communicate with the custom backend (i.e., can we use only forest admin UI )

The Forest Admin frontend requires that the backend responds to a certain API that is exposed by the agent that you are asked to install. But if you prefer, this code can be embedded inside your own project if you use node, rails or django (will be released very soon). This way, routes specific to forest admin can be handled by the code from Forest Admin, and you can customize the calls you need to change.

  1. Can we add/modify the controls that are part of existing forestadminUI ?

The Forest Admin’s frontend can be customized in numerous ways, you can refer to the documentation or maybe play with it if you want to know more. But, just as an idea:

  • You can choose which collections are visible to your users
  • You can choose which columns are visible on collections
  • You can build a summary view by using arranging components that we provide
  • You can build a smart view entirely on your own
  • You can build a dashboard
  • etc
  1. Can we use Forest Admin similar to form.io? or is this a Dashboard/Visualizer kind of solution

I don’t know all the features from form.io, but Forest Admin can also be used to manage your data, create new entries, update values, launch some custom processes on your data.

  1. can we have multiple data sources, add new data sources after deployment ?

For the moment, you can manage multiple datasources in two way:

  • you can create a separate project
  • you can create smart collections that are retrieved in your secondary data source.

We are working on a solution for a more integrated handling on multi-datasource, but it is not available yet.