When evaluating IoT platforms, capability must be balanced with usability. As Losant's capability increases, we have to find new ways to maintain the high level of usability and productivity that you enjoy. While we do strive to make individual features easy to use through consistent UX and documentation, what we’ve heard from you is that you need more comprehensive examples that demonstrate how to combine these features into real IoT solutions.
Today’s release of Application Templates provides a set of real-world reference implementations that you can use for:
- Architecture guidance.
- Implementation best practices.
- Starting points for your own applications.
Getting Started with Losant Templates
With today’s release, whenever you add a new application, you’ll see a list of available templates. When you add an application from a template, Losant automatically creates all required devices, workflows, dashboards, and any other resources.
When you choose a template, you’ll see a preview dialog showing the resources that this template requires. If your sandbox or organization doesn’t have enough remaining resources, you’ll have to free them up or contact your sales representative to gain more before continuing.
Templates are available for sandbox and enterprise customers within Losant’s managed cloud environment. If you’re using a dedicated Losant installation or a white-label environment and want to use these templates, they can all be found in the application-templates GitHub repository.
The Templates
Each template is carefully designed to demonstrate a specific set of Losant’s capabilities through real-world examples. This initial release contains four templates, with more on the way.
1. Weather Station
The Weather Station Template requests weather data from an external API to populate a personal weather dashboard. This template provides a complete implementation of the Losant Walkthrough.
2. Industrial Equipment Monitor
The Industrial Equipment Monitor Template represents a multi-tenant equipment monitoring application with multiple customers and users.
3. Asset Tracker
The Asset Tracker Template monitors real-time geolocation, temperature, and shock for multiple asset tracking devices.
4. Huddle Room Monitor
The Huddle Room Monitor Template provides real-time availability and historical occupancy data for corporate huddle rooms.
Partner Templates
The initial set of templates was developed by Losant, however we do invite partners to contribute templates to streamline the integration and onboarding of our mutual customers. By using a template, customers can get up-to-speed in a fraction of the time when compared to starting from scratch.
Partner templates are also a great way to expose your product or service to Losant's existing community of developers. Our users are constantly on the lookout for technology and partners that may solve their problems. A template provides our users with confidence that the technology integrates with Losant and provides an easy path for their own development.
If you'd like to explore partner template options, please Get In Touch.
Can I Create and Share my Own Templates?
At the moment, the templates you see in Losant's user interface are curated by us and are publicly available to all users. We do see the value in sharing custom templates between members of your organization directly through the platform, but that's not available as part of this initial release. This is a feature we'll be exploring, so if you have thoughts on how you'd like template sharing to work, let us know in the Losant Forums.
Even though custom templates can't be shared directly through the user interface, you can still create your own templates using Application Export and share them through services like Git. This is how our templates are created and they can all be found in the application-templates GitHub repository.
What’s Next?
With every new release, we listen to your feedback. By combining your suggestions with our roadmap, we can continue to improve the platform while maintaining its ease of use. Let us know what you think in the Losant Forums.