We want to keep you up to date on what is happening with the new web apps. Here is a short overview:
Progress By Page
Most/much of the functionality done
Tasks
Processes **
Admin
Account
Work In Progress
Decisions
History Mode
Not started yet
Migrations
Batches
Authentication
** we currently show the plain BPMN diagram without additional information/tokens.
State of the code
Until February we were still working on dialing in our architectural decisions. With the latest refactoring of the REST API implementation, we are straightening things out and got in a place of getting a proper process for writing new code (as well as refactoring the old code).
For this some updated documentation is needed, but the documentation itself is regularly updated and shows how the code base is designed.
Next big tasks
Create a better process for the back-end to test more features
Create a front-end testing suite
User feedback
Interactive BPMN diagrams
Additional contributions
Additional contributions outside the core team are coming and going right now. It is hard to predict on how much acceleration we are getting, but the community is growing and more and more people know how to work with the code base.
Which is a very good thing, as it removes single (or two) points of failure with time.
First alpha release
A great timing for archiving an alpha release would be the EOL of the Camunda 7 community edition. Will we be able to do it? We should be able to have a 80% working application till then, with some rough edges.
Probably not ready to ship, but ready to test by other people than the developers.
Questions?
If you have any specific question regarding the progress of the web apps, feel free to use this topic. I hope to be able to answer them.
Hi Paul, not sure if i am in the right place to ask a question on the state of the new web-apps. I just checked out the code form main repository and ran the npm install and run dev. After some struggles with CORS i got it working to connect to my local engine. But looking at the frontend, the styles seems to be quite off and not looking like your screenshots. But looking at the developers tools, it is not saying that styles could not be loaded. I was wondering if I am doing something wrong when loading the new web apps. Thanks for your feedback in advance!
It looks like this for me while looking at your screenshots there should be a side bar and bit more colours
So just checked out the code from main branch and am running from web-apps directory using npm run dev. Maybe I should run it as a prod build or docker setup? Thanks for your help!
I do have other processes indeed and tasks in there where I can see the processes and variables but the spacing and alignment just seems a bit off but of course I understand it is still work in progress. So to be clear it is not a complaint it was just for me to understand if what I was doing something wrong with the build. I am also not a frontend developer so it’s not that I can contribute to this part. Thanks for your response again and will definitely keep track on the progress.
How is the new app / apps being developed? I mean, who decides what features should be implemented/included, how it should look like, layout, placement of elements etc?
I’m asking because the usability and features of the cockpit (in Camunda lingo) is a key factor for the acceptance of the whole eco-system. The people who operate the process apps work with it every day.
Does some discussion about the apps take place (even if it happens internally, i.e. not here on the forum)?
We decided in the beginning to bascially replicate the feature set of the old apps including enterprise features (without paywall) with the goal to renew the technical foundation.
This is the feature baseline. Other features may be suggested any time in the forum, slack or as an GH issue.
The design part (“how it should look like, layout, placement of elements”) is currently suggested by me. While feedback was given by others involved with the project, who gained some understanding what is used, what not, what is missing and so on, I try to fit it all into a coherent design.
Which is all work in progress. What you currently see isn’t set in stone. We will do UX/UI testing, when the functionality is (mostly) complete. Then the users will show us the way.
And yes, the webapps are the place where users will gain the lasting impressions about the product. We are very aware of that. And we need to cater to the power users, who orchestrate processes, and casual task-list users.
When the time comes, I’ll also ask for feedback and testing.