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Internal Tools
What is runbook automation? A quick guide
Jan 20, 2022
–Madhura Kumar
When you take a step back from the buzz of activities we generalize as work,
you'll notice event patterns—repetitive processes. We can document most of these
events and processes into easy-to-run steps in runbooks. Runbooks help make sure
tasks are performed at the same level of accuracy and yield predictable and
desired results. While runbooks tend to live in Google Docs or wiki pages,
runbook automation is the process of using software to execute these more
reliably, quickly, and autonomously
Why “let the support team build their own tools” rarely works
Oct 22, 2021–Ravi ParikhEngineering teams tend to prioritize customer-facing features over internal tools. As a result, the state of internal tools in most companies–especially fast-growing startups–lags far behind where it would be in an ideal world. But there's a solution: why not just let the support or ops team build their own tools? There's tons of no-code vendors out there that promise exactly this. However, unless approached correctly, this won't work. Before diving in, I want to clarify that the primary reasoAirplane: a complement to Retool for non-CRUD internal workflows
Sep 13, 2021–Ravi ParikhA lot of Airplane users wonder how we're different from Retool–are Airplane and Retool competitors? Complementary? Here's our take. TLDR: both tools excel in different ways, and plenty of companies use both Retool and Airplane as complements. But there are also a few areas of overlap.Airplane: An easy-to-use Rundeck alternative for better runbook automation
Sep 8, 2021–Ravi ParikhHere at Airplane, we get asked often about the differences between Airplane and Rundeck. We thought we'd give our take. We're obviously biased towards our approach, but we started building Airplane in part due to some of the needs we had that existing tools, like Rundeck, didn't meet.Airplane: A New Approach to Internal Tools
Jul 23, 2021–Ravi ParikhToday we're publicly launching Airplane, a platform that lets engineers quickly create lightweight internal apps for their teammates. We've been in closed beta for the last 6 months, but as of today, Airplane is open for anyone to sign up and try out [https://www.airplane.dev/]. Why existing approaches to internal tools fall short My co-founder Josh and I both spent the last 7+ years at two different SaaS companies.  I previously co-founded Heap, an analytics company, and Josh was CTO at Benchl
