Some major upgrades have just become available on the platform that promise to add a lot more options for viewing data sources on your apps.
These are the first new features under our User Experience add-on, and headlining the batch is a brand new Screen type – the Mapping screen.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
These upgrades are currently available via the Appenate Mobile Client (AMC) app on IOS only. The Android version will be delivered over the next 2-3 weeks.
Additionally, these new features are only visible in your master accounts since IOS branded apps have not yet been submitted to Apple (they will be very soon).
Mapping a Data Source
The Mapping screen is a fully fledged screen type in its own right, providing the ability to display Data Source rows as map pins on a full screen map in your mobile apps.
We’ve added a lot of customisation options such as control over pin colours, callout display and user interactions to enable dynamic scenarios when the user selects a map pin.
Smart clustering of data points means that the Mapping screen can handle the display of thousands of pins while remaining responsive and engaging to your users.
We’re excited to add this new Screen type to our existing options and we think this should provide another level of flexibility and productivity to your clients’ apps.
New In-App Filtering Options
A long running feature request from our customers has been the ability for app users to filter data displayed in Listing screens.
With this update, filtering is now a reality 🙂
It starts with the ability to turn on Filtering screens on the app for both Listing and Mapping screen types.
This is done by simply checking the “Allow Filtering By Column” box in the relevant designers.
Once filtering is enabled, a new icon appears on the app in the search box of the Listing and Mapping screens. Tapping on the icon will take the user into a new app screen that lets them add up to 3 custom filters which will then be applied to the data.
Filters are now also “sticky” in that they are remembered by the app on subsequent screen opens.
The display of the filtering input fields is also dynamic based on the data type of the column as setup in your Data Source -> Rows page on the secure website. This way the app will ensure that the correct data type is entered by the user.
Advanced Data Source Column Settings
To help control how the Data Source filters and rows display, we’ve aded a new Column Settings dialog that is available on every Data Source column via the Data Sources -> Rows page.
Simply click on the “cog” icon seen in the column heading to open the new dialog.
The dialog contains powerful options such as:
Referring Data Source:
Lets you specify another Data Source which contains the set of possible values that can appear in this column. When you define a Referring source, the Filter screen in the app will automatically display those possible values as a drop down list of options instead of defaulting to text entry.
Conditional Display Rules:
We’ve added a whole new level of display customisation for Data Source values.
You can define rules that make column values appear in different colours and text styles based on a formula result.
For example, you might have a Status column that has three possible values – Good, Bad and Ugly. Defining rules for these will let you display those Status values in different colours to emphasise their meanings.
These rules can be leveraged on Mapping screens to colour pins, in Listing screens to vary the data value display and are also automatically applied in Form screens when you use a Choices field with List of Choices display style.
Listing Screen Enhancements
The Listing screen type has received a raft of improvements and new features that should allow you to build even better app experiences for your users.
New features include:
Right side display positions
Now you can display column values in 2 new right aligned positions on every row in a Listing screen.
Text Styling options
Every text display position on a Listing screen can now be styled via colours, font size and style of your choice.
Additionally you can leverage the Conditional Display Rules feature to produce dynamic display on rows based on the column value.
Better Grouping and Sorting
You can now control the ordering and display grouping of rows in a far more granular fashion.
There are even new options to control the display of group headings to produce eye catching app results.
Set Your Own Title Bar Buttons
You can now set two right aligned buttons to appear in the app title bar, letting you add more navigation options for better user experience.
Maybe you want to let the user view a Data Source in a Listing screen and a Mapping screen. Well simply add a “Map” button to let the user easily jump between screens.
One Huge Update!
This has been one of our biggest single updates to the app and web platform with many improvements to functionality that we hope will help you build even better apps in the future.
As mentioned above, the app side features are only available right now on IOS via the Appenate Mobile Client app.
However all customer branded IOS apps will be submitted very soon and the matching Android version is only a couple of weeks away.
As a new twist to our Beta program, we have only exposed these new features to master organisation accounts on the platform. Our thinking is that this will reduce any confusion with your clients that do not see the new features in their branded apps.
Once the functionality is broadly available, we will remove the Beta tags and make these features available across all accounts.
With such a big update there may be bugs or new things that you want us to think about.
If so, let us know!
We’re looking forward to hearing what you think and seeing the cool stuff you build with these improvements 🙂