April was a busy month for us, with a lot of new employees starting with SAP AppGyver and getting onboarded onto our team.
Here is a list of some of the things we were working on in the past month. Most of these have work still ongoing and have NOT been released.
For released items, please see our changelog.
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3rd party plugins support
Why are we working on this?
- With plugins, developers can utilize custom code in their app, by encapsulating a React library or React Native plugin into new native view components and flow functions
Development status:
- MacOS and iOS builds brought to work on the new build service infrastructure, required for the ability to include arbitrary 3rd party plugins in builds
- 3rd party plugin editor: finished overhaul of improvements to UI, including the ability to run multiple platforms at the same time and test properties and styles from web window instead of trying to change the settings on the emulators’ small screens
- Existing core plugins have been migrated to the new structure and separated in a way that the minimum required plugins for a plain application are going to be fewer than before
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Connectors and connected systems
Why are we working on this?
- Instead of each data resource being configured in isolation, the concept of a connected system (enabled by a connector) allows things like base URL and common headers to be configured only once per system/API
- OData and REST API endpoints will be easier to manage (alongside SAP BTP Destinations in the Enterprise Edition)
- The required UI overhaul on the data tab will also provide us with an opportunity for an overall facelift
Development status:
- Designs finished
- UI implementation under way
- SAP BTP Destinations are working under the new structure
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Data browser
Why are we working on this?
- With the connected system concept normalizing the way different kinds of APIs/systems are accessed, a universal data browser can be created, through which a developer can edit their data straight from the SAP AppGyver design time
Development status:
- Designs finished
- UI development under way
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Marketplace UI improvements
Why are we working on this?
- The current usability of the marketplace is not great, so we are rolling out a new version of marketplace UI, which will take the whole screen and have better usability.
- The new UI will also allow us to be able to showcase the latest new components better
Development status:
- Development done
- QA and stabilization under way
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Asset manager improvements
Why are we working on this?
- The current asset manager relies on direct S3 URLs for the assets, without an abstraction layer in between
- Providing that abstraction layer allows for a much more reliable experience, plus lays the groundwork for e.g. supporting multiple versions of the same asset (such as light and dark mode image) or publishing assets via the marketplace
- In addition, we’ve overhauled the UI and significantly improved the usability of the asset manager, including the ability to organize assets by folder
Development status:
- Designs and design time development have been completed
- QA, stabilization and runtime support under way
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Documentation revamp
Why are we working on this?
- Our documentation could be structured significantly better to make it easier to find relevant information
- We would like to embed documentation directly from our documentation to our SAP AppGyver tool
- Some of our documentation has been out of date and some parts are not documented in detail
Development status:
- Work is ongoing to move to a different documentation platform and to rework our documentation structure
- New guide and tutorial for data components is in review
- As documentation is moved to the new platform, outdated information is corrected or removed
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Improvements to existing plugins (that is, native view components and flow functions)
Why are we working on this?
- There are additional features that our existing plugins can support via their native code implementation that we want to enable
Development status:
- MapView web support is under way, still missing some features
- Dropdown style unification for web is under way, still some issues to resolve
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SAP BTP Auth/Destination support
Why are we working on this?
- Enabling the Enterprise Edition users to utilize the authorization they have configured for their BTP subaccount will enable seamless SSO
- With authenticated users, BTP Destinations (a way to integrate to various SAP systems from within BTP) can be accessed from the app
Development status
- End-to-end is working with coder graphics
- Few quality-of-life improvements to the overall flow remain to be implemented
- Implementing the final UI is under way
Continuous improvements being worked on:
First time developer experience improvements
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Listing and prioritizing issues regarding onboarding and general usability issues
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New team members starting in mid-May will start tackling these
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Email confirmation for new and existing developers
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We want to prevent issues with typos in email while signing up and not being able to access their account if the password is forgotten
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Increasing overall security and spam-proofing of our platform
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Accidentally removing the “Hide spinner” flow function from the first page no longer causes the app to appear broken by opening into a spinner that never goes away – this is done by making all pages automatically hide the spinner
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A new page property can be used to disable this functionality, requiring the “Hide spinner” to be explicitly used on the first page
Advanced developer experience improvements
- UI improvements when configuring a data component’s data adapter property
- UI improvements to the component template editor when creating data components
- Theme usability betterments, such as better tools to reset changes made to theme
- New icon binding editor to support Fiori icons in addition to Font Awesome
General SAP AppGyver Preview app and runtime improvements
- Runtime codebase has been fully migrated to TypeScript, speeding up future development
- Bug hunting, including fixing some unfortunate regressions
Note that we can’t give out specific timelines on any upcoming features, but hopefully seeing their progress here is reassuring.
We’ll work on providing you updates like these more often so you may get an idea of what is getting worked on behind the scenes.
Thanks for all that work !
