Manage Applications on the Platform

At WorkXpress, we have focused all of our energy on making web-based business application development easy. In particular the software development lifecycle of Build, Test, Production, and managing the changes made from build to build can pose a challenge to develop teams. We don't feel it should have to be a challenge, so we've engineered our Applications tab to assist with this process.

Here's an example of the Applications tab for a builder with a lot of applications in various stages:

There are three major areas of the Applications Tab:

  1. Create an Application
  2. Application List
  3. Application Details

Create an Application

Click on the “Create an Application” button to launch a page that allows a new, empty application to be built. You want to start here whenever you begin a new Application!

You will need to enter a name, select a cloud to host on, and agree to the terms of service.

Application List

The Application List will show you all of the applications you have access to. Click on an application to update the Application Details area with the details of that application.

Note that what your account surpasses 5 applications there are controls at the bottom of the Application List to navigate through pages of applications.

Application Details

The Application Details area in the center is where most of your work will be done on this application. Notice that in the case of the “System and Network Monitoring” application, there is only an installation in Build, or Development mode. Note that it's been released 4 times, and if a new build was released it would be version 5.

I can click on the large red blocks area in the center to launch the application. This will bring up a popup, load the application, and log me into it. Here I can use the build tools to add, update and remove blocks; updating my application.

Note that there is a platform update available. Clicking on this link will bring me to a list of newer platform versions that I can update to; and show a list of the new features added in the newer engine versions. Be sure to read these carefully when updating your application as the platform release notes can contain critical information.

Under “More Options” I can perform a verity of operations, I can:

  • Launch Application - This is an alternative to clicking the red blocks in the center.
  • Application Overview - bring up further details about the application allowing me to change details like the application name and icon.
  • Activity Log - show a log of activity on this application.
  • Version History - show the list of versions of this application, create a new release, or revert to an older version.
  • Modules - See a list of available modules.
  • Copy Application - Copy the application to another Cloud.
  • Move Application - Move the application from it's current Cloud to a different Cloud.
  • Detach from Cloud - Remove the application from it's cloud. This is commonly done when the application won't be developed for a while to save space on a Cloud.
  • Destroy this Application - Done with an application? Don't need it anymore? Destroy it.

The areas to the right of Development allow you to create an installation of this application in Testing and Production mode. These modes remove the build tools, and allow you to use the application you've been building!

Here's an example of an application with installations of all 3 roles:

The Testing and Production areas also have many options available under “More Options” that closely match those under Development. One important additional element, to help keep things easy, is the large green arrow between the Development and Testing applications. This button, labeled “Update Testing from Build” will allow you to describe the changes you've made in the current version of Development, and then it will release a version of the Development application and update the Testing application with these changes! In this example, Testing and Production are both at the same version (v156), but in the case where Testing has been updated to a newer version another large green arrow the connects Testing to Production will appear. This arrow, you guessed it, will update Production with the version that Testing is currently on!

We've simplified Development → Testing → Production rollouts to 1-2 click processes. We've pretty proud of that and we hope you enjoy the experience.

manage applications on the platform.txt · Last modified: 2016/09/14 18:19 (external edit)
Copyright WorkXpress, 2024