We continue widening the circle of Webix users over the globe. Today we have a conversation with Michael Shrading. He is an experienced developer and a true Webix follower. Michael is working on a project called Recruiting Systems. Besides that, he is a senior developer at the 7 Principles group. Let’s find out some details.
Hello Michael! It’s nice to meet you. Please, tell us about your experience in IT.
Hello! I am a PHP full-stack developer with more than 20 years of experience in web and app development. I work at a large company in Cologne, Germany. I work there in a permanent position as a senior consultant among other projects for it.NRW in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Apart from that, I am dealing with a Recruiting Systems project. I have written the Akoni tool for recruiters to manage their clients and companies. Now I am nearly at the last step of developing this tool. On this project, I’m all at once, a manager, a director, a developer. I would like to find a developer, but nobody is acquainted with Webix. A freelancer is working for me, I have taught him.
Twitter Bootstrap caught on because it is a framework that was developed by a large company. I believe Webix is quite unknown because there isn’t a large company behind it. And also there are only a few developers with Webix experience. That makes it all difficult to work with but for me, it’s the best tool I can find on the net at this moment, and I think that can’t be overtaken.
Thank you for your feedback! Could you please describe the solution for recruiters you are dealing with? How does it work?
In the application I am developing there is a list of candidates, the data related to them, their qualifications, skills, their contacts. You can appoint a date for the meeting inside it. You can attach PDF files of their CVs. I would also like to make it possible to work with Doc format as well. There is also a list of companies looking for employees and the domain of their business. There is an HTML calendar. I would like to use the Gantt widget from Webix 8.0 there. I need to make some changes in the back end though. All the backend of my tool is made with Webix. I’m working with Webix 6.1 now. I’m stuck with this version. I would like to update to version 7.3, but I can’t because of the styles I used in 6.1. They change significantly with a newer version, which I don’t want to happen.
What do you think are the advantages of the tool?
It’s a CRM for external recruiters. It coordinates candidates and companies and brings them together. This is a completely new case. The layout is stored on the customer’s computer in the browser cache. All information from the database comes over an interface that stores all requests into the server cache as JSON string. So once you fill in the data, the system will be fast for a recruiter to work with it.
How long have you been using Webix?
I have been working with Webix since 2016. Then it was Webix 3.4 if I am not mistaken.
Are there any difficulties you have noticed while working with the library?
It is more problematic to configure external editor software like CKEditor then Webix. I can’t say I had some great difficulties with Webix. There were some issues with input fields and data collection but I managed to cope with them. In general, I can say that everything is easily built with JSON objects. It takes time to organize though. The main problem for me as I see it is that very few people in Germany know about Webix. Some of them say it is too expensive, but I disagree.
Big companies, Vodafone, for example, want to be sure their application will work perfectly for the next 10 years. If they can’t find a developer that can work with Webix for example, they will not use this library. Take Angular, for instance, many developers know it and can work with it, so it is easy to find a substitute employee. So I think you should create a community of developers in companies that deal with Webix to promote it.
Thank you for your ideas! Have you used any other libraries apart from Webix?
Php Framework, JQuery and Bootstrap.
What are your plans?
First I have to work out the CV parser for candidate profiles which isn’t ready, then I want to give the ability to have more than one template for email and profile layouts, and to build in communication between all the recruiters in one group. Then I have to upgrade from Webix 6.1 to Webix 8. Which is very difficult cause I have some braking chain changes in the styles used.
Thank you so much Michael for the interview. We wish your project to continue succeeding.
If you want to learn more about Michael’s project, visit the page.
Do not hesitate to contact us if you want to tell us your experience of dealing with Webix.
