ActionKit provides a rich API that allows organizations to build custom functionality on top of the platform, including rich user interactions, back-end automation, and integrations with third-party services.
Unfortunately, there are lots of organizations that don’t have anyone on their staff who is fluent in Python, C++, or Perl that can build and deploy custom online software for them which would issue calls that API — but they do have technically-savvy web developers who know HTML and JavaScript… and it turns out that’s enough to build a wide range of custom tools that are powered by the ActionKit API.
Because these tools are built in HTML and JavaScript, they don’t need to be run on a separate server elsewhere on the Internet — instead, we can just use ActionKit’s “Dashboard” feature to paste the HTML and JavaScript code into a custom screen in the ActionKit admin web interface.
And because they’re running on ActionKit admin pages, any tools we build this way are automatically tied into ActionKit’s authentication system for staff accounts — anyone who can log in to your organization’s ActionKit admin can access these new tools without creating a new account, and users with limited permissions in ActionKit can’t access any information they’re not supposed to.
No special tools are required, as calls to the API can be made using core JavaScript functionality like the Fetch API, or through libraries such as jQuery, and the data sent and received is generally formatted as JSON, which is trivial to parse and emit in this context.
In addition to customized reporting, these tools can also extend the ActionKit admin interface to better support an organization’s workflow.
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