Releases

Another great control added

Multi-value select control is added to the always-expanding library of Flowfactory controls. Increasing efficiency when developing applications and giving the end user a great experience.

Multi value select is a new control that can be configured and added to any view in the Flowfactory studio. You will find it under Controls when creating and editing views.

It is super simple to configure, choose which type of entity that should be shown in the control, and bind it to a collection property in the entity that will hold the selected items. Choose the option for Property based list and you can bind it directly to a predefined collection on your entity.

In the end-user web application the control will render as a standard dropdown and when activated it will display all items that can be selected and the user can simply check the boxes for the items needed. Selecting an item will add it to the collection on your entity and deselecting an item will remove it.

A new look and smart features

New smooth Workflow designer

Big changes in the 2.3 release. The workflow designer has been redesigned to make it easier to distinguish different workflow activities and giving it a cleaner look.

Group summaries in grids

A new great addition is the ability to add summary rows to your grid views. To make it even more amazing we also added summary rows to groups, giving the user full freedom to create analytical reports and aggregations.

Setting up group summaries couldn’t be easier. In Flowfactory Studio open the Grid in the view designer , then tap the Summary Type field for the row you want to show summaries. Then select what type of summary it should show, this could be Sum, Average, Count and Min/Max.

That’s it, run your application and summaries will be calculated automatically!

Custom UI Controls

Introducing Custom UI Controls in Flowfactory, now you can easily create your own visual components to enhance your applications user experience and take advantage of tailor made controls that fit your business case.

Custom UI Controls are created and bound to your Flowfactory models using HTML and Javascript-templates. Your controls are rendered live in your test application and you can immediately see your changes and create those final details without having to reload your application.

Once created you can reuse your Custom UI Controls in different views and even in different applications.

Build Custom UI Controls in Studio

1. Create your Custom UI Control using HTML. In this example we use a UI Library DevExpress to implement a Map Control.

HTML and DevExpress template

2. Bind data from an Entity to the UI Control. In this case we bind the street-field from our contact Entity'

Simple binding to your models

3. That’s it, we now have a complete Map Control, created in minutes.

Click here to see a video-demo on how to create Custom UI Controls

Release date: November 30, 2021

Quick Start

Getting started with your first Low Code application has never been easier. We have now introduced different developer levels to the application. Our low code development environment now adapts to your experience level and highlights and hides functionality depending on your selected level.

Selecting Beginner gives you a scaled down UI with focus on gettings started with the core concepts

Selecting Expert opens up for more advanced functionality

Microservices

With the Flowfactory platform you can center your development approach around APIs, opening up for a Microservices architecture. Create a smaller set of independant Flowfactory services or break down a existing application into a set of microservices.

In Flowfactory GO there is now a Microservice project type that you can use as a starting point for your services.

With this project type you get a studio that is tailored for supporting a Microservice architecture. Functions and UI is focused on integrations, contract modelling and business logic making the step to using microservices even simpler.

Workflow Builder improvements

The workflow builder is the tool where you build your business logic.

We have made some big improvements in this area giving developers a more efficient work environment

Configuration of activities and activity branches are now shown as a sidebar in the workflow builder. This gives the developer a better overview of the workflow and reduces number of clicks and loading times.

Quick access to help sections for all workflow activities are now accessible directly from the studio.

More detailed descriptions of activities. For each activity in your workflow you can know more clearly see the type and relevant information for this activity.

Simplified Application links

When publishing test instances and customer applications the application is assigned a unique id. Before this release this id has been part of your applications link but we have now added the option to set a unique sub domain name for your application instance.

This means that your application links will be easier to remember, share and access from other systems and services.

To set a sub domain name you open the instance details and add the name for your application.

With the example above the user can now access the application from: https://microtest.app.flowfactory.com/

Release date: September 1, 2021

In this new version of the platform you'll find functionality which turns integration into a seamless experience that will eliminate significant amount of time and financial investment.

The launch also includes new functionality to simplify user registration as well as several features that make the process of user-centric creation easier and smoother.

Integrations

We know that no app is an island and that integration is key to your success. But we also know integration work is what can absorb the lion's share of your energy and resources.

In Flowfactory we have created functionality that makes it possible to easily create and consume APIs,

The new functions open up for a new and very efficient way to build applications within an organization. Now you can build applications that implement one or more business processes in the organization and then, by creating an API, you can share that functionality within the whole organisation.

This also opens up for the possibility to extend your applications with functionalities that are available in the cloud. This means you don’t have to build everything by yourself,instead you can use the great services provided by SaaS providers.

No more data islands and duplication of logic. Everything you build is possible to share and consume in just a few clicks - not months!

REST Publish

The REST Publish functionality gives you the power to let other applications benefit from the functionality you have developed. You have full control over how the API you publish should look and you decide if you want to publish parts of the data model to other applications, or if you want to publish functionality that can be used from the connecting applications.

REST Consume

The REST Consume functionality makes it easy to connect a Flowfactory application to external APIs. This makes it very easy for you to extend your application with functionality that is provided by applications in the organization or by external applications. For example you can add functionality for document signing, business information retrieval, issue tracking, positioning and route planning.

OpenAPI (Swagger) Publish

To make it even easier to integrate with a Flowfactory application, we have added the possibility to create OpenAPI definitions from the REST API that you have built. This makes it super easy for external applications to build connections to Flowfactory applications.

OpenAPI (Swagger) Consume

Even if it is very easy to build an integration to another application by configuring it in Flowfactory Studio it is even easier when the application provides an OpenAPI definition. You just upload the OpenAPI document in Flowfactory Studio and the basis for the integration is done for you automatically.

GO User registration portal

To make it easy to onboard users to your applications we have added the possibility to create a user registration portal for the application.

You can customize it by setting the logo, texts and the condition link.

The user is verified by email confirmation.

Language support for Swedish and English.

Release date: May 11, 2021

GO redesign

We have redesigned GO to make it easier to create new applications and handle invitations of developers and application users and also to make it more pleasant to look at.

Live updates of views

Now you don’t even have to reopen the webview to see the result of your changes in Studio. The view is updated automatically directly when you save your changes in Studio.

Just like that!

Extended workflow debugger data viewer

We have improved the debugger so that you see more data for the current step in the workflow debugger.

This gives you a better understanding of how the workflow behaves and makes it easier to track down configuration mistakes.

Entity hub

To give you a better understanding of how an entity is used in an application we have redesigned the Entity view. The new Entity hub gives you an overview of the entity and the connected workflows, views, events and UI settings.

Query runner

Often you want to know right away what data is returned from a query to make sure that you have built it the right way. That’s why we have added the Query runner to Studio. In the Query runner you can take a query from a workflow or build a query from scratch and run it to see the result right away and then adjust it until it works as you intended.

CSS builder

To make it easier to test different CSS adjustments we have moved the CSS builder to Studio. This lets you test your CSS changes in an isolated environment before you deploy it together with the update application to the users of the application. It is also possible to switch between CCS templates.

UI Validations

Now you can let the user get direct feedback in the UI when there is missing data in a view. You set the properties in the model as required in Studio and then the platform makes sure that the user gets the right info regarding what’s required in the UI.

Release date: March 8, 2021

Workflow branch shortcuts

To speed up the workflow building process we have introduced workflow branch shortcuts. The shortcuts removes several manual steps when adding new workflow steps in a workflow by showing branch criteria alternatives to the user. When the user drops a workflow step on one of the branch criteria alternatives the criteria and the name of the branch is prefilled on the newly added branch.

Studio Test session dashboard

To make it easier to understand how an application works we have added the Test session dashboard. The dashboard lets the developer see what happens under the hood of the application when running the web client. The views that are opened and the workflows that are run during a test session are listed on the Test session dashboard. To open the view or workflow you just double click the row in the list. The dashboard also shows statistics for number of invocations of the workflows. This makes it easy to locate where to focus when doing performance improvement fixes.

Live updates of workflows and views

Another feature we have added that will improve productivity a lot are live updates of workflows and views. Live updates mean that when running the web client in a test session you can change a workflow or a view in Studio and the next time you run the workflow or open the view the changes are applied directly without the need of starting a new test session. This dramatically reduces the time needed to do adjustments to an application since you can see the result directly.

Workflow debugger

Having full control of how the application logic works when the application runs is essential when building high quality applications. That’s why we have added a debugger where you can set breakpoints in Studio and step through the workflows and inspect the data that is used in the workflows. This gives you insights on how you application behaves and makes it much easier to find bugs.

Release date: january 9, 2021

Enchanced Studio configurator flexibility

The configurator now have more freedom when modifying an existing application in Studio.

Create entity from Excel file in Studio

You can now quickstart your application development by creating an entity with views for listing and editing the entity by uploading an Excel file. Workflows for add, edit and delete for the entity are also created. This functions removes all the manual work to create the entity, views and workflows. You can of course adjust the created entity, views and workflows if needed.

Web client performance improvement

The performance in the web client is increased for applications that persist a lot of data or persist very often.

Other fixes

• Fixed a bug where lists in Studio got out of sync.

• Added support for Gantt control when coding custom controls.

• Fixed a bug that made the wait spinner to disappear.

Release date: 9 november 2020

Custom UI controls

We have added support for custom UI controls. This makes it possible to create UI controls that are not available as a standard UI controls in the platform.

Examples of type of controls that can be added are, Gantt chart, Pie chart and Scheduler.

Studio springboard functionality

It is now possible to create list view, edit view and workflows for add, edit and delete for an entity by using the new springboard function. This functions removes all the manual work to create the views and workflows. You can of course adjust the created views and workflows if you want to.

Create import definitions from Excel

To create a new import definition you can upload an Excel file and the import columns will created from the columns in the Excel file with correct data types.

Other fixes

• Simplified handling when adding custom activities.

• Quick test session startup.

• Report designer stability.

• Possibility to run a workflow on column click in a grid.

• Static parameters in workflows.

• Studio cache bug fixes.

Release date: 21 september 2020

Cache fix in Flowfactory Studio

Multiple cache issues in Studio has been resolved. These include views not showing all entity properties before entity has been opened in entity designer and added properties not being present in workflow and view designer.

Other fixes

• Start view in Studio no longer throws error when opening.

• Dialogs with root entity having Id property with type other than Guid threw error upon closing.

• Miscellaneous layout fixes in Studio.

• Rotation of images were sometimes incorrect when taken in IOS 14.

• Report designer fixes in Studio.

Release date: 29 june 2020

Major update to Studio UI

For this release we have focused on the Flowfactory Studio and updating its visual appearance. We have updated all UI components used in the Studio and also underlying components to make it run more smoothly and stable. Most of the UI has been updated and several productivity features has been added.

This update also opens up for many more coming features in Studio which will speed up the development process even further.

Search buttons move to the side of the interface for easier access.

Possible to move tabs to another screen and detach/group them from Studio GUI.

Upgraded view editor with added possibilites to edit via tree view

Model diagram view for entities.

Font based icons

You can now used font based icons for buttons and commands in the web client. Supported frameworks are Fontawesome 5 free icons and DevExpress.

The icons scale really well on all devices since they are vector based and not pixel based and it also makes it possible to change the color of all icons with a single CSS rule.

Icon is defined in Flowfactory Studio:

Visit these sites to check out the icons:

Font awesome >>

DevExpress >>

Other fixes

• Major updates under the hood for great future features!

• Standard Windows Fonts where added to Docker images so PDF-reports work as expected.

• Ribbon bar in web client would in some cases display small buttons as small. Small buttons are aligned correctly when containing less than 2 in one column.

• Performance upgrade for workflow editor in studio.

• Fixed bug where server restarts was needed when uploading custom code.

• Fixed bug where entity model was cached on server.

Release Date: 27 Mar 2020

Improved performance in grids

We have improved the performance for views that contain grids displaying collections that are connected to the view entity.

Faster startup of test instance

We have reduced the startup time of test instances with roughly 20 seconds. This is an ongoing work and we are working on further reducing this delay.

Fixes

• DevExtreme UI components updated to the latest version.

• View layouts where incorrectly reinitialized during execution which reduced.

• Theme generation failed in GO.

• When clicking an already selected row it didn’t activate command bar buttons that where dependent on that data type.

• Coloring of rows where broken in some cases.

• You would get a certificate error message when launching test session from Studio.

Release date: 25 Feb 2020

Dockerized hosting solution

We have changed the underlying technology of the platform to run all web clients in isolated docker containers. This not only gives us increased security, by ensuring that each application is isolated from other apps running in the Flowfactory cloud, but also makes it possible to scale up and out individual applications that require more resources. This change will allow us to have a truly scalable and elastic cloud hosting solution for Flowfactory applications.

Property tooltips

This feature is a great addition for adding informative tooltips to your applications. When you define a tooltip in your entity model, that tooltip is automatically displayed in your application wherever you add input fields for it.

Studio updates

In this release there are several Flowfactory Studio updates. One of the major things is an update of the Report Designer to make it more responsive and intuitive. With the Report Designer you can add powerful search pages to your applications to present aggregated views of your data.

Fixes

• Layout fix for issues with vertical layout heights.

• Minor theme updates.

Release Date: 11 Dec 2019

Upgrade to Angular 8

We have now moved the web client to use Angular 8 as client side library. With this move we open up more possibilities for us to further optimize the web client for more responsiveness and better performance.

Don’t cache custom theme files

Virtual entities opens up use cases where you can handle data that is not persisted to storage. When you retrieve data from an external source or assemble data from several different entities in your application it can be presented as one single entity. This will be of great advantage for many different application types.

Get login prompt when you click invite link for application

By using a single application definition you can publish it as separate instances that can use their own local settings for display of texts and numeric formats.

Fixes

• Import from Excel file skipped the first row during read.

• Controls bound to entity child property where incorrectly updated.

• Ribbon buttons had an extra background color.

• Large ribbon buttons in web client where blurry for platform commands (such as save).

• Checkbox control displayed as toggle where incorrectly aligned.

Release Date: 22 Oct 2019

Style grid rows using CSS

You can now control the display of table rows using CSS instead of only setting background color. This gives you way more possibilities to control the look of table rows. You change the display of text, row height and many other ways to really make data stand out.

Updated look and feel in web client

We have changed how the ribbon control looks to make it more concise and also made the web client respect your generated app branding theme more. You now no longer need to apply any custom CSS to make the application fully adhere to the accent color selected in GO.

Syntax highlighting for theme changes in GO

We have added syntax highlighting for JSON and also autocomplete for CSS in GO to make it much easier to customize your application.

Updated standard platform activities for import/export

Activities for import and export of data to and from Excel files has been simplified to make them easier to use in workflows.

Performance enhancements for views containing images and binary data

Initial load of views containing entities with images and binary data is now much faster due to optimizations done during initial data loading.

Fixes

• Some of the bug fixes that is in this release are

• Row colors where not applied to grid rows in some cases.

• In some cases all of your applications didn’t show up under My applications in GO.

• Columns chooser moved items to the wrong index.

Release Date: 12 Sep 2019

Application branding

By using the built in theme builder you can customize your application to create a unique experience. You can change the design of the login screen and the application itself and also the behavior of mobile apps added to the home screen through the manifest.json file for a more native-like experience.

Virtual entities

Virtual entities opens up use cases where you can handle data that is not persisted to storage. When you retrieve data from an external source or assemble data from several different entities in your application it can be presented as one single entity. This will be of great advantage for many different application types.

Local selection for application instance

By using a single application definition you can publish it as separate instances that can use their own local settings for display of texts and numeric formats.

Optimizations

We are continuously working on performance optimization. In this release we have reduced loading time for the most complex views up to 60 times.

Low code developer technical documentation

We are continuously working on improving the overall experience for our low-code developers. Our library now covers support material, technical documentation and best practice examples for the entire process – setting up, creating, publishing and upgrading applications.

Release Date: 22 May 2019

Multi language support

You now have the ability to localize your application to have a broader reach for a single application. In the designer you add languages that your application will support and you can then add terms that can be translated for each language. These terms can then be used for display of labels, translation in workflow activities or even translation in custom code.

Each application instance can be associated with a language and the language selected not only specifies what translations that should be used but also controls number formatting etc. so that you have full control over the display of your application.

Radio button list control

Use this control to make selection from shorter lists easier on especially mobile devices. Each item in the list is displayed as a radio button which allows a single selection. This is a great addition to the drop down control and decreases the number of clicks required in your application.

Data grid enhancements

We have added additional features to the data grid control that give you more control over the appearance and behavior.

You can now toggle responsive mode for the grid which automatically hides columns if the screen size is small. By setting hiding priority on the columns you can control in what order the columns are hidden.

Furthermore, you can now enable or disable paging in the grid and also set the page size, how many rows are displayed on each page in the grid.

You can now also select a single click workflow in addition to the double click and row selection that we had previously.

Finally we have added settings that control the appearance of the grid. You can toggle display of column lines, row lines, grid border and row alternation color.

Simple view for drop down

For shorter lists or lists that only contains a single column it might be overkill to use the full-fledged lookup control with row filtering and multiple column support. You can now toggle simple mode for the control that makes it display a more simple ordinary drop down.

List enhancements

You can now apply alternate filtering for lists in your entity property definition which adds flexibility to the list handling.

Image control enhancements

You can now select to limit image size and specify maximum size of the image, width and/or height. This will scale the image on the client, before it is sent to the server, which decreases network traffic and can increase performance of your app.

Fixes

• You can now directly add items to system definition lists after they are created.

   

• System definition list items wasn’t correctly propagated from template database to main database.

   

• Expand button for grids wasn’t shown in some cases.

   

• Cancel button was missing in legacy version of file upload dialog.

   

• Group header wasn’t rendered correctly for newly added rows.

   

• Save grid settings didn’t save column width.

Release Date: 16 Apr 2019

New file upload control

A new version of the file upload control has been released that simplifies uploading and handling of files in workflows. Simply add a property of type binary data to your entity and add a Upload file activity to a workflow and you can store the file inside your entity by accessing the output parameter File data.

New file download control

We are also releasing a new file download control that makes it easy to send files from your application to the client. Pass the activity desired filename and binary data containing the file contents and the file is downloaded the client.

Permissions for editing in grid

Permissions in Flow factory makes it easy to define global rules that limit what data can be edited by who. This functionality has now been extended to also include editing in grids so that these rules are also enforced for inline editing.

Storing data in User system module

You now have the possibility to save changes to User system module. This data module has a mirrored structure of the system database and can be used to store application settings that can be used during run time, such as customized export or import definitions or view settings.

Loading data from other data modules

Support has been added to load data from other data modules besides the main data module. This way you can present information from user system, system or even platform modules in your application.

Formatting dates in labels

You can now specify format for dates in labels. This way you can exactly control how dates are shown.

Fixes

• Grid command bar and ribbon buttons didn’t behave the same way in all instances. Their behavior has now been harmonized so that they work the same way in all scenarios.

• Data-database structure is now properly upgraded when updating published instances of applications.

• Grid state persistence didn’t properly save all settings, these has now been fixed.

• An error occurred while trying to add a column of type binary data.

• Calculated values are now properly cached when specified to do so, this can greatly increase application performance in certain scenarios.

Release Date: 14 Mar 2019

Hide grid columns based on criteria

You can now define criteria on grid columns that will automatically hide or show them depending on other data on your screen or the user.

Themed login screen

We spiced up the login screen with a background image and some more colors!

Tooltip enhancements

We have enhanced how the tooltips work, they now don’t disappear automatically after timeout and are only shown if the tooltip workflow returns a text for the tooltip.

Web client stability

We have fixed many issues in the web client to increase stability and making sure features work as expected.

Release Date: 19 Feb 2019

Automatic restore of saved grid settings

You have the ability to save layout settings for grids that you have customized; columns that are hidden and the order that they are shown in. Now these settings are automatically restored if you have previously saved them.

New design on login screen

The login screen has gotten a new design and now displays name of the application as well as what version you are running.

CSS class on controls

To allow easier customization of apps you can now specify CSS class that is applied to controls at runtime. You can change all kinds of things from changing color of specific buttons to completely changing the way a certain grid looks.

Theme customization

To allow easier customizations of your app we have introduced an easier way to customize existing themes while minimizing required effort after version upgrade of the web client.

Checkbox as toggle button

Checkboxes can now be displayed as toggle buttons instead of ordinary checkboxes. They will look like buttons that are pressed when it is checked.

Performance optimizations

We have further optimized the performance of the web client both on the server and on the client side. Decreased memory footprint and increased stability on the server side and reduced data handling on the client.

Release Date: 18 Jan 2019

Grid row styling

Grid row styling allows you to define business rules for coloring grid rows based on values in the entities. For example, you can define that all overdue invoices should have a red background color and it will be shown like this at all places in your application.

Hide and show controls and buttons based on data

You can easily define criteria on controls as well as buttons that will automatically hide or show them, as well as disable or enable them, based on data in your screen.

Grid row filtering

Grids can have criteria specified that automatically hides rows that are not relevant for the screen.

Replacement of authentication module

When running Flowfactory on premise you now have the ability to completely switch out the authentication module to integrate the platform with your own authentication mechanism.

Performance optimizations

We have further optimized the performance by reducing data that is passed from the server to the client as well as optimizing loading of data on the server.

Release Date: 19 Dec 2018

File upload and download

Support for file upload and download has been added which makes it easy to add uploading of files in your application. Using the existing platform support for reading and writing Excel files you can easily create import and export functionality for data.

Globalization support

The web client will use whatever culture you have defined in your web browser for correct display of dates, numbers etc. This will be automatically applied without requiring any special effort from the developer.

Enabled and visible criteria

Controls can be dynamically enabled/disabled and shown/hidden by specifying criteria for the controls.

Performance enhancements

Performance has been greatly increased by adding internal caching of views.

Release Date: 28 Aug 2018

Dynamic UI

The UI is now dynamically updated when fields are changed to reflect changes that has occurred on the server side. This opens up support for property events in the web client.

Inline editing in grid

You can now edit fields directly in the grid. Support has been added for text, numeric, boolean and date fields.

Performance enhancements

Performance of Search Report control was greatly increased by reducing the amount of data read from the database.

Tooltip

Tooltips can be added to grid rows where the tooltip text is calculated server side inside a workflow. This allows for very complex tooltip scenarios where you easily can create tooltips that can be created from very complex logic.

SignalR stability improvements

The SignalR connection will now show current connection status and reconnect whenever the connections has been interrupted.