Mendix Release 10.10 – Features Sprinkled Across the Platform

This month, we’re releasing many features sprinkled across the platform to make the lives of all our users better. Studio Pro contains several quality-of-life improvements, like performance and Epics/Jira integration! Next to that, some nice widget, MxConnect, and AI updates. As well many platform updates for App Insights, Mendix Cloud, Mendix for Private cloud, Control Center and Marketplace. Pfew, that’s a lot of sprinkles!

Studio Pro

Performance

We noticed several areas where we could speed up Studio Pro, mostly around working for longer periods. We made several improvements here, which will enhance the life of our beloved developers.

Mac version update

The Mac version just got a lot better with support for search in the app explorer, so you can find your documents a lot faster. In addition to that we have made installing the Mac version a lot easier by no longer requiring you to accept a security warning before installing, Thirdly, it now also supports the Git CLI, meaning you can benefit from all the Git functionality that you are used to on Windows. These improvements should make it easier for you to go make it on Mac!

MendixChat

MendixChat helps developers to quickly acquire Mendix knowledge and increase their productivity without the need to leave Mendix Studio Pro. With this release we have improved the quality of the answers using newer, state-of-the-art LLMs and fine-tuning it on Mendix. In addition, we have substantially decreased response time (latency). Also, the answers are more user-friendly in terms of the formatting such as bullet point, highlights, and code sippets. We’ve also enhanced their ability to have conversations based on the last three questions and answers.

Note: MendixChat can be found in the View -> MendixChat menu of Mendix Studio Pro. Just give it a go!

Epics (and Jira) integration

Managing your stories has never been this easy. With support for Epics directly in Studio Pro, you can change the status of your story as you go.

Changing story status will work exactly the same way if a Jira connector is enabled for your project. This makes the Jira connector properly bi-directional and marks the general availability of this feature. If you are making use of Jira for agile planning, now is the perfect time to go to the Settings page of your project, enable it and manage your work directly from Studio Pro!

‘Add activity’ dialog now instantiates all List subtypes

Good news for all developers who regularly use the generic Add activity from the toolbar in the microflow and nanoflow editors; The selection dialog now has full support for all subtypes (e.g. Count, Sum, Maximum) of the List operations and List aggregate activities which makes it easier and faster to add activities like this.

Widget updates

Combo box improvements

The Combo box widget now supports static values as its data source which makes it much more powerful. This can be used to show a fixed subset of enumerations to choose from or to simply create a list of possible options for a field without having to define an enumeration in the database first. It is even possible to set custom content for each item to give you full flexibility over how the options should be shown.

WebXR (Beta)

We are excited to officially release the new WebXR module packed with widgets that can be used in AR/VR applications. It offers several advantages over the Native Mobile AR module, because you can seamlessly add it to your web application and run it on a wide range of augmented reality and virtual reality devices, including the Apple Vision Pro, Oculus Quest, HoloLens, and Google Cardboard.

See it in action and read more about its capabilities in the following blog post:

Mendix Connect

Snowflake integrations

We’ve introduced new ways to integrate your Mendix application with Snowflake. You can now bring your Snowflake data into Mendix, trigger stored procedures or even AI and ML workloads, and write back into Snowflake.

Snowflake support is added as beta to the External Database Connector, so you can develop, test, and use your integrations in Studio Pro. When connecting to Snowflake you get the same set of capabilities as available for the other databases: select queries, insert, update, delete and execution of stored procedures. These can be developed and tested while working in Studio Pro, the entities needed to hold the data in Mendix will be automatically generated based on the queries you create.

We also published a platform supported REST SQL connector to the Marketplace with support for Mendix 9.24 LTS and key-pair authentication in case you would like to connect with a 2048-bit RSA PKCS-8 key-pair.

For more information on what connector suits your needs best, please visit the Snowflake module documentation.

REST Client (beta)

This month we’ve improved HTTP headers handling in the interactive REST client. If appropriate, headers with the same name will be concatenated. To save you some time, we’ve also added default header values, e.g., for Content-Type and Accept.

AI

OpenAI Function Calling

Using your data in your conversational UI was never easier. You can now use it to answer questions like: What’s the status of ticket X? – or – Are tickets 1 and 2 potential duplicates? We’ve added support for OpenAI function calling to the OpenAI Connector, so you can instruct the ChatGPT-3.5 and 4 models to call microflows in your application to retrieve additional information that help answering the questions. Checkout the showcase for an example on how to implement this.

PgVector Knowledge Base

On top of OpenAI function calling, we’ve released PgVector Knowledge Base as a second solution to ground your LLM in data with a PostgreSQL database. It provides a set of easy-to-use actions that you can drag and drop into your microflows to maintain your knowledge base. So no more query writing. You can focus on creating capabilities like propose a resolution for xyz based on similar incidents in the past as well as our manuals and guidelines. Use it in Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Similarity Search setups. All you need to do is bring a pgvector-enabled PostgreSQL database, connect it to your app and get inspiration from the example implementations in the updated OpenAI Showcase application.

App Insights updates

We’re excited to announce the latest updates to App Insights, a key component of the Mendix platform aimed at bridging the gap between business and IT colleagues. With these new features, we’re empowering Mendix customers to streamline communication, gather valuable insights, and prioritize feedback effectively.

Bulk actions and priority for feedback

Managing feedback just got a whole lot easier with the introduction of bulk actions and priority settings. Now, users can make edits to their feedback inbox in bulk, allowing actions on multiple items simultaneously. Additionally, the new priority field enables users to designate the importance level of incoming feedback items, ensuring that critical issues are addressed promptly.

Feedback API v2

We’re excited to roll out the latest iteration of our Feedback API – version 2. This REST API comes packed with all the latest features and enhancements, promising improved functionality and performance. As part of this update, please note that the old Feedback API v1 will be deprecated as of September 20th, 2024. We encourage all users to transition to the new API to enjoy the full benefits of the App Insights platform.

Improved Reporter Communication Experience

Enhancements have been made to the reporter communication tab, making it easier than ever to engage with feedback reporters regarding their submissions. With smoother communication channels, teams can collaborate more effectively to address issues and drive continuous improvement.

New Feedback Notification Settings

We understand that staying informed about feedback is crucial for effective collaboration. That’s why we’re introducing customizable notification settings. Users with appropriate roles in a project can now tailor their notification preferences, receiving alerts for new feedback submissions and comments made by reporters. Additionally, the option to watch or unwatch individual feedback items provides greater control over notification overload.

Control Center: grid filters in apps view

By popular demand, we’ve added the grid filters to the apps view in the control center. It’s now possible to filter on a combination of fields to get the exact list of apps you want, and you can export that information.

In this example, we made a list of environments belonging to a technical contact that do not contain any deployments, and export that to Excel.

Marketplace Curation

We understand the importance of adhering to governance policies and guidelines established by organizations and we also recognize the necessity of translating these policies seamlessly into our platform to ensure compliance and efficiency for your team. With the Marketplace Curation feature, the Company Admin can now specify criteria for selected public Marketplace components to be recommended based on your organization’s governance policies. This means that developers of the company will have clear guidance on which content is recommended for usage within your company.

This functionality provides several key benefits:

  • Developer guidance: Developers can easily identify Marketplace content suitable for their apps by filtering Marketplace content by the RECOMMENDED label in Studio Pro’s Marketplace section or on the Marketplace in Mendix Portal. This helps developers find valuable and relevant content for app development in your company. For more information, read the documentation for Displaying Recommended Marketplace Content in Studio Pro.
  • Enhanced marketplace exploration: By specifying criteria for recommended content, developers can explore a wider array of public content, enabling them to leverage resources for their apps.
  • Governance control: Centralized curation allows Mendix Admins to translate the offline policies and guidelines to an in-platform experience, establishing efficient communication and time-saving processes between developers and Mendix Admins.

To get more information, read the Marketplace documentation.

To start leveraging the feature and tailor it to your organization’s governance needs, simply navigate to the Control Center / Marketplace Curation . From there, you as the Company Admin can specify the criteria for recommended content and assign or remove labels manually.

Mendix Cloud – Data residency in Canada region

All application data in the Mendix Cloud Canada region is now kept within the country. This also includes the secondary backups. We no longer replicate the backups to the US East region, but we store them now in the new Canada West region. This is especially good news for customers that must follow strict guidelines on where their applications’ data is kept.

Mendix for Private Cloud

Mendix for Private Cloud just got even better with its latest update, focusing on streamlining environment management and providing administrators with more control and insight. Here’s a quick rundown of the key features:

Export to Excel: you can now effortlessly export scheduled events to Excel directly from the Model Options tab on the environment details page. This enhancement enables you to efficiently track and manage upcoming events with ease.

Kubernetes Insights: Gain valuable insights into your infrastructure with Kubernetes server information conveniently displayed in the Additional Information section of namespaces.

For more comprehensive details, please refer to the April release notes.

Private Mendix Platform

The April release of Private Mendix Platform, version 1.9, brings a number of engineering improvements and functional extensions that improve the platform and developer experience.

Better error handling: no more “computer says no” nondescript errors that block your workflow. Errors are now graded on severity and given more appropriate UX. Error messages are also more verbose and descriptive and contain a unique error code that can be used to trace back log messages for easier troubleshooting.

Container images support: the Kubernetes CI-option now also supports outputting Docker container images, a.k.a. OCI’s, as the result of the build process. This allows enterprise customers standardizing on container images for their deployment orchestration to seamlessly integrate Private Mendix Platform projects into that workflow.

Ding-dong, you’ve got notifications: this release sees a wide extension of notifications across the platform with more events triggering notifications, providing developers a richer, more interactive experience using Private Mendix Platform

Pre-provision users with SCIM: we are proud to introduce the ability to pre-provision users onto the platform using the SCIM standard. Instead of waiting for the first-time SSO login, admins can choose to pre-populate the Private Mendix Platform with selected users from their IdP. This follows the SCIM standard.

Are you ready to start your next app?