In 1908, Ford Motor Company began using a new manufacturing process called the “assembly line” to build its automobiles. The concept was simple – use interchangeable parts instead of hand-crafted pieces to speed up the assembly of their product. The vision was to design and build cars more quickly, and they did—decreasing the time it took to assemble a car by 90%. This simple change resulted in the birth of mass production and transformed whole industries.

Mr. Ford would smile if he saw iRise today. With the launch of iRise 8.5, the company has introduced the iBloc™ API, which allows developers to create “custom widgets” that can be used as interchangeable parts in a visualization. These widgets can be used alongside iRise’s standard widgets to dramatically simplify and speed up the assembly of visualizations.

iBlocs and Innovation
Much like the auto industry at the turn of the 20th century, the technology industry today is experiencing a wave of innovation through the growth of public APIs. Companies like Apple and Facebook have transformed their products into platforms upon which thousands of applications can be developed to use their products in new and creative ways.

iRise has harnessed this concept and applied it to visualization. They have created a public API that allows 3rd party developers to build their own widgets and use them on the iRise platform. Instead of having a dozen or so native iRise widgets to choose from, modelers will have hundreds or perhaps even thousands of widgets at their disposal.

This sounds very exciting, but what is an iBloc? It is simply a combination of HTML, Javascript and CSS that works together to perform specific task in a visualization. Common examples include a Slider widget, a Table Paging and Sorting widget, or a Bar Graph widget.

What are the Benefits?
There are multiple benefits to building and using iBlocs in a visualization, starting with speed and simplicity in modeling. We’re constantly under pressure to meet tight deadlines, and sometimes it can be time-consuming to simulate common requirements using standard iRise widgets. A perfect example is paging and sorting on a table of search results. If you’ve never tried modeling this before, it can be a complex task. To solve this issue, we created a Paging and Sorting widget using the new iBloc API that lets you model this functionality in about 30 seconds. We’ve hidden the complexity within a custom widget that lets you associate to a data table, select a page size and choose the sortable columns in the table. The widget does the rest. With the Paging and Sorting iBloc, we have reduced the time it takes to model this functionality from several hours down to minutes.

iBlocs also open opportunities to simulate new things that cannot be created using standard iRise widgets. iBlocs use javascript, and javascript supports AJAX. With the use of AJAX calls in your iBlocs, you can develop server-side software using any language you want – Java, .Net, Ruby -- to accomplish anything.

To better understand the power and opportunities with iBlocs, think of a sandbox with a child inside of it flying a kite. The child can only play in the sandbox, but the kite can go anywhere in the sky. The same rules apply with iBlocs -- the API defines our sandbox, but AJAX lets us fly anywhere we want.

For example, maybe your enterprise uses SAP and your business users want to see live data in their visualization – this can be built with an iBloc. As another example, we decided to create a widget that lets you visually annotate a visualization by drawing on top of it – you can find this widget here. These types of features could not be built prior to the iBloc API.

Finally, iBlocs support a more agile approach to visualization. In an agile world, developers are encouraged to work more closely with BAs and business users. iBlocs allow developers to have more stake in the game. How often have you shown a developer a visualization only to have them tell you it cannot be built? With iBlocs, developers have the chance to get more involved in modeling by building custom widgets that can be used in a visualization to demonstrate functionality that developers can stand behind.

Why build code for something that is visualized?
Why should we invest time and money building something that is meant for a visualization? Taking a cue from Java’s “write once, run anywhere” mantra, think of iBlocs in terms of “write once, run anytime.” Once you make the investment in an iBloc, it can be used anytime by anyone within an organization, so the benefit of increased productivity gets multiplied each time the widget is used.

In addition, iBlocs improve requirements accuracy. When we have a requirement that is difficult to model, we usually put a mockup or placeholder in the visualization and talk around it. But business users provide better feedback when they see something functioning, and with iBlocs we can now simulate things that were not possible before, resulting in better requirements and greater ROI.

How do I build an iBloc?
If you’re still reading, I assume it’s because you’re convinced that iBlocs can help your business and not because you enjoy my writing. How, then, can your organization build their own iBlocs? You can go to the iRise Developer Network and learn about the iBloc API. It contains examples, tutorials and discussions about guidelines and best practices to follow.

Conclusion
Just as Henry T. Ford used interchangeable parts to improve his business, iRise created a platform to let the ecosystem of iRise users build interchangeable widgets and revolutionize the way we visualize. The coming year should yield incredible innovations as the power of iBlocs takes hold in the enterprise. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

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