Hi there AppWorks fans,
Welcome to a new installment of AppWorks tips.
Today we celebrate our second anniversary! 🍰 🎁 🎂 🎈 Remember that first post!?
The 17th of May 2021 is next Monday, so there you have it!
Let’s do a recap of what we did this year and tell you some facts about the future and what will be in the pipeline.
Let get right into it…
…with a real big thank you! for all the people that kept me motivated on creating and pushing all those blog topics about AppWorks. Planning and consistently executing on it for sure brings a bunch of valuable information and direct contacts…You know who you are!
These are the kinds of people I want to give thanks’ to:
- My valuable subscribers that contacted me via the subscribe form. You’re all on the list of the monthly newsletter where you get an overview of last month posts! Don’t forget to add the
appworks-tips.comdomain to your receiving white-list, so the most important monthly update isn’t dropped off in your spam-folder. - A long time following of much appreciated people on YouTube (like ‘John Somnez’ from Bulldog Mindset and Simple Programmer as well as ‘Aaron Marino’ from alpha m.) They made me change my life (although they probably don’t know it!).
- People from OpenText that provided support on questions I posted on the form, but also the demos that were giving during the online events.
- People from Amplexor that let me work on big AppWorks projects.
Why did I start this blog?
Just to keep me reminded! This section was already described in the 1-year celebration, but let’s see if it’s still valid…
A simple and easy question for me as it all started around May 17th when ‘AppWorks’ crossed my path of knowledge within my career as a technical consultant. A great demo was given during an event and with relation to the old products I worked with at that moment I was ‘damned’ by the UI, the way of working, the flexibility, and the possibilities of this low-code platform…Was it love? I don’t know, but it was well worth the time spending on it the 2 years and for the next couple of years. AppWorks is in a growing product, and I’m glad I jumped on that train since last year and will continue to do so!
There are even more ‘because’ reasons…Because…
- …very less information (and that’s still the case!) is available in the public
- …people still ask me where to start with the product
- …I want to be “the best” with the product, and you only will be the best when you’re curious on functionalities and ask question to all the people around you
- …knowledge sharing and helping others is the best thing you can ever do in your career! It brings unimaginable fulfillment to your daily work
- …I was very curious what this blog would bring me…And “hell yeah!” does it bring me value!
- …connection with new people…So people know who you are and what you are capable of! 😀
Recap from last year…
Let’s do a recap on what we did this last year with the blog page. I want to divide this section in 2 parts to describe:
Highlights
OpenText wanted to go to quarterly releases, so in 1 year we saw indeed 4 releases passing by (20.3, 20.4, 21.1 and 21.2). They all had their own released features, and we tried them all out in update posts around the new release. The installation menu is steadily updated with each release, so you are always able to create a new ‘developer’ edition for our beloved platform.
…
Latest communication from OpenText: ‘Grow’ your business with the latest Cloud Edition releases
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Since last anniversary we published some great ‘advanced’ development features like these topics for you to consume:
- Consuming JSON data via ReST…A question I see in almost every project…How can we consume JSON data via ReST calls over HTTP? It’s a hot topic in the current web applications these days, but as the AppWorks platform in XML based with services based on SOAP it can be a struggle to make it all happen for your project. It’s possible and this post shows how to start with it.
- Development of an EIS connector…If you have an external system in your organization, and you want to ‘embed’ it directly into the entity modeling screens of your solution; The EIS connector is your way to go…Read all about it in this post and give your EIS connector a head start.
- Customizing a result list panel…An entity has a ‘List’ BB which can be used in a layout. If you want to extend the functionality of the list, it’s possible to customize it with your own features. You need to create your own JavaScript with a set of default methods to consume from. How to start and pass parameter values into your scripting is described in this blogpost.
We also published great installation posts:
- Docker installation guide…The platform installation software is delivered with docker-compose files, so you are able to build your own docker images. This post will also generate the docker containers, so you have a containerized environment up and running. Another advantage…Containerization is the future and matches with the ‘Cloud Edition’ and ‘Grow your business’ vision of OpenText. This post is also your head start to that next step…pushing images to a container registry and use Kubernetes (with HELM Charts) to build new clustered containers that can easily be scaled.
- Making iHub available for the platform…This post makes an iHub server available which is required when you want to bring the reporting features for your solution to a next level.
- Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD)…Also, a hot topic! In every project I hear this call…”We want CI/CD”, so we can go faster to production! Sure you can, but you’ll still need to build that a ‘Pipeline’ which facilitates that speed…Trust me, building pipelines is a side project you want to start directly with your solution implementation so every small piece of change can be integrated and deployed automagically. This set of posts brings you up to speed with building a pipeline with Jenkins specifically for the AppWorks platform.
- Language pack deployment…Each end-user loves to use a web application in their own native language. All the mystery behind a language pack is discovered in this post.
To finalize the highlights part, we also had the OpenText enterprise world events (digital and for free). One for the ‘whole world’ and one only for Europe. Both got great reporting blogposts where all the latest information is shared with images and new thoughts on products. I received much appreciation on these types of posts, so I will continue to spread this kind of information out to the world during these events.
Promises turned into actions
The monthly newsletter is up and running and all my beloved subscribers are informed with a monthly informative mail with a recap of the last month. For me, a closure of the month and for you a beer-time moment to get yourself up-to-date with AppWorks related topics. The newsletter is sent to all the subscribers of my blog page. The number is increasing every month and if you are not already member of the community, it’s time to do so here. Another promise (for myself) is to link related blog post in the forum posts of OpenText. My intention was to do this also on a monthly recursion, but I see this is not happening at the moment. I know for sure it’s important to get more traction for a blog page when there is an interactive participation in these kinds of forums. Not only with related links, but also asking questions and answer the questions from other AppWorks lovers. There was a promise last year for an option to send in questions! Well, it’s indirectly available via the feedback option on the site but let me see how we can update this feature to send more of a ‘question’. What you also can do is just post a comment (anonymously) with a question on the end of each post. These comments are monitored and get an answer where required. Also, the already mentioned OpenText forum is a good place to ask your question to the best of all experts on the product. I also asked questions here and almost each question gets a reaction with a satisfied answer.
Google Analytics
Like last year we’ll dive into the connected Google Analytics and provide you some inside knowledge about the interesting numbers on this blog site. It’s data created by my followers, so I’m glad to share the information with you all (you have the right to see it)! 💪
Audience
Let’s start with the user counts…Hooley crap!?!? Compared with last year I see an increase of 513%!!
Well, 7.251 new users found the blogsite over 1182 for the year before…Hell yeah!! I see also an increase in pages views in the weekends…you’re simply the best!
Almost 27.000-page views (last year this was 6000!). GREAT!!
Where are all those people coming from?
Well, the top 3 looks as expected…
And the browser they use?
The OS?
Acquisition
How did the users get on my site?
Behavior
The top 10 pages that are visited?
Still interesting here are the OTDS and Documentum posts in the list…Let’s see if we can post more on these topics too when we bind them all together with AppWorks…It’s on the backlog, but not an easy task!
The page loading time?
Looks great….with sometimes a small peak, but it’s OK!
Well, I think we will face a bright future with lots of information to share around the AppWorks platform! 😜
The future
What will the future bring to this blog? Well, there will still be a weekly post about an AppWorks related topic. Also feel free to send me feedback about topics you would like to see published on this side! They get high priority if they bring valuable information for other people too.
We’ll keep on grinding on all the already started ‘promises’ since last year, but there is more to improve, and these are topics What else will be available in the future…
Selling items like courses, booklets, tooling, coaching.
Our list of subscribers is long enough! Time to start selling some basic and logic items via an online store. Only valuable items that will bring you to a next level can be purchased. To give you a hint: 10 steps on…
Forum posts
As already mentioned…It’s on my radar and not to forget to give it a DONE for next review!
Send in questions
I already told you about the OpenText forum to ask question to the OT experts, but feel free to add a comment with a question on the end of each blog post. Let me see how to update the ‘Feedback’ button, so you can also ask a question from this site.
Community
Like last year I already see we’re starting to build a small community where we can share information with each other and learn from the knowledge we gain in the world of AppWorks. It’s a topic I think about a lot, but don’t know yet how to bring this to a next step. If you have any thoughts or want to help to start up such an initiative let me know…Just ask…I won’t bite! 😉 I’m also open for any online session where AppWorks related information is shared!
I hear a lot about these kinds of world-wide initiatives, but I never used these services and don’t know if it can bring any value to you, again…let me know!?:
- Patreon page, so we can add more value for those die-hard fans
- Discord server, so we can communicate with each other world-wide on a technical level
Backlog topics (preview) for new posts
As you all know, I have a backlog list of topics to post about. For this I use a Kanban board to keep track of things…Let’s see what’s on it for this year:
- Brava! viewer deep dive
- Play around with the ‘Northwind’ database example data
- Exploring the HTML5SDK for a web content panel (show video files and google charts in AppWorks!)
- Install Documentum 21.2 (The ultimate 2.0 edition with all lessons learned)
- Hopefully!!…AppWorks, Documentum and OTDS all together (glued with ‘oAuth’ authentication)!
- Maybe!?…An OpenText Content Server installation
- BPM stuff…Like ‘Business Identifiers’, delays, timers, events, and messages
Ohhh mama….It will be great again!!! 😍😍😍
Quote for this year
“Continue the weekly blogpost commitment and bring more value to the growing subscribers list with the first selling items”!
That’s a ‘DONE’ for our second year! We’ll keep up the grinding work for the next coming years to spread all the information I see in my surroundings about AppWorks. You also see that I have things on the backlog for the future so keep it focused here so we can have a third anniversary in the next year 2022.
Don’t forget to subscribe to get updates on the activities happening on this site. Have you noticed the quiz where you find out if you are also “The AppWorks guy”?
