Shiny meets Electron: Turn your Shiny app into a standalone desktop app in no time

Using Shiny in consulting can be challenging, as all deployment options involve either sending intellectual property and data to the cloud or IT involvement. When providing consultative-like services to extremely large, risk-averse, enterprises this can greatly restrict one’s ability to quickly get Shiny apps into users’ hands, as engagement of IT can take months if approved at all.

We’ll share how the Columbus Collaboratory team overcame these barriers to rapid deployment by coupling R Portable and Electron, a framework for creating native applications with a variety of web technologies.

All the tools needed to use Electron for desktop deployment of Shiny apps will be reviewed.

We’ll highlight a specific example in which these technologies were used within a large enterprise to completely automate a weekly report.

We’ll also share how the app used R Packages such as openxlsx, shinydashboard, RODBC, and Zoo to query an internal database, cleanse data, calculate key metrics, and create a downloadable excel file for dissemination.

The best part? This Shiny app was delivered to the end business user as a stand-alone executable. https://github.com/ksasso/Electron_Sh...

Main Sections

0:00 Introduction
0:34 Overview
2:23 What is Electron?
7:11 Comparing Deployment Options
10:10 Using Electron
13:14 Intermediate Use Cases
17:42 Additional Considerations
18:23 Audience Questions

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