Over the last month, we have been working on improvements to the platform. In this blog post, you can see a simple list of what has been changed, updated, and/or what bugs have been fixed. Read more about the release notes of last month.
New features & improvements
Pages
- Enhanced page load performance when opening a page builder page in the IDE. On average, pages are now loading 4 times faster!
- New entity browser that Improves the user experience when using the Text and Variable component option kind in the Page builder. We have merged the 3 individual buttons to only 1 button present in the component option.
- Control option to preload child components inside the Dialog component. Via this newly added option you can allow or disallow the preloading of these components. The option is by default set to true.
- All Text-based input components now have an advanced option added to delay (debounce) the on change interaction type. With this option you can overwrite the default behavior on change of the input. This can be useful in use cases where you use the input component for filtering a Data table component or such.
Data
- Schema models: The business technologist is now able to create a schema model and properties in a no-code way, just like every other data model.
- HTTP step: We've enriched the HTTP(S) step in next-gen actions with dynamic values possibilities. From now on, you can easily configure your HTTP(S) step by using dynamic values in your URL and body. With this improvement, you no longer need to use expression steps to transform the variables to a functional format. This gives you a lot of flexibility to configure the HTTP(S) step to your liking. Read more in the blog.
AI with Actions
We have released 4 new AI functions in the Block Store:- Prompt
- This step allows you to send a prompt to a language model, such as Open AI, and retrieve the answer. You can use this step in combination with other components, such as a textbox for building a chatbot. The prompt step can be customized so that it performs specific tasks; for example, you can customize your prompt so that it checks the spelling of each submission. Learn more with this documentation.
- Classifier
- This step is able to use a language model to assess your input and classify where it belongs in the parameters you set. For example, it can determine whether an input is true, false, or undetermined. This enables you to build a workflow where you can check the status of a prompt or segment of text.
- Summarizer
- This step automatically summarizes text. It can be configured in a range of possibilities to determine how long the summarization should be or even how many tokens from the language model it should use.
- Anonymizer
- This step is able to anonymize information. This is useful if you want to anonymize a large set of documents without having to go through each line individually. This step significantly speeds up the process of anonymizing sensitive information.
For pro-coders we’ve created a generative AI helper, so you can create your own AI functions. Learn more with this Github documentation.
- This step is able to anonymize information. This is useful if you want to anonymize a large set of documents without having to go through each line individually. This step significantly speeds up the process of anonymizing sensitive information.
My Betty Blocks - The company overview
- Company admins can overview all apps and their status including helpful data that can impact the license costs:
- Internal & external users
- Builders
- Building blocks
- Get a birds eye view of all the organizations, applications and templates associated with the company.
- Company data can be exported to share externally or saved to see periodical growth
- Company members' roles can be updated so that they no longer have access to the company overview.
- Company members can be removed so that they no longer have access to all the organizations and applications associated with the company.
Documentation and education
- The education team is working on documentation to support customers in their application development process, from starting the ideation process to best practices on getting your application ready for production
- The introduction to application configuration, including links to other new articles we have worked on! (Working with a DTAP-street, Logging/debuggin tips, and more!)
- Information on setting up your custom domain.
- Data transfer to a production environment
- Usability testing strategies
- Testing application: stability and security
- A guide to a new application template, the survey builder!
- Information on our amazing new AI prompt step.
- Insight in a beautiful new functionality: the company overview.
Fixes
Pages
- In some cases, the Reconfigure modal opened in a smaller width than expected. This has been fixed now.
- The keybinding ‘f’ to focus the search input in the Property selectors got triggered while another modal was shown in front of it.
- We fixed a bug where components could be dragged inside locked wrappers. This has been fixed now.
- We fixed a bug where the component state didn’t update after firing a set current record interaction.
- The Page IDE did a hard crash when trying to create an interaction with a saved component as target component. This has been fixed now.
- We fixed a bug where ‘hidden components’ did not appear in the list of target components in interactions. They only appeared when they were rendered once in design time. This has been fixed now.
- We fixed a bug where using the filter interaction could crash the Page IDE. This has been fixed now.
Documentation and education
- Changes in documentation include
- New process update in: Changing the front end to your own custom domain
- Added information for more regions to our SMTP documentation.
- Alt-tag updates in over 100 articles
Up next
Pages
- Page variables with the introduction of the Object page variable type.
- Contains a more efficient way of data loading / querying (smaller sizes). The page variable queries the data that the page actually requires.
- Queried data via a page variable is stored in page state. Where UI if/else logic can benefit from.
- Reusability of page variables.
- Removes the actual (functional) need for a ‘Data container’ component, and also the UX challenge to drag and drop them on the right (nested) spot on the canvas.
- More clear ‘what data’ is used on the page (one overview in the sidebar).
Data sources
- HTTP step: Soon, we will add the ability to select a newly created schema model and output type to structure your output response. This way, you don't need to build extra action steps to establish a functional request to an API or remote data source.
AI with Actions
- AI Smart search functionality:
- This step allows you to search through data with natural language rather than keyword search.
- Convert docs to text functionality:
- With this step you can easily convert documents like docx, pdf, images, excel, to text. When it’s text, you can use it in other steps of your action.
My Betty Blocks
- The app gallery: Share the inventory of applications built by the company to inspire new projects to be added on the roadmap, prevent making the same solution twice, and drive the adoption of applications.
- New permissions: Manage the access of certain roles within the organization to cater to specific user needs. This includes the following functionalities:
- Manage data model
- Manage actions
- Developer mode (local component set & component tree)
- View page templates
- Start page from scratch
Education
- Advanced path updates, new videos with guides and explanations on diving deeper into the Betty Blocks platform
- Setting up your pages theory
- Creating a more advanced UI for your homepage
- My Betty Blocks application Settings
- Rounding up the first edition of articles supporting the application development process! These will all be chapters including multiple documents to help you get started and finish the process around your innovation!
- Ideation, MVP and your first sprints
- How to configure your application
- Testing your application
- Planning your go-live moment
- Communication and maintenance
- The education team is gathering wishes for use case items to document! Email odin@bettyblocks.com for any feedback and wishes regarding our documentation.
Platform roadmap
Want to know more about the upcoming features and functionalities of the Betty Blocks platform? Visit the platform roadmap of our community where you can find most of the topics that we are currently working on and are planning to work on. Let us know your thoughts by upvoting the topics you believe are the most valuable!
That was all for now. Your feedback allows us to continuously improve the Product. So please, let us know what you think about it!
