We just wrapped our first Retool Global Meetup on November 10th, where we hosted a lively virtual discussion with members of our community who use Retool everyday (and whose early feedback really helped us build our product from the get go 
).
Kevin Whinnery, head of Developer Experience at Retool, and Jamie Cuffe, Product Lead, started off by previewing an exciting new product we just launched: Workflows, which brings automation capabilities to Retool! This includes, but isnât limited to, things like ETL tasks, CRON jobs, and setting up and sending notifications, plus other alerting type use cases. Jamie explained that Workflows was specifically launched because itâs something you all had asked about for a long time, and is now even being used by Retool for its own business, for tasks like billing scripts and managing upgrades. He pointed out that while there are a lot of workflow automation tools in the market, youâre still limited in that you canât customize them with code for specific use cases â Retool Workflows aims to bridge that gap so you can use code to automate such processes.
Kevin then led some âmini-interviewsâ with some willing audience members, James Cook, Scott Rademaker, and Stephan Zimmer. James dialed in from Chicago, where heâs a Technical Projects Director for Motor Werks Auto Group. His role involves âfinding ways to make his company more efficient and processes more effective, while eliminating extra steps and costs along the way. Retool helps us manage workflows and processes.â Jamesâs team recently launched a mobile app, and its backend interface and CRM system is powered by Retool.
Next, Scott, longtime developer and product manager (he also answers fellow Retoolersâ questions on this forum every.single.day 
), talked about using Retool to help companies implement tooling for their customer support teams: âI felt really comfortable with [Retool] and Iâve found that itâs very natural and intuitive. I build apps for companies and help with their internal process and moving data around.â
Last, Stephan, a developer based out of Stockholm, described how he came across Retool while working for a previous employer, and helping them solve the problem of building tech as âa one man show.â Since then, Stephanâs been a Retool developer for various companies, helping them get started with things like integrating to an ERP system.
When asked about what theyâd like to see in future meetups, the group expressed being able to preview new or soon-to-be-released features, and learning about new ways existing features could be used to optimize for business solutions. Scott said heâd love to see more people demo Retool apps theyâve built out in later meetups, because âwe want to help each other solve problems! If someone says theyâre trying to build something or solve for a business use case, [then] someone else can chime in and say, âIâve done that before and this is what Iâd do.â â
In that spirit of problem solving and learning, Iâm excited to plug our next community event on Dec 9 at 9:30 am PT! Register here to learn about how to design intuitive apps in Retool, with Sales Engineer Jon Walls and Deployed Engineer Julie Chen. Come with questions, and expect a great time (and many lightbulbs to go off 
!)
.