Roadmap

We've been quiet on the progress of the upcoming Automations feature, so it's time for a much needed update!

Once we started working on Automations we identified structural improvements that could be made to WebApps/Module to make this feature build easier and more scalable for the future.

WebApps were built 4 years ago now, and were built using the tech available at the time on platformOS. It's now a good time to apply upgrades to WebApps which take advantage of some of these platformOS changes.

 

Structural changes

WebApps store information about their structure in Form Configurations. Form Configurations are platformOS specific files. Therefore, if you want to manage this structure at all via CLI then you need to learn how to build Form Configurations.

We're moving away from Form Configurations, and will instead be storing information in JSON format on your sites. This has some benefits:

  • Familiarity - JSON format is used across the web, and will be far more familiar to developers than platformOS Form Configuration format will be.
  • Speed - We can load JSON data faster than we can fetch and translate Form Config data. This should show speed improvements, both front-end and back-end.
  • Future - We can more easily add new features that work with this JSON format, rather than having to use workarounds to work with Form Configurations.

 

Automations

When editing a WebApp or Module structure you'll be able to see a new tab for 'Automations'. Here you'll select your trigger, and then the action.

Here's a list of triggers that will be available:

  • Item create - Admin
  • Item update - Admin
  • Item delete - Admin
  • Item create - Front-end
  • Item update - Front-end
  • Item delete - Front-end

Here's a list of actions that will be available:

  • Email Notification
    • To
    • From
    • CC
    • BCC
    • Reply To
    • Subject
    • Template
    • Content
  • API Call
    • To
    • Format (e.g. https)
    • Request Type (e.g. POST)
    • Request Headers
    • Content
  • Custom Action (You'll be provided a file location to store your custom code in)
    • Content



We'll provide a further update in the next couple of weeks.