News & Blogs

Hi everyone,For the 2021.3 release, the complete Creation process has been overhauled to be fully run by Indicium. There was one other feature on the backlog that was very valuable to the Generate definition process, and now was the perfect time to implement it.  When generating, all generated program objects would be dropped and re-created by the control procedures. This process costs performance and IO. It would be smarter if objects were not simply dropped and re-created, but instead created/changed/dropped only when that truly applies. StrategiesTo improve the Generate definition process, several generation strategies have been implemented. A Strategy is a defined way of how the Software Factory should generate the control procedure. For every strategy there can be reasons to choose one over the other, but it is recommended to use the Staged strategy due to all its performance benefits. Read on to see how to implement these new str

The low-code market has developed quickly in recent years. Current events have put pressure on IT leaders to dramatically increase application delivery speed, even more than before. The COVID crisis has certainly demonstrated that the constant continued development of software is crucial.Want to know how you can improve the agility of your business and adapt quickly to changing circumstances and market opportunities using a low-code platform? Discover how Thinkwise enables you to modernize large, business-critical applications, with extremely high speed of development and flexibility, during our first Low-Code Summit on 13 October 2021.Time: 09:00 to 15:00 CEST Location: Online Admission: free of chargeSign Up

In our previous blog, we discussed why we came to the conclusion that translating natural language into a formal language is the best approach for us to create linguistic interfaces for Thinkwise applications. It was mentioned that an existing project called Genie follows this approach and we decided to build a prototype to test whether or not Genie is the best framework for us. The purpose of this blog is to share our story about how we built our first prototype using the Insights demo application. The prototype is available at (https://nlpdemo.thinkwise.app/)To make it more formal, for our prototype we need to construct a neural semantic parser from th

Delivering value for the business is what drives software development. Stakeholders are mostly interested in the functional aspects of our applications when it comes to delivering this value.However, non-functional aspects are just as important. Quality aspects described in ISO/IEC 25010 provide a great starting point for identifying which non-functional aspects are important to your business. The application may fail to meet the demands or could harm the business if these aspects are not considered.The Thinkwise Platform allows developers to quickly build enterprise applications. In doing so, the Thinkwise Platform not only allows the developer to rapidly deliver functionality but also offloads many of the non-functional concerns to the platform.  As an illustration of this, the way in which the entire platform is designed to allow applications to survive technological changes comes with an intrinsic boost to portability. The model-driven development approach

In a recent Community platform update from Insided, the way URL's are constructed has changed. In a reaction Insided said the following: The URL’s of ideas were inconsistent to other content types, so we changed them to be consistent (this was required for conversions to work).If a user has copied an idea URL before April 19, then this URL is not going to work anymore. The URLs are not going to change in the future, so whenever a user copies an idea link from the Community now, they will always see the correct topic.We apologise for the inconvenience

In part one of this case we’ve outlined the general case and implemented several of the CRUD functionalities as well as response paginations.If you have missed part one, you can find it here:Case: A message protocol-independent web service (part 1 of 2)The final two endpointsWe now continue with the final two endpoints and we’ll test the service in part two.The final two endpoints are:Select license by applicationCode and productCode Select applications with an active license for accessSelect license by applicationCode and productCodeThis endpoint allows the caller to load a license based on an applicationCode and productCode.

TL;DRThinkwise is ahead of the curve in terms of ridding the world of legacy software, and to keep it that way we have to look ahead. Right now, the Software Factory has the opportunity of becoming one of the first business software development platforms to offer interfaces working with speech or written text (linguistic interfaces). We believe that with state of the art methods, we will to be able to offer high quality linguistic interfaces to all applications made with the Software Factory, without much hassle.No extra modeling or development will be necessary to get started, though it will be possible to improve baseline systems. These baseline interfaces will be generable from existing applications' models and some examples from their databases. All this can be done while allowing customers to keep full control over their data. From there on out the system can improve based on user interactions. Our goal is to ship, in just a few releases, the ability to generate

E-learning Thinkwise PlatformWhen you want to become acquainted and learn how to work with our platform, then of course you want to start as soon as possible! We completely understand this, and this is why Thinkwise has developed a state-of-the-art e-learning program. This e-learning gives you the opportunity to gain a solid basic understanding of our platform. It also prepares you for the examinations that lead to the highly sought after Thinkwise Associate Certification.The number of users of the Thinkwise platform is growing fast, both internationally and nationally. And to gain the maximum benefit from the Thinkwise platform, it is obviously important to train yourself in its use. Thinkwise has therefore developed a state-of-the-art e-learning program that ensures that you can acquire this knowledge anywhere and at anytime. 

Indicium provides APIs for all kinds of back-end services, such as entities, tasks, reports and process flows. These APIs use the OData protocol.However, there are scenarios where integration in the application landscape requires applications built using the Thinkwise Platform to expose an API using a different protocol.Think of a SOAP service with a WSDL or a REST service which doesn’t conform to OData protocol. This can be an endpoint for a message bus or a high-level composite service to integrate in the landscape.Message protocol independent web servicesIn version 2021.1 of the Software Factory, Message protocol independent web services in a process flows were introduced to support this.This feature allows you to create entirely custom APIs, receive and process the HTTP requests on the database, and set the HTTP response as well.N

Hello everyone, This week we like to share some tips & tricks on how to submit a support ticket.When you start developing your own application with the Thinkwise Platform, there is documentation and the community to learn everything you need to know. When the platform software isn’t working as it should, you can submit a ticket. The fastest way to get your support tickets resolved is to provide us with as much detail as possible. Besides product and version information you must include the steps to reproduce the issue. We cannot help you with bugs we cannot reproduce.In addition, you can use screen recording to demonstrate the problem and add a video to the Support Ticket. Here are a few suggestions to help you out: Screen recording in Windows 10Press your Windows Logo key + Alt + R to start

Dear community members, We want to make it as easy as possible for our community members to post their questions and stay informed of new features and updates. Therefore, we are moving to a simpler community structure.First of all, the general information about how our Community works in terms of functionalities is moved to Knowledge Base. This can be seen via the community menu. Also, our showcase application Insights has also been moved there.Community menuWhat will the structure look like?CategoryThinkwise Platform: SubforumsQuestions & Conversations News & Updates Roadmap Inspiration roomWhat can you find by subforum?  Questions & Conv

All of you, that have worked with Microsoft Azure, have probably noticed that Azure does not allow you to mutate or select data from a different database than the transaction database. However often you find yourself in a situation where this is necessary. This blog will help you with exactly that. This blog describes 2 features which you can use.Feature 1 External DatasourceMicrosoft SQL has a feature available called “External Datasource”. This feature supports selecting data from an external source, but does not require to connect to this external source. It is kind of like a fake table within your database, which selects data from the defined external source. While using an External Datasource it is possible to select data from another database within Azure. Do keep in mind that it is not (yet) possible to mutate data using an External Datasource. If you would like to mutate data on a different database, you have to use the second option this blog

In an effort to make deployment easier for everyone, we've updated the license mechanism in the Thinkwise Platform. Downloading and importing a license will be a thing of the past as of version 2020.2. As mentioned before, Indicium Universal will be a mandatory component in any environment. Not only to be able to use Universal, Scheduling and AutoML, but also for the automatic license renewal mechanism. Indicium Universal will automatically renew licenses for environments without the need for any user interaction. Furthermore, the innovation fee report in IAM has been removed from the Intelligent Application Manager - the contents of this report will be exchanged when renewing the license. The expression environment will be used a lot in this blog. This expression is used to denote an Intelligent Application Manager with the applications present in this IAM and all runtime components attached, such as Indicium

 Would you like to know more? Read the release notes here!

Data security and privacy remain important aspects of everyday life and in the Thinkwise Platform. Therefore, as of release 2021.1, we created a new access type: 'unauthorized', which can be used for columns, tasks and reports. And on top of that: you don't need to set up the columns yourself, but the Software Factory does it for you! Hidden or unauthorized? Now before explaining how that's possible, let's first set out the difference between a hidden and an unauthorized column. A hidden column was already available in the Software Factory. It means that the column is hidden visually from the user interface. That's quite safe already, but in some cases the data might still be approached through Indicium. Unauthorized columns on the other hand can't be approached in any way. The user interface or any API won't even know the column exists, so that's an even safer way to protect your sensitive data.Until now, th

Document previewing has been an important feature in our Windows and Web GUIs over the last years. By popular demand, we have implemented an API for document previewing in Indicium as well. Because of this, our Universal GUI now supports document preview as well, but as with every feature that you see in our Universal GUI, you can also integrate it in your own applications very easily because it's an API offered by Indicium. What does this API offer?Document Preview allows users to preview files that are stored in your application. Indicium makes this work by converting the files, if required, to a data format that is supported by browsers. The following data formats are currently supported by Indicium: Word Excel PowerPoint E-mail PDF Images WebpagesIndicium will convert Excel files, e-mail, images and webpages into HTML format and everything else into PDF format.  

Want to get a quick, but thorough introduction of all the innovative features of the Thinkwise Platform? Watch our brand-new platform video and discover the power of low-code for core systems! 

As Microsoft has announced, basic authentication for the Exchange Web Services will be deprecated from October 13th, 2020.Basic authentication will be replaced by OAuth 2.0. OAuth 2.0 is a more secure and reliable way than Basic Authentication to access data from the Exchange service.These changes only apply to the cloud-based Exchange service, there are no changes for on-premises Exchange servers. Do you use the Thinkwise Exchange Connector with Exchange Online or Office 365? Then make sure you upgrade to the latest version of the Thinkwise Exchange Connector before October 13.To setup or confi

Thinkwise Platform Pentest It is important to us as Thinkwise that our customers have a secure Low Code software platform. That is why we periodically do a pentest to prove that the Thinkwise Low Code platform is sufficiently safe.The pentest was augmented with several audit activities, in which security controls, secure configuration and secure development were discussed in interview form. The following topics were covered in this audit:Secure design and architecture (both network and application-level) Secure software development (SAST, DAST, threat modelling etc.) IT Security Controls: authorization, authentication, password management IT Security Controls: secure communication and encryption; data protection at rest IT Security Controls: access control / default denyDescription of test scopeBecause the attack surface of applications built using the Thinkwise low co

One of the unique and distinguishing features of the Thinkwise Platform is that applications developed with the platform can survive technologies. Thinkwise applications can seamlessly switch over to new technologies, platforms, and even completely new software architectures, without any rework.Customers who developed their core system with the Thinkwise platform 16 years ago, at the time with a Visual Basic user interface in a two-tier architecture, have over time been able to effortlessly upgrade their existing enterprise systems to new technologies such as Web and Mobile, migrate to the cloud if desired, and take advantage of advanced new features like Machine Learning.And soon, all Thinkwise application will be able to switch to the latest Thinkwise Universal User Interface, a Progressive Web App developed with React that will replace all the other Thinkwise user interfaces.

A popular request, the Mass Update feature, has been implemented in the latest release of the Web user interface.You might already be familiar with the Mass Update feature in the Windows interface, found in the Extra section of the ribbon which allows you to update values of one or more columns in multiple rows of a table at once. This feature is now also available in the Web interface.Update in the Ribbon’s Extra sectionThe setting for enabling or disabling permissions to Mass Update in the Software Factory remains the same and is found in the Subjects screen where it is enabled by default, as shown below. 

We are happy to announce a new component has been released for the Windows and Web GUI’s which enables end users to preview various documents like PDF’s, Word documents, Excel sheets, Powerpoint slides, images, web pages and many more from within the GUI. The preview component just needs a path to any file or URL you’d like to open. The Windows GUI preview component uses the same preview technique as Windows Explorer. It uses the registered previewer if one is available. The Web GUI loads the file on the server and generates images which are sent to the client. The preview component supports 50+ file formats, including PDF and Microsoft Office documents. Usage To use this new component you can easily use the screen type modeller in the Software Factory. Simply drag the preview component on your favourite screen type like you’re used to and watch the magic happen! The preview component uses the first co

A small, but very useful improvement has been delivered in the latest release of the Windows and Web user interfaces and the Indicium Service tier. It is now possible to use process flow variables in the constant value of input parameters of process flow actions!To create the request URL for an HTTP connector based on user input, for example, instead of having to create the URL in the process action logic like this:set @url = 'https://api.overheid.io/bag?filters[postcode]=' + @postcodeYou can just set the value of the URL parameter like this: The user interfaces and service tier will automatically substitute {postcode} with the current value of the postcode process flow variable when the HTTP action is executed. 

When we started development on our new Universal GUI, one of our main goals was to create a User Interface that worked well on all platforms, be it desktop, tablet or mobile. This feature was so important to us that it even inspired the name. One important distinction between all these platforms is the amount of available screen real estate, or in other words the amount of pixels on a screen that you have to work with. Something that works great on a desktop client might not look so hot when it’s all mashed together on a mobile device. And resizing certain elements on the screen can drastically impact how useful certain screen elements are. Resizing the form on a screen can make it so that the grid that was displaying so much information before now only shows a handful of columns. To make sure everything looks the way you want it to, the Universal GUI makes use of breakpoints. This means that when the screen size or the size of a screen element hits a certain width t