The founder of MIRA Innovations and architect of the UltraFlow apps is Mike Jupp. Mike was recently interviewed by a well-known Sydney journalist.

Could you tell me a little about your background?

I was born in Hampshire, England, and studied Biology at University – mostly molecular genetics.  I would have liked to pursue a higher degree and go into research, however an entry-level job as a COBOL programmer paid a lot more, so I switched to programming.  That might sound like a big leap however there are a lot of parallels between storing, replicating, and expressing information via genes, and doing the same thing with software.

I discovered Salesforce in 2010 and found that I really enjoyed working with clients to solve their problems and have been doing that ever since.

Where did you get the idea for your app?

Many of my clients needed to extend the Salesforce platform with custom solutions.  Often they had complex processes that required custom user interfaces, which took a long time to build and test, and were expensive.  I was asked more than once if it was possible to configure the UI and save money; unfortunately at the time it was not.

The introduction Of Lightning changed that, however we still needed to write a lot of client-side code.

I realised that I could avoid all this work and expense using a single Lightning component that read and then rendered Form metadata, much like a browser renders html.  The ancestor of UltraFlow was born.

When was that?

In about 2018. I tinkered with the pilot for a couple of years, just to be sure that it was also possible to build an engine that could handle the metadata for a process, or Flow, that determined  a user’s journey through the process.

The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown gave me the opportunity to flesh out the concept and create the core components of what is now the Runtime Engine app.

I was still working as a consultant on short-term contracts, so it took a few more years to design and build the Designer tools that create the process and UI metadata, and to succeed in listing both apps on the Salesforce AppExchange.

Who were you thinking of when you were designing the apps, and why?

Covid was the catalyst that demonstrated how unprepared the world was for an epidemic / pandemic. UltraFlow can be used to configure all sorts of solutions, however I feel that its best use is in the public sector, and especially in health.  With Covid-19 we saw the urgent need to provide information, track cases, deliver vaccinations, and handle rapidly evolving variants.

The health sector needs a tool that can be used to create citizen portals quickly, and be able to make changes as new information is available.  This is what is important to me – helping as many people as possible, in as many countries as possible, as quickly as possible.

What are you working on now?

Oh, I have many ideas!

For instance, I am not going to wait for someone to ask me to build them an epidemic management tool using UltraFlow – I am designing one already, to be shipped as a separate app.

From my experience working with Health departments at both State and Federal government here in Australia, and my scientific training, I know enough to anticipate what will be needed.

Watch this space!

Thank you.

 My pleasure.