Overview

Automate repetitive and time-consuming work by quickly building user interfaces that integrate tasks and data.

What are business applications?

The business applications that you create drive efficiency across your business. Maybe you work for a bank and need to streamline your mortgage request process. Maybe you work for a flooring company and need to simplify your job quote process.

Your applications are composed of user interfaces (UIs), which run on the client, and automation services or actions, which run on the server. Think® of applications as front-end UIs driven by back-end business logic.

Applications are usually based on templates or starter applications that are created by a more technical user. Templates are composed of toolkits, which are libraries of building blocks (or assets) that can be used to create applications.

What are templates?

A template is a predefined starting point that you can use to create an application. A template can represent a common-use case pattern, such as a document renewal template, or workflow dashboard template. When a technical user creates a template, it can contain artifacts, such as applications, actions, views, and business objects. When you create an application based on a template, all of these artifacts in the template are copied into your application. Also, because a template references toolkits, these references are included in your application.

What are toolkits?

A toolkit is a collection of shared artifacts that you use during application creation. Toolkits can be created by a technical user, or contributed by another offering. A toolkit generally contains the following artifacts:
  • Views: Reusable sets of user interface widgets, such as text fields, date time pickers, and buttons, that users can use to interact with a business object or service. Views can comprise one or more sets of other views, data bindings, layout instructions, and behaviors.
  • Actions: Applications use actions to launch services, which contain business logic. You can configure an action for a view. For example, a user can click a button to launch a workflow service that opens a mortgage application.
  • Business objects: Structured data types that represent solution entities as a collection of properties.

Creating toolkits, templates, and applications

Toolkits, templates, and applications can be created with the low-code designer. For users familiar with building process applications in the traditional workflow capabilities, you will be comfortable building applications with the low-code designer, since many of the same concepts are the same.

The low-code designer comes equipped with two view modes:
  • Basic: A simplified application design experience. The left navigation pane and other properties views are hidden. Simply drag components onto your page to start customizing your application.
  • Advanced: A more robust application design experience for technical users. Access the left navigation pane, more properties, and the diagram to get a comprehensive view of your application flow.
You can change your view mode from the user preferences.

How to build a simple application

To put together a simple application, follow these steps.
  • Base your application on a starting application or template that is provided to you.
  • Construct your pages. Create a page and start dragging components to your page from the components panel. For example, add a button view or a text input view. Associate data with the view, if needed. Configure properties for the views, such as color. You can also quickly drag automation services to your page to leverage the power of the automation platform.
  • Configure next steps to move between pages. For example, add a next step for a button that a user clicks to move to another page.
  • Preview your application to get a sense for how it looks and behaves.
  • Publish a version of your application.
  • If your provider updates the template, update your application.