Since the earliest days, AgilePoint has always been known as the platform that can tackle the most demanding, cross-functional automation use cases. However, we like to think that AgilePoint really came into its own during v7, and especially v8 timeframe. It was now a complete offering, the full package that allowed our customers to build cross-functional automations at massive scale – thousands of apps, thousands of steps in a process, and a whole host of forms to go along with that.
Along the way, the development paradigm changed – teams grew larger, and before we knew it, many different developer personas had joined the fray. To ensure the integrity of the app and to avoid introducing breaking changes, the platform would lock the entire app if a single app designer was making changes. While this was a great safeguard, this could also be a hindrance, especially for the most complex of solutions. With the advent of AgilePoint v9, I am pleased to announce that this is no longer the case!
What’s the Deal with Collaborative App Development?
Well, as you might have gleaned, it helps overcome a critical hurdle faced by larger teams that sought to work on different parts of the application in parallel, and promises to further reduce the time to value for your next application by collaborating with your colleagues in real time!
But what if I don’t want to turn this on just yet?
Fear not! Like everything else in the platform, it is up to you, dear customer, to determine the platform features that are exposed to your users. For this, we’re bringing the flexibility to turn this feature on or off, both globally and on a per application basis. Whew!
Awesome! This sounds great, but I need more details!
Like anything else in life, there are rules and fine print we need to follow, and we’ll lay out the big pieces down below.
If a Process is locked for editing by one user, we’re blocking the following features for the secondary app designer:
- Changing the process data model
- Edit of its library
- Creating/Editing Data Sources
If an eForm is locked for editing, we’re turning off
- Adding new controls
- Promoting a control to the Library
- Mapping of a data source
- Edit DataGrid/ListView configuration
See? Just a few things to make sure you don’t rip any hair out. Some of us would rather keep the little we have left!
Now let’s look at this feature in action in a short video
Note: Please note that this video is recorded while this feature is in beta version. Some of the labels and icons might change by the time it goes GA but the general concept of configuring these activities would remain the same.