Sprint 29 Review: Integrate Form Editor in NEO

Alexander Suter

Demos

NEO Designer: Process Animation @Lukas Lieb
NEO Designer: Form Editor @Louis Müller
NEO Designer: Workspace (Prototype) @Christian Strebel
Migration Wizard @Alexander Suter
Variables Editor @Lukas Giger @Reto Weiss

Nice summary of the sprint by @Alexander Suter

NEO
NEO aka NOCO (NO COde Designer) now integrates the Form Editor. The look and feel paired with the power of the Ivy Process Engine will change the landscape of process orchestration platforms.
🧙@Lukas Lieb 🏄@Louis Müller 👷@Christian Strebel

Variables Editor
It still has to be a bit LOCO (LOw COde Designer). Defining variables directly in variables.yaml is a thing of the past. The Variables Editor is even better than ever.
👨@Lukas Giger ⛹@Reto Weiss

Z
Last resort Z! Only 🚴@Bruno Bütler is older than Z. Z is a highly flexible layer deep in the Axon Ivy Engine. Only a few ivyTeamers know the power of this layer and can exploit it. We are in the final stages of eliminating this layer completely. This will give us a lot more power to develop new features in the Process Engine in the future.
🏊@Reguël Wermelinger

Migration Wizard
Furthermore, we have once again improved the Engine Migration Wizard so that you can migrate to the new versions as quickly as possible to use NOCO.
🤾@Alexander Suter

NEO, NOCO, LOCO?
NOCO like the drink? Or LOCO like the singer? Yes, what now? Should "the new" tool really be called NEO? When we launch a new tool, we should have a vision and a well-considered name for it. At the moment, everything is branded with NEO, changing the name at the last minute will be a pain in the ass and will haunt us for a long time. Think about it.

Keep on and stay tuned.
@Alexander Suter

Lukas Lieb

1 - NEO Designer: Process Animation

Start processes in the Neo Designer 🚋

Audience

Process Developers
Pre-sales
Jasmine Nielsen

Value

🌐 Integrated web browser with dev-workflow-ui
- With nav bar (back, forward, refresh, home, open in new tab)
⏯ Start process action for start elements
- Will open integrated web browser with process
🌠 Animate process, with:
- Open closed processes
- Settings for speed and disable animation

Other improvements:

🗑 Delete / Create processes
🖥 Open HD processes
❌ Close all editors menu

Discussion

Next steps

The animation modes are still missing (only animate: open editors, don't jump into HD's, etc...)
Currently, the open editor will not wait until it is opened, so if this takes some time you may see a wrong animation

Screenshots / Code

Web Browser

Animate process

Close all editor tabs

Louis Müller

2 - NEO Designer: Form Editor

Enables Low Coder to model user dialogs using the Form Editor prototype

Audience

Low coders

Value

List all available forms of the current workspace
Form Editor integration
Delete / Create forms
Creation of forms (and processes) via Inscription view
Automatically build and deploy the project when its forms or processes are changed. This allows you to smoothly develop and simulate your process models.

Next steps

Extend Form Editor with data browser

Screenshots / Code

Christian Strebel

3 - NEO Designer: Workspace (Prototype)

First prototype how to handle Login and different Workspaces in NEO Designer.

Audience

NEO's, LOCO's, NOCO's, All

Value

Login with the users of the normal security system
Multiple 'workspaces' possible

Discussion

Is a workspace per user or per organization (security system), or even both possible?
Self service user creation feature needed?
Should developer users have a special permission or is it defined per organization (security system)?
What should be the final name of the NEO Designer?

Next steps

Public Neo Demo (for internal testing)
Guided Welcome page
Create with template
Export / Import (app.zip, iar's)
Workspace definition file (Which projects, Libraries, e.g. who can see it, who can edit it, who is the owner)
Discuss / Solve: Hand over between low and professional coder?

Screenshots

Alexander Suter

4 - Migration Wizard

Project conversion
After migration. Projects needs to be migrated to the latest version. This was done on Axon Ivy Engine startup automatically. Causes long first startups and may fail unnecessary for projects which are outdated and not needed anymore anyway at runtime. There is now a button in the Engine Cockpit to convert them manually after migration. So you can decide on your own which projects needs to stay alive. As long as they are outdated, they won't be started.

See Video

Active environment
Furthermore, the configuration of the ActiveEnvironment will be merged into the active configuration. In the project conversion (only when converting in the engine cockpit) and for the app.yaml files during the migration with the Migration Wizard.

IWA_Application.FileDirectory
We also dropped the legacy IWA_Application.FileDirectory. Prior to Axon Ivy 8.0 you was able to specificy the path of the application in the Admin UI when creating such an app. Since Axon Ivy 8.0 this is no longer possible in the Engine Cockpit and all created applications are under Data.AppDirectory. If you migrate from older versions IWA_Application.FileDirectory was still in charge and will be moved during migration to the correct place.

Running Engine Check
We added one more up-front check when starting the migration. We detect if the old Axon Ivy Engine is still running. If this is the case, it's not possible to migrate.

Doc
The migration instructions has been revised and heavily simplified, because the Migration Wizard is doing the work for you now. See: https://dev.axonivy.com/doc/11.4/axonivy/migration/index.html

Audience

Engine Operators

Value

Smoother migrations

Discussion

Feedback

Next steps

Question: How important is it for you to see all changes made in the configuration directory?
XIVY-14063 Show diff of configuration after migration

Reto Weiss

5 - Variables Editor

Improved Variables Editor that can now encrypt/decrypt passwords

Audience

Process Developers, Low Coder

Value

Encrypt/Decrypt passwords
Add validation for special characters
UI improvements
Project Migration for variables with '.' in keys

Discussion

Next steps

Show variables that can be overwritten
UI Improvements
External file editing

Screenshots / Code

Christian Strebel

Noteworthy

Move jvm-module.options to bin folder and make jvm.options in configuration/jvm.options optional @Alexander Suter
Remove old HTML Dialog Editor (WYSIWYG part) @Alexander Suter
- Designer is now 35 MB smaller, because we could remove the JavaFx library
- The Icon Browser was also removed because it was also based on JavaFX. Should we put it back?