At Mendix, we aspire to continually experiment and innovate with the future of low-code application development. We believe that is why Gartner has placed Mendix in the lead for Completeness of Vision in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms report. At Mendix, we envision Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) as key technologies to further enable automation and developer productivity in application development. For that reason, we have started to introduce AI-based virtual co-developer bots, each specialized in a certain domain or stage of the application lifecycle development.
Unwilling to stop with just AI and ML, we are further innovating with our core capabilities for next generation apps such as native mobile apps and offline-first apps. With Mendix 9.7.0, we are bringing some of our newest efforts to enable next generation low-code development and next generation apps. Let’s look at them together!
MxAssist Logic Bot upgrade coming your way
In the last few releases, we have been gradually improving the MxAssist Logic Bot. We are happy to announce that with this release, a new version of the MxAssist Logic Bot with major improvements in all three components—the AI Model, UI & UX, and Performance—is now fully released!
- The AI model has now been retrained with a fresh and substantially bigger dataset including 100 million microflow patterns and 12 millions Machine Learning parameters. We have added more and new context-related features, microflow actions and properties in the AI model. These have improved the recommendation accuracy, especially the top next action recommendation.
- The user interface has been completely redesigned with better integration and interaction with the microflow editor UI to avoid any overlaps. In addition, new controls and interfaces have been introduced to give more control to the users.
- The user interface responsiveness and interaction is faster thanks to several performance optimizations that have reduced server calls by 92% and User CPU usage by 35% on average. The Logic Bot microservice is also deployed in more regions to reduce network latency.
It is noteworthy that most of the above improvements were gradually released over Mendix 9 monthly releases and Mendix 8.18. If you have not used the new version of the MxAssist Logic Bot yet, log into the Platform and give it a try. Let us know what you think – your feedback is the often the basis of our next iteration!
Simplified over the air (OTA) updates for native mobile apps
With this release we are eager to present a simplified approach for over the air (OTA) updates for native mobile apps. OTA updates make it possible to provide new functionality or fixes to native mobile apps without having to go through the app store, which makes releasing new version easier and is an enormous timesaver.
From now on, providing an OTA update is as simple as deploying the model to the cloud, similar to hybrid mobile, and no third party service (CodePush) is needed anymore. A native mobile app checks at startup whether there is a OTA update available, and if so updates itself. Note that for binary changes (e.g. changes in dependencies, permissions, app icons) a new app store update will still be needed.
To enable this feature, go to the native mobile navigation profile of your app and enable the over the air updates feature. Then, build and release a new version of the mobile app using the latest updates (the UI will ask you to update if needed). After that, new deployments to the cloud will trigger over the air updates on the devices.
Deleting objects in offline-first apps
With this release, we added support for deleting objects in native mobile apps and offline-first progressive web apps. Deleting objects can now simply be done via the delete object(s) activity in nanoflows, and delete client action on pages.
After deleting the objects, the objects are not available on the device anymore, and only after synchronizing will the objects then be deleted on the server. To synchronize deleted objects, the synchronize activity with the mode ‘All Objects’ or ‘Unsynchronized Objects’ should be used. Also, when a full sync is done at startup (e.g. because of a model or Mendix update), deletes are synchronized with the server.
Please refer to the documentation for more details.
Persistent Filtering
In our last release, we announced our new Data Widgets module featuring our new Gallery widget and filter widgets. And it’s the filter widgets where I am very happy to announce our latest enhancement: persistent filters.
Easily configure persistent filtering by simply choosing an attribute for which to store the selected or entered value. Persistent filtering is available for all filter widgets: Text, number, date and dropdown and will work across both the Datagrid 2 and Gallery widgets. With this feature, you will be able to pick up right where you left off last time and quickly get to doing the tasks that you need doing!
Native Pie/Doughnut chart
For the second release in a row, we have a yummy new native feature for you. With this release we are serving you up a brand new chart for native: the pie chart! A simple but powerful chart, they are often used to show a percentage breakdown of data and it’s a great addition to the native toolbox.
Offering two presentation modes (that of a pie and doughnut chart), compatibility with Atlas and a dark mode rendering, this new chart really comes baked out of the Studio Pro oven. Perfect for bringing a new level of charting to your native app.
Are you ready to start making?
Mendix 9.7.0 is waiting for you here!
Watch the Mendix 9.7.0 release video, here!
For more details, take a closer look at all the features, improvements, fixes, and more in the release notes.