Client: Ironsmith, a tree grate manufacturer located in Palm Desert, CA.
Project Background
Their web application needed to open files from Windows File Explorer just like their original Microsoft Access application. Access kept a link between a project and a folder to their on premise file server and the user could click on this link to open File Explorer, and from here the user can open a file in its respective application (eg. open DWG files in AutoCAD, open PDFs in Adobe, etc). The problem is an application running in a browser cannot do this because it is a security issue.
What We Did
The solution we settled upon was a lightweight, simple desktop app. You might ask, why replace their Microsoft Access desktop application with a web application if they needed a desktop app to open the File Explorer? Why not just make a desktop application?
In general there has been a movement for business applications from desktop to the cloud. As browsers and cloud computing have become more powerful, ubiquitous, and cheap there has been a move to cloud based applications. Benefits include easier testing and faster updates, and getting access to many open source libraries cutting down development time.
Using a small desktop application to bridge the gap between desktop capabilities and web application allowed the business to take advantage of both paradigms.
Challenges Encountered
We used Python and PyQT to make this app over something more popular like ElectronJS since we have experience with Python and using Python and PyQT we could ship a smaller file for such a simple little application. We wrote the code and bundled it with an installer then packaged it with InstallForge for a familiar install/uninstall workflow. But doing this we ran into antivirus issues. The solution to this was to whitelist our app with antivirus software companies. A top 10 is given here.