Manage the Development Life Cycle
By now, you have created your first sample application, activated it to a test environment, and tried it out in the runtime environment. You also explored the different components, such as processes, forms, and decisions, that make up an application. Before you get too involved with creating more applications, let’s look at some key ways you can keep your applications in control and under control.
Manage Spaces and Applications
Spaces group related applications and enable users to collaborate when developing applications. You can create additional spaces at any time, add users who can access the space, and specify what access each user has to the space. For example, you decide whether the user can edit applications in the space or only view them. Spaces help with collaboration as well as organization.
As you create and edit applications, you have options to validate, save, and publish your changes. You can also create snapshots of application changes, view the change history, and import and export applications and snapshots.
Document Your Applications
Providing descriptions, notes, and comments about your applications and processes is a good idea. And it’s great advice even if it’s coming from a writer.
You can add documentation at the application level, the process level, or the activity level. For example, you can use descriptions to help users go to the correct process, explain what the process does, or point to a process that would better serve their needs. Thoughtful details can provide appropriate context for a report about your applications.
If you’re collaborating with other developers, then the team can use the documentation fields to share information such as requirements or reminders. When collaborating with others during the creating or editing process, sticky notes are useful. They’re highly visible and easily added and removed.
Play, Test, and Activate Your Applications
As the developer, you can use the application player to test your processes without having to save and activate the application. See Play Processes and Test Applications.
Users with owner or editor permissions can activate the application to the runtime test environment so that they can try it out by simulating the end user experience. And users with administrator privileges can activate applications, and perform specific actions such as retire, activate, or shut down applications. See Manage Active Applications.