Product Updates

To celebrate the new year we want to make sure you don’t miss out on some awesome new features provided by our GUI’s! Shared features Win / Web GUIFile StorageIn addition to having a product store their files in the data on disk, new options have been added to store files on an FTP location, an Azure storage or in-database using a blob. The developer can choose one or more of these storage locations and apply them where necessary, depending on the architecture and the available infrastructure. Radio buttonsWhereas mobile was outfitted with radio buttons for a while, the Windows and Web GUI can now also show data in a form using radio buttons. The control type is available in the Software Factory for any domain with elements. Drag DropEnabling and configuring drag-drop can be done at subject configuration in the Software Factory. Multiple rows can be drag-dropped at once, rows can be dragged from both grid and tree. See this post for more details. Menu filteringAll list bar menus and tree menus have been outfitted with a filter bar to quickly find a menu item or menu group. This is especially useful when the applications become large. Details tilesAs an alternative to detail tabpages, the developer can now choose to provide detail tiles to access related subjects. Opening a detail using a detail tile will be identical to zooming. Selecting a different row in the main subject will not affect the newly opened document. Phone number controlWhereas the Mobile GUI has supported the phone number control for a while, support for the phone number control has also been added to the Web GUI. This control will use the tel: protocol to issue a command to the operating system to call the specified number. SharingThe user can share any record in their user interface using the Share button. A link is generated which can be used at any time and by any user to navigate to the same record, providing the application hasn’t fundamentally changed and the record is still present in this location. DeeplinkingBecause of their syntax, creating the share links programmatically is not recommended. Instead, when creating a deep-link for a specific purpose (such as mailing a link to an online invoice), a process-flow based deep link can be used. Any process flow can be marked to be available as a deep-link. When the user clicks the link, the web application will load and start the specified process flow. Specific process flow variables can be made available to be set in the URL of the deep link. A deep link using a process flow would look something like this See this post for more details. Windows GUIMulti MonitorThe Windows GUI has been outfitted with a feature to undock and redock any document. Documents can be docked together to create a group of floating documents. This feature can be used for side-by-side comparisons where the tabbed documents do not suffice. By holding ALT when opening a document from the menu or from detail tiles, the document will automatically open as a floating document. Add row in gridThe option has been added to add rows using the grid instead of the form. A new row will be shown under the set of rows which can be used to add rows. The new row can be configured to be always visible or only when adding a row in the grid. When the grid is grouped, the row will be shown under the selected group since there is no column available to set the value for the grouped column. See also Inserting in grid for more details about this behavior. Merged menusA new option has been added to merge the menus. When enabled, all menus of the same type across different applications will be merged into one big menu. The user will no longer have to switch to a different application to open a document from another application. Drag & drop filesFiles can now be dragged and dropped from the explorer to a file_upload or image_upload control in edit mode. Remote folder (simple)In addition to the remote folder control, a simple variant has been added which only displays a single remote folder. The simple remote folder does not have a folder browser and actions to modify the folders. In addition, the simple remote folder does not display any subfolders. Process Flow MonitorA new monitor has been added to the developer ribbon tab which allows a developer to step tough a process flow step-by-step. Information about process flow variables is shown and the history of the different process actions executed in the process flow will be recorded and available in this monitor. Web GUICube screen typesThe web GUI will now show cube screens as modeled. This allows for more complex screen types where cubes are combined with other components. This feature was already implemented in the Windows GUI and is now also available for the Web GUI. Mobile GUITiles menuThe Mobile GUI has been outfitted with a tiles menu. This tiles menu works a bit different from the Windows and Web tiles menu’s. Instead of providing all tiles in a grouped overview, the groups are added as tiles to the menu. Pressing a group will show the tiles in the group. Groups with only one tile are not displayed; instead the tile in this group is displayed. Cardlist improvementsThe cardlist has been improved and can process more of the settings provided by the model. Instead of a title and two supportive fields, multiple fields can now be displayed in the card list. The label of each field can be shown optionally. Have fun exploring these new features!

2017.1?But I was expecting version G9.9!? Well, internally we named this version G9.9, so maybe you’ve heard us talk about that. But now that we are ready to release this new version, we’ve switched to a better version name. The reason for this is that the current version naming does not give any indication about the release date. Some of our customers are still running a G8. It might seem like they’re only one version behind, but the G8 was actually first released in 2012! So, they are missing out on lots of pretty awesome new features! To be more clear about this we’ve switched to a date related versioning scheme, where the name will start with the release year followed by a dot and a sequence number. So the next release will be 2017.2 and maybe we’ll even release a 2017.3 and 2017.4 this year. The first version released in 2018 will be named 2018.1, etc. New featuresHere’s an overview of the coolest new features. Indicium Service TierUser Interface & User Experience Drag-drop Themes Async progress Tiles menu Tree modeling Default editable form Form list Validations (with consequence and solutions)Role Based Access ControlProcess Flows 2.0File storage We’re still working on blog posts for some of them and you’ll be seeing them soon. In the meantime, you can get more info from the release notes. This version and the complete release notes can be downloaded from TCP. So… Download 2017.1 today!

In the last few weeks, there have been a lot of post about the G9.8. We are happy to announce that version G9.8 of the Thinkwise Suite is ready! As usual, this version and the release notes can be downloaded from TCP. But to give you an overview, here are the blog post we have written about some of the new features: Software Factory – Process analysis Software Factory – Design Two-factor authentication New blog posts [1] Let’s zoom in on a new feature Why we renamed version control to data conversion How to use the changelog Runtime configurations PyxisThe G9.8 version is called “Pyxis”. This is a constellation in the Southern sky, abbreviated from Pyxis Nauticawhich is latin for a mariner’s compass. There are some new features like requirements, data conversion, code changelogs, code screens and badges that can guide you in creating exceptional software.

We are proud to announce version G9.7 of the Thinkwise Suite. This version contains some awesome new features, the most important being: Oracle support New licensing mechanism SF model in IAM Code archiving for even smarter smart upgrades Official support for SQL Server Reporting Services In addition, more than 110 other features and fixes are released with this version. As usual, this version and the release notes can be downloaded from TCP. In this post we describe the deployment of SF in IAM in more detail. SF model in IAM Before the G9.7 the Software Factory development environment consisted of two databases; the actual development database (a.k.a. SF_ONT) and the accompanying meta database (a.k.a. SF_META) containing the model of the Software Factory. This has some disadvantages. For instance, if we want to release a new version, we also need to restore a new database with the meta model. Also, with regular Thinkwise applications, when an application is live, it is always synchronised to IAM. So why don’t we do that for our own products, namely Software Factory and Intelligent Application Manager? To solve these problems, as of this release, the SF meta model is delivered as a script, which creates an application in an IAM. In this version the Software Factory development environment will also consist of two databases; the actual development database and the accompanying development IAM database. So, the difference is that the meta SF is replaced with a development IAM. In this way, the Software Factory development environment will behave exactly like all other Thinkwise applications. This also has several other advantages. First of all, it is now possible to add your own user preferences. Want to add your own prefilter, change the default sort order or have some screens start up automatically? It’s all possible now! Secondly, because the Software Factory can only be used within IAM, it is now possible to use the new licensing feature on the Software Factory for customers. They can only use the Software Factory, if they have a valid license. Finally, we do not need to deploy a database backup anymore but can deploy new versions using scripts only. This will keep the installation packages smaller and makes it easier in the future to create an automated installer that executes all scripts. Upgrade During the upgrade of a G9.6 or older version to the G9.7, a new IAM database will be created and the Software Factory model will be “synchronized” into this IAM, including a first user group setup. It is not recommended to alter the rights or groups, because some rights might be required in the modelers and custom tasks. We plan to provide more groups in the future, so if you have a great idea for a group, please let us know! Example The upgrade and new settings might be explained the best with an example. So let’s describe the situation for an example customer VDO. VDO has a develop SF named VDO_SF_ONT and a meta SF named VDO_SF_META. Both are on G9.5. To upgrade, we will go to TCP and download the software package. This contains scripts to upgrade to G9.6 and to G9.7. After the SF is upgraded, we will take the VDO_SF_META offline. The installation package has an install_iam script. With this script, the develop IAM database will be created. We’ll name this VDO_IAM_ONT. There are two scripts to import the model (SF and IAM). After execution of those scripts, I can start the Software Factory. VDO has 3 developers, Liam, Noah and Emma. We can make 3 users and then add them to the group of sf_developers. To get their rdbms login names, we can also go to the employee table in VDO_SF_ONT and use the employees there. When someone uses the G9 SF, a record will be automatically added to the employee table. This employee can then be used as owner for requirements or developer, tester or reviewer by control procedures. Emma is the project leader and we want her to be able to add extra developers if necessary. So we assign her to the group IAM_administrators. After the ini-files are changed to metasource is IAM, Liam and Noah will have one application, the Software Factory. Emma will have two, the Software Factory and IAM. Because Liam always uses the requirement screen, he adds this as startup object. IAM model in IAM Some customers choose to synchronize the IAM model in IAM. Meaning that they have one program with two applications, the end product and IAM admin. Because there is no Meta_SF, it is no longer possible to synchronize with this model. But also, because there is no meta_sf, you need an IAM model in the IAM. This is why we always deliver a scripted model to add to the IAM database. So IAM will always be an extra application in the program. Finally So what are you waiting for? Let’s upgrade!