the XWiki TeamWe're proud to share with you App Within Minutes, an application to allow non tech experts to create their own applications in the fewest steps possible!
As collaborative software makers, ease of use is one of our main concerns: the easier the tool is, the more chances it has to be adopted by many users. We have often observed creating applications is a difficult task for people without programing skills and it can become tedious for end users to always ask for the IT department's help when basic applications are needed. This is precisely what we had in mind when we decided to work on App Within Minutes.
This application allows end users, i.e. business users, to benefit from XWiki's powerful data management system and easily make/create collaborative web applications even if they don't have a developer background.
A wizard guides users through 3 successive steps :
- Name your application
- Define the structure of your application
- Customize the home page of your application
To show you how easy it is to create an application in a few clicks with App Within Minutes, we have made a short tutorial on how to create a "Bike Product Sheet" . It's available on video, as well, here.
It's available starting with XWiki 3.4 or higher
First of all, you need to try XWiki on the Cloud or download a local version.
Once you are logged in on your wiki go on the home page click on "AppWithinMinutes" which is usually on the left side panel.
Name your application
This is the first step of the creation process. You have to provide the application name which will determine the application home page URL and the application space name. Each application is mapped to an XWiki space.
In the "Application Name" field, type "Bike product sheet", then click on the "Next Step" button.
Define the structure of your application
In the second step, you need to define the application structure, i.e. the type of data your application will handle.
At the end of this step the wizard will create the template and the sheet that will be used to create new application entries, in this example a new product sheet for a bike.
Customize the home page of your application
In the third and last step, you customize the way your application's home page will look like. You can choose which columns to display in the livetable. Then click "Finish".
In our example, we explain what the goal of our application is and we choose to display every bike's features.
Use your application
Now you can try out your application! At the end of the creation process, the wizard takes you to the application's home page. This is the place where you will be able to:
- Create a new "bike" product sheet (picture 1) thanks to a wiki page template.
- Browse and filter your data using the livetable (picture 2).
- Edit the application's structure and class (picture 2).
Picture 1 - Bike product sheet template used to create the Mountain bike n°1
Picture 2 - Application home page : livetable, new entry and class edition
We hope this App Within Minutes presentation has convinced you how easy it is to make applications and we highly encourage you to use it to create new applications yourselves.
