The 2024 edition of the Appfarm Developalooza gathered the developer community for a day of no-code discovery. Here we got to share the latest platform features and some exciting plans for the year.
Developalooza is Appfarm's annual developer event, for knowledge sharing, exploring and connecting with the community. We got to share the latest platform features and some exciting plans for the year, while partners and customers demonstrated specific use cases on stage to show how they have used Appfarm Create to bring value to their organizations and customers.
A lot has happened in Appfarm since the end of 2022. Appfarm Chief Revenue Officer Hans Magnus Wold and Head of Customer Success, Anna Helene Skau, opened the event by taking us back to the first Appfarm Developalooza and going through three key happenings that have occurred since:
Identity
The Appfarm brand has both visually and strategically shifted to reflect our market positioning changing from a disruptor and a challenger to becoming an enterprise-grade platform. This was also emphasized through an ISO 27001 certification, catering to enterprise-grade security demands.
Funding
After a successful funding round at the beginning of 2023, we were positioned to invest in our branding, growing the team, and product development. In one year, our team doubled in size, enabling us to strengthen existing teams and build out new ones to invest in our customer’s success.
Value:
Since 2022, the number of active applications in Appfarm Create has increased by 153%, and daily hours spent on the platform have increased by 64% percent. This emphasizes the importance of our developer community and the value they bring to Appfarm by creating business-critical applications.
Fie Løvold and Nejra Brcaninovic from the partner success team went through the expansion of the partner network since last time, which has more than doubled in size and has crossed international borders. The Appfarm community is a true example of knowledge sharing, and is used by all developers to ask questions and learn from each other. While the number of internal Appfarm developers is 17, the total amount of Developers in Appfarm Create is 1805. That speaks volumes of the importance of the work of our partners and customers. They also announced three new initiatives that will be implemented for partners within the year:
After recapping the changes since the last Developalooza and our focus on improving the developer experience, Product Manager Aaron Beaton and Chief Product Officer Simon Larsen, touched on three recent updates that offer significant enhancements to the platform.
They then jumped into a preview of what’s coming soon.
Release cycle
We are adapting our processes and infrastructure to release more frequent, smaller, updates to the platform. This will enable us to iterate faster on new concepts and streamline the way we deliver bug fixes, improvements, and new features.
In conjunction with more frequent releases, we will introduce release channels. This will enable solution administrators to control how their solution receives platform updates. There’ll be a channel for early adopters to run the latest version of the platform with access to improvements as they are released. A second channel will be updated with changes that have been out in the wild for a while and are known to be stable, and a third channel will sit a bit further behind for solutions that require a more conservative approach to updates. We’ll share more information about release channels when they become available.
Component history
With component history you’ll be able to view a detailed history of each view, UI component, action, and action node added to an app. The history will specify when the item was added, when it was modified and how, and even if it was moved between parent components.
Component history builds on the collaborative nature of Appfarm and will display changes that other developers have made. It acts as a form of documentation, describing who did what and when.
And, this summer we’ll bring the long-awaited undo/redo functionality to Appfarm Create.
Data
We are adding support for storing time series data in Appfarm. We have customers that already use time series data from IoT sensors and transactions in their solutions and this native support will provide a seamless way to integrate that data.
Additionally, a new built-in service endpoint will enable the efficient export of large amounts of data from a solution database. This will provide a performance boost for regular exports to data warehouses and data lakes.
Reusability
Our biggest reveal was that soon, you will be able to create your own UI components that you can make once and use everywhere. This has been our most requested feature and we are aiming to release it this summer.
For example, if you make a header you would like to use in multiple views, you will be able to select the parent container and create your own header component. The component will then be ready to drop into any view, with full design-time preview. If you update the component, the changes will be instantly reflected in any view it has been added to.
These components will also support input parameters to easily connect data and actions based on app context, enabling you to develop components for list items, cards, and other repeated content.
This capability will enable you to build up a library of your own components based on your organization’s design language, from simple buttons to complex UI structures. These will be shared across views, apps, and eventually across solutions. Collaboration with designers and other developers will become even easier as you work with a common library.
Looking even further ahead we will introduce granular deploy to push updates per app, add reusable integrations, upgrade our underlying UI libraries, and provide new features to support account and solution management.
After the Appfarm sessions, we invited five partners and customers to present their solutions on stage and share specific learnings on various topics.
Zebra Consulting
Johannes Omberg Lier from Appfarm partner Zebra brought with him Sigrid Wiktoria Seigen from their Skanska-owned customer Entreprenørservice to talk about everyday digitalization for large enterprises. They highlighted the need to bring the user closer to development and being able to consider their specific needs in order to transform from manual processes (pen and paper) to a digital worklife. They showcased their solution used on construction sites by several different user types, and how they have adapted each function to the specific user, both in terms of permissions and views, but also UI and functionality.
Tide Buss
Erlend Aas from Tide Buss presented their solution to manage and match more than 5,000 bus drivers with routes and daily routines. This process was previously done manually by printing documents that were handed out in the morning. This made it challenging to provide real-time updates for vehicle maintenance and route disruptions and was not user-friendly.
Gture
Henrik Viktøren and Svein Husa from Gture showcased how they have implemented AI in their solution for their successful startup QBIG. This is a SaaS for accounting firms to ensure compliance in accordance with the requirements of the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority. Their solution has several different areas of compliance control, where each branch has its own chatbot that guides users to the correct documentation and requirements.
Muleum
Preben Amilcare Mortensen from Muleum took the stage to show how they are using Appfarm to complement the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP system for their customer Franzefoss. They also compared the usage areas for PowerApps and Appfarm and concluded that in many ways, they complement each other well, but when developing applications where external users and processes are a factor, they have an Appfarm-first development strategy.
ControlC
Yassine Tebib and Jérémy Jean from ControlC showcased how they are using Appfarm to create the main application that connects data from a vast and complex ecosystem of core solutions for their customer Cocottes, one of Luxemburgs largest fresh food providers. With Appfarm at the core, they have connected Cocottes ERP solution, CRM system, order management solution, and much more, to create a holistic view of all aspects of their services.
After the partner sessions, it was time for the anticipated no-code cage fight, a development competition styled as a high-energy boxing match: Red vs. Blue!
The competition started with a qualification round, where the first two people to send a web request to a provided endpoint would qualify for the main event. The tension in the air was palpable as attendees from all around the audience raced against the clock, vying for a chance to step into the ring. After a few minutes of intense clicking from the laptops, two faces emerged on the screen: Erlend Aas from Tide and Henrik Vikøren from Gture.
With the stage set for the main fight, the two finalists came running onto the stage. Amidst cheers from the audience, they faced off, each armed with nothing but their own skills, the Appfarm development platform, and a coach. Last Developalooza’s champion, Thomas Hesselberg, ensured a fair and clean fight as this year’s referee. With him, two live broadcast commentators gave the show a finishing touch: Even Wetten from Axaz and Lavrans Løvvik from Avo Consulting.
In a lightning-fast display of skill and creativity, the fighters went head-to-head over four 3-minute rounds, racing to make a mobile app for registering encounters with people in the Appfarm Community, using components like maps, photo capture, and much more. As the seconds ticked away, the intensity peaked until one knocked out his competitor, claiming the title of no-code cage fight champion. This year, Erlend Aas, with his more than 1600-hour track record in Appfarm Create last year, came out victorious.
See tasks that used to take hours, be completed in seconds. Champion change that creates business value.
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