News & Blogs

News and blogs on our products, services, and events

  • 144 Topics
  • 270 Replies

144 Topics

Serhat Sahin
Apprentice
Serhat SahinApprentice
published in News & Blogs

Code reviewBlog

[h3]Review required[/h3] In the Software Factory 2018.1 release, a new ‘Review required’ setting has been added to the SF configuration. This setting is turned on as default in the installation or upgrade of the Software Factory. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/0471171c-a559-43e2-9104-cda087f32d89.png[/img][i]Review required setting[/i] [h3]Ready for review[/h3] With review required turned on, the task to complete a control procedure will be replaced by a task to set a control procedure ready for review. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/710aee2c-0da1-498f-bb87-ad0a4a1f8b93.png[/img] [i]Task to set a control procedure ready for review[/i] This task will set the status of a control procedure to a new status ‘Review’ and create a changelog entry. Like in the previous version, the changelogs, including the code changes, can be found in the ‘Code changelog’ tab page. Two new tasks have been added to code changelog. [im

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Serhat Sahin
Apprentice
5 years ago
Anne Buit
Community Manager
Anne BuitCommunity Manager
published in News & Blogs

Retrieving identity values in T-SQL – AdvancedBlog

A while ago, a [url=https://office.thinkwisesoftware.com/blog/retrieving-identity-values-t-sql/]blog[/url] was published about retrieving identity values in T-SQL using the [b][i]Output[/i][/b]-clause. This blog continues on this subject for a more advanced scenario. [h2]The case[/h2]There are some situations where you don’t just want the identities as output, but you also want to match them to related records which were used in the insert statement. For instance, when copying multiple [i]order[/i] records including the [i]order_line[/i] records, you need to match the new [i]order_id[/i] with the source [i]order_id[/i] in order to copy the [i]order_line[/i] records properly. Now don’t get me wrong, there are other ways to achieve our goal of mapping the inserted [i]order_id [/i]identity with the source [i]order_id[/i]: [list] [*]We could store a foreign key called [i]source_order_id[/i] in the newly created [i]order[/i] record. However, this would require a data model change and we

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Anne Buit
Community Manager
5 years ago
Martijn Grefhorst
Community Manager
Martijn GrefhorstCommunity Manager
published in News & Blogs

How to decorate a tree (in 4 easy steps)Blog

Creating a tree view for subjects has always been a struggle, until now. All that is needed in release 2017.1 is setting up the tree model for your subject and assigning a screen type with a [i]TreeView[/i] component. [h2]Tree properties[/h2]Just like the grid and form the tree is now fully configurable through the Subject modeler. The [i]tree display column[/i] is the text column shown in the tree. When leaving it blank the look-up display column will be used. The [i]icon column[/i] presents the icon in front of the display column. There are two [i]tree types[/i] to choose from: hierarchical and column grouping. These will be explained later on. A new feature is the [i]default expanded[/i] property. When set, the tree will automatically expand to the provided level of nodes. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/500ee583-b287-4f7c-a7b4-15da31422ca7.png[/img] [h2]Hierarchical grouping[/h2]Previously, a self-reference was needed to show an hierar

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Martijn Grefhorst
Community Manager
5 years ago
Tim de Lang
Moderator
Tim de LangModerator
published in News & Blogs

Creating an awesome application with themesBlog

In 2016 we’ve started to improve the layout of the Project Portal (which has since been dubbed ‘Thinkwise Insights’). Some of the changes were already possible with layouts in the G9.8 SF. We’ve made full use of those possibilities and we’ve added a lot more options to the SF. One of the most noticeable changes is that we’ve renamed layouts to themes, so from now on I’ll be talking about themes. If you’re still on a version of the SF that uses layouts, you can substitute layout. Our goal was to make it easier to create a modern, fresh and usable look and feel for your application. In this article I’ll tell you what options you have and how to best utilize them to create a usable, clean, modern and awesome-looking application. [h2]Grid[/h2] [h3]Alternating rows[/h3]You’ve never had the option to change the color of the alternating rows in the grid. The GUIs calculated a color for you, and that was it. You could remove the alternating background colors with a little trickery; b

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Tim de Lang
Moderator
5 years ago
Serhat Sahin
Apprentice
Serhat SahinApprentice
published in News & Blogs

Advices are dead, long live recommendations!Blog

Every morning when you get up, you make your bed. When you grab your toothbrush, you put toothpaste on it. When you’ve washed your face, you wipe it dry. After you’ve had breakfast, you tidy up the table. Life would be so much easier if these morning rituals could be done automatically. Well, we can’t help you with that, but what we can do is make your job life easier with user preferences. In fact, we can make it very easy by setting these preferences automatically for you, when you generate and apply [i]recommendations[/i]. User preferences allow actions to be done automatically, such as opening a screen when you start an application, filtering for specific data by creating prefilters, and more. For many of those preferences it is possible to generate recommendations in Intelligent Application Manager (IAM) based on your work behavior. [h2][b]Recommendations[/b][/h2]Recommendations are simply user preference suggestions in IAM based on the user logs. Users can generate new reco

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Serhat Sahin
Apprentice
5 years ago
Anne Buit
Community Manager
Anne BuitCommunity Manager
published in News & Blogs

This file is disconnected from the Software Factory. Changes will not be saved.Blog

One of our most fervent bug-reporters mentioned that it’s truly annoying to get a [b]pop-up[/b] in SQL Server Management Studio most of the times you open a new template. Developers see this pop-up because the file contents are updated. This happens when the file is no longer monitored by the Software Factory. A line is added to notify the developer that the file is disconnected. SQL Server Management Studio detects this change in the file and provides you with the pop-up as seen below. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/2ad96999-a05e-4f6b-9f65-9ed43112f0b9.png[/img] And it’s true, this disturbs the workflow. Some developers even gave up on opening templates directly from the Software Factory and instead resorted to copy-pasting templates. [h1]The good news[/h1]The good news is that you can actually turn this pop-up off! Go to [i]Tools – Options – Documents[/i] and check [i]Auto-load changes, if saved[/i]. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thi

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Anne Buit
Community Manager
5 years ago
T
Moderator
Tim WaalewijnModerator
published in News & Blogs

Working with attachments in the Thinkwise Exchange ServiceBlog

Starting with version 3.00 of the Thinkwise Exchange Service it is possible to sync attachment files from exchange items such as emails, appointments, contacts and tasks. Currently attachments can only be synchronized from Exchange to the database, not from the database to Exchange. [h1]Syncing attachments[/h1]The binary data of an attachment isn’t retrieved automatically while syncing. Instead, when an item is synced from the exchange server to the database, any attachments the item might contain are converted into a formatted string containing the metadata needed to retrieve the actual attachment file from the server. The reason for this is that it makes synchronization lighter since the metadata of an attachment is almost always smaller than the file itself. This metadata is sent to the database through an [b][i]exh_attachments[/i][/b] parameter in the applicable [b][i]exh_from_exh[/i][/b] stored procedure (e.g. [b]exh_from_exh_add_email)[/b] and is formatted in the following

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T
Moderator
5 years ago
Anne Buit
Community Manager
Anne BuitCommunity Manager
published in News & Blogs

Troubleshooting Mobile development & proxy service tiersBlog

[b]Troubleshooting[/b] There is a small chance that you might run into some difficulty along the way. Since Mobile uses technologies that most developers at Thinkwise are not very familiair with, this troubleshooting chapter should help with the most common problems. Pinpointing the problem is the most important activity, since the vast majority of all problems have nothing to do with the mobile GUI but instead are caused by the proxy service tier, the model, the database or a setting in IAM. [b]'My service tier won’t run!'[/b] If instead of an authentication pop-up an error page shows up, something could be wrong. However, if you entered correct credentials, you might get a 404-not found, because there is no website at this location. Anything other but an authenticaton pop-up or a 404 should not happen. If the authentication pop-up keeps showing up even though you entered valid credentials, the database configuration might be wrong. Re-check the web.config and make sure the webser

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Anne Buit
Community Manager
5 years ago
V
Moderator
Vincent DoppenbergModerator
published in News & Blogs

Excel-style filteringBlog

Version 9.8.15 of the Windows GUI introduces a new feature – Excel-style filtering. The feature is named Excel-style filtering because it aims to offer users a filtering experience which is similar to that of Excel and feels familiar and intuitive. Excel-style filtering provides a way to filter individual columns on multiple values, something which is frequently requested by our users. This feature is not available for the Web GUI at the moment, but it will be added in the future. [h3][b]Where to find it[/b][/h3]Excel-style filtering can be accessed through a new menu which is available on the column headers of the grid. This menu can be opened by right-clicking a column header or by clicking on the menu button on a column header, shown in the image below. The column header menu also provides a new entry point for existing features such as grouping, sorting, opening the filter dialog and clearing all filters. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/5f29d7b1-

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V
Moderator
5 years ago
Frank Wijnhout
Thinkwise blogger
Frank Wijnhout
published in News & Blogs

Retrieving identity values in T-SQLBlog

We often insert data in a table and afterwards we need the identity values of the new records for certain tasks. At Thinkwise most developers use the function [b]SCOPE_IDENTITY()[/b] to do this. Although this function works fine, it’s only useful when you insert a single record because [b][i]SCOPE_IDENTITY()[/i][/b] is a scalar function and returns only one value. Many times we create statements that insert more than one record at a time. In those cases we need another method to retrieve all new identity values. The solution for this situation is the [b][i]Output[/i][/b]-clause (available in SQL Server 2008 and higher). An [b][i]Output[/i][/b]-clause returns information from, or expressions based on, each row affected by an [b][i]Insert, update, delete or merge[/i][/b] statement. In other words, with the [b][i]Output[/i][/b]-clause you can retrieve all data that was in the inserted and deleted tables during the statement. So the [b][i]Output[/i][/b]-clause does not only retrieve iden

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Frank Wijnhout
Thinkwise blogger
5 years ago
Anne Buit
Community Manager
Anne BuitCommunity Manager
published in News & Blogs

Software Factory – DesignBlog

[quote]About 800 years ago, a French theologian wrote the sentence “[i]Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam”, [/i]which was the origin of the saying “All Roads Lead To Rome”. When it comes to software development, this saying holds very true. There are literally endless ways to implement a software application.[/quote] In a [url=https://community.thinkwisesoftware.com/blogs-21/software-factory-process-analysis-36]previous blog[/url], process analysis was positioned as a way to determine the scope and functional goals for application development in the Software Factory. This provides the project with specific goals, modules and required functionality. A good base for an estimate. To keep the analogy going; We decided we will go to Rome by car, though Germany and Switzerland. The trip shouldn’t take more than 2 days. However, there is still a lot of leeway. Do we only take the highways or the scenic route? Take the ferry along the road or toll roads? The functional goals can sti

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Anne Buit
Community Manager
5 years ago
Ester
Moderator
EsterModerator
published in News & Blogs

How to configure data conversionBlog

A very important step in preparing for an upgrade is setting up version control for the data conversion. If version control is not used correctly, it can even mess up your database. Best case scenario, the upgrade-script will fail and a backup should be restored. But in the worst case scenario, the upgrade will run without errors and you’ll lose data. Because it is such an important feature, we wanted to emphasize it by adding version control to the menu and writing a blog post about it. But as the post progressed, we realized some improvements were needed. First and foremost, we changed the name to [i]Data conversion[/i]. Data conversion can be used to transform existing data to the new structure, just as version control could, and this screen can be found in the [i]Deployment[/i] menu. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/fcd70b35-4c5e-428b-860b-35f36af859f3.png[/img]Screenshot of Data conversion [h2]Features of Data conversion[/h2]When you prepa

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Ester
Moderator
5 years ago
Ester
Moderator
EsterModerator
published in News & Blogs

How to use the changelogBlog

The [i]Code changelog[/i] is a new feature that will be released with the G9.8. This feature will make it easier to manage revisions of control procedure and template code. To track changes in code, some developers choose to add a header in the template containing the date, author and a description of every modification. But when there are a lot of development cycles, this header can become rather big. Another disadvantage of this method is that the header is included in the generated code. This is why we created the [i]Code changelog[/i]. [h3]Completing control procedures[/h3]Every time a control procedure or template is created or it’s code is updated, a record is added to the [i]Code history[/i] and the status of the control procedure is changed to [i]Development[/i]. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/9aa4c71b-2f4a-40da-ae3c-32b247403ced.png[/img] Code changelog with changes When you’re done making changes to a control procedure and its templates y

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Ester
Moderator
5 years ago
A
Rookie
AliRookie
published in News & Blogs

Runtime configurationsBlog

With the upcoming release of the Thinkwise Suite G9.8, some changes have been introduced in the Software Factory regarding ini parameters. Ini parameters are properties that each application uses to start the right application. Ini parameters can be either mandatory (e.g. meta connection info) or optional (e.g. setting the delay for the combined filter). All of these ini parameters are saved in an ini file on the drive. This ini file can be opened and modified with a text editor. The ini file is usually already set up correctly and referenced from the shortcut of the application. So it might appear that the application doesn’t use an ini file, but each application always has its own ini file. [h2]What has changed?[/h2] [h3]SF: Runtime configurations[/h3]To have more control over and insight in the parameters used, to be able to share different ini parameter configurations between developers or user groups, and to make it possible to provide the correct ini parameters to all the run

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A
Rookie
5 years ago
Serhat Sahin
Apprentice
Serhat SahinApprentice
published in News & Blogs

Let’s zoom in on a new featureBlog

[h3]Zoom into details[/h3]To create a good overview, it can be desirable to configure a screen which shows ample data with many underlying details. But these detail windows can become rather small. To make such a window larger, it is possible for users to zoom into a detail screen. The question is: “What will the screen type of this zoomed screen be?” [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/5dd134c6-2a63-4f17-8731-a62772a73354.png[/img] [h3]Screen type inheritance[/h3]In the Software Factory G8, the zoom screen type was inherited from the [b]master[/b] screen type. This seemed like a good solution, but in fact it lead to unexpected results. For example, if a detail screen contained only a grid and the master screen type contained both a grid and a form, the user would get access to a form when zoomed in. This would provide the user with the option to add records, which the developer might not have intended. Since the developer had no control over this, the

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Serhat Sahin
Apprentice
5 years ago
Anne Buit
Community Manager
Anne BuitCommunity Manager
published in News & Blogs

Software Factory – Process analysisBlog

With the advent of the Software Factory release G9.8 “Pyxis”, we would like to introduce a change in the Software Factory regarding requirements. Where previous releases of the Software Factory had limited support for the registration of requirements, the G9.8 release will have fully-fledged support for the process analysis. Process analysis is used in the Thinkwise Project Methodology as the way to elicitate the requirements. By capturing the primary process of a company, it is way easier to determine what the application has to do to support this primary process. The processes are specified using [url=http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/PDF/]BPMN 2.0[/url]. [h2]Processes[/h2]The [b]primary process[/b] can be specified in the Software Factory using activities called tasks. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachment/9bcc8ae5-98bb-4ca0-a8ff-a82b1aa68e92.png[/img] This primary process shows 3 [b]partial processes[/b]. Each partial process could be the respon

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Anne Buit
Community Manager
5 years ago
V
Moderator
Vincent DoppenbergModerator
published in News & Blogs

Two-factor authenticationBlog

With the upcoming release of the Thinkwise Suite G9.8, we have introduced the ability to perform two-factor authentication on users. Two-factor authentication provides an extra layer of authentication, on top of the conventional username and password, which serves to establish the identity of a user with a higher degree of certainty. Typically, two-factor authentication requires the user to prove that they are also in possession of something that only the real user should be in possession of, for instance a mobile phone. Our implementation of two-factor authentication supports the validation of phone numbers (by means of SMS) and the validation of email addresses. [b]Support[/b] Two-factor authentication can only be used in applications which are managed by IAM, as IAM is the place where a user’s settings with regard to two-factor authentication can be configured. In addition, support for two-factor authentication is provided by the Web GUI and the Mobile GUI, but not by the Window

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V
Moderator
5 years ago
Anne Buit
Community Manager
Anne BuitCommunity Manager
published in News & Blogs

Look-up the Display ValueBlog

Virtually every table in an application has a primary key. The primary key is unique per record and can be used to refer to the record. For instance, the table [b][i]Person[/i][/b] can use a number as primary key. However, when a person is referenced in the application, we do not want to see this number. When we are referring to a person, we want to see the name of the person. The name of the person is said to be the [b]display value[/b] of the person. The display value of a person could be variable, depending on the context of where this person is referenced. The display value might even be stored in another table, especially when dealing with link tables. Obtaining a set of keys and display values and translating a key into a display value is called a look-up. This blog is about look-up display values and how to use them effectively. [h2]Terminology[/h2]In the example with persons, the [b][i]Person[/i][/b] table is used as a [b]look-up table[/b]. The look-up table is the tab

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Anne Buit
Community Manager
5 years ago
Roel
Moderator
RoelModerator
published in News & Blogs

Auto-close unavailable applicationsBlog

Because the Thinkwise GUI’s and Service Tiers use a connection pool for database connections, they will automatically try to reconnect with every new statement. This can cause locking problems during maintenance or upgrades. In the upcoming GUI’s a new feature will be introduced which will automatically close any application that is no longer available in IAM. Every five minutes a check is performed which will compare the currently loaded applications with the available applications for the current user. If an application is made inactive or the access rights are revoked then the GUI will close all the corresponding documents and removes the application from the menu. This feature ensures that all users are disconnected from the application and no new database connections will be opened by the Thinkwise GUI’s. [h2]Example[/h2] In this IAM we find a Software Factory and three versions of a customer end product. [img]https://uploads-eu-west-1.insided.com/thinkwise-en/attachm

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Roel
Moderator
5 years ago

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