Rocket Forum - A New Place to Get Product Announcements and More!
August 19, 2020
Born in 2014, Rocket.Build has grown from a small internal annual hackathon to include not just Rocketeers, but our entire customer, partner, and student ecosystem. But the challenge has remained the same; to make a difference for our customers through product innovation during the hackathon.
This year, I’m part of two Rocket.Build teams. While I’m excited about both projects, I know you’ll be super excited about the project where we’re automating MultiValue product announcements from Rocket Business Connect (RBC) to the new Rocket Forum. So if you miss the old product announcements you used to get from RBC, keep reading and don’t forget to create a free account on our new Forum.
First, I’d like to introduce the team:
- Marty Mallick, Application Developer III
- Mark Sapp, Senior Software Engineer (he works exclusively on RBC)
- Charles Dane, Senior Retention Marketing Manager (since starting in March, Charles has been working on launching the new Rocket Forum)
- Wendy Prinz, Manager, Business Applications (specifically the RBC application)
- Me, Kathy Larson, Product Marketing Manager for MV
Next, you should know that RBC was built on top of and still runs on UniData. It also relies on WebDE and SB/XA. After upgrading UniData and WebDE in 2019, we also added the new MultiValue Integration Server (MVIS) to the mix. For more details on RBC, check out this blog post.
The NEW Rocket Forum
The Rocket Forum, our digital touchpoint for customers, prospects, partners and Rocketeers, is an interconnected engagement portal and content repository of “all things Rocket”. It offers value to customers in the form of:
- Product info – talk to peers, ask Rocketeers questions, share your knowledge, learn!
- News
- Development input (surveys, learn about alpha/beta opportunities)
- Training, learning, and sharing of content and knowledge, enhancing professional development and recognition for subject matter expertise – find all of the videos and recordings from our MultiValue University virtual events
- Relationship building with fellow customers, subject matter experts and Rocketeers
The Rocket.Build Project
Since our new Forum is based on the Higher Logic platform, which provides APIs and since UniData has been part of the API economy for years, our project was straightforward. Step one was determining which API to use to post to the Forum from RBC. Marty and Mark used RESTful services and oAuth and some UniData BASIC functions to provide all the tools to communicate to a REST endpoint, parse JSON and handle the security requirements.
Our project went so smoothly, we decided to make the capabilities live and you can reap the benefits today. So, if we win Rocket.Build, yay for us. But, even if we don’t win, our customers win. Which is the whole point of Rocket.Build.
p.s. Funny story! On Thursday, Aug. 13th, the team was testing a product announcement for “fake” new version of UniVerse 16.2. Our customers and Rocketeers who have already created accounts on the UniVerse sub-forum were unintentionally part of our test and got an email alerting them to the “fake” new release of UniVerse. In the midst of our test for our Rocket.Build project, we got inquiries from a partner and a couple of Rocketeers asking about UniVerse 16.2. So, we know it works and we know who’s paying attention!
I hope to see you on the Forum!
