What Is Dogfooding?

Dogfooding’ or ‘eating your own dog food’ refers to the practice of an organization or company using their products or services internally. This process can help producers test their commodity in a real-life scenario. And like this, ensure that it productively solves the problem that the product or service is addressing.

This can allow you to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and further solve any issues pertaining to your product’s overall functionality. Furthermore, dogfooding is extremely useful in practically proving your product’s organizational value. Read more

Crust releases Corteza 2021.3, including a new visual workflow builder

Cork, Ireland, 6 April 2021.

Crust Technology, the driving force behind the open-source low-code platform Corteza, is excited to announce a new major release: Corteza 2021.3. The highlights of this release are a visual drag-and-drop workflow editor, a new UI, a template editor and authentication improvement.

New features and improvement in Corteza 2021.3

Corteza Workflow

The new workflow editor enables users to automate simple and complex processes, without the need for programming knowledge. It’s based on BPMN 2.0 standards, and easy and fast to use. Simply drag and drop the elements you need on the canvas, configure and connect them. Main features include:

  • Unlimited workflows anywhere in Corteza
  • Drag-and-drop editor
  • Zoom in, zoom out and move the canvas
  • Single or multiple start points (triggers)
    • On create, update or delete
    • On a manual interaction (a click on a button, such as “Covert this lead”)
    • On a scheduled interval (for example, every day at 1 am)
    • On a set date and time (you can define multiple “timestamps” for the same trigger)
  • Expressions (interact with values in your workflow. For example: calculate the grand total of a quote)
  • Functions (list of predefined functions, such as find records create a new record, find a template, send an email etc)
  • Iterators (loop through a list of records)
  • Error-handling
  • Gateways (check a value and continue with the workflow in the desired path)
  • Delay (pause the workflow at a certain point for a set time)
  • User interactions:
    • Alerts (for example, a confirmation message on the screen)
    • Choice prompt (select one of the two buttons. For example, yes and no)
    • Single input (ask the user for a value that the user can type in)
    • Option select (ask the user to select a value from a list)
  • Testing and debugging tools

Extensive documentation on workflows has been created, explaining each feature in great detail. This documentation also provides useful examples.

New UI

In collaboration with experts from the Dutch Accessibility Foundation, significant changes have been made to the UI. The fully responsive design follows the WCAG standard compliance (World Content Accessibility Guidelines), which makes Crust the leading innovator in accessibility in the Low-Code sector.

Template Editor

The new template editor allows you to define the generic document structure (such as a welcome email message or a quote PDF), which is then converted into an actual document based on the provided data. Templates are written in HTML and allow placeholders, functions and conditional rendering. After creating templates they can be rendered in Corteza workflow.

Authentication

This release comes with an OAuth2 server with Authorization code and client credentials flows. All authentication interfaces used by Corteza can now fully be modified and styled to your needs. Personalization is performed by defining a series of templates and assets (e.g. images and JavaScript code). This allows you to make the authentication screen match the company style guide.

Messaging Changes

Support for a Matrix-based federated messaging solution will be provided as of Corteza version 2021.6. The goal is to align with Corteza Record Federation, ensuring that using organisations can create richer, federated relationships, not limited to static records only. In preparation for this, the legacy Corteza Messaging solution has now been deprecated.

Other changes

  • Upgraded to Go 1.16
  • Removed obsolete asset embedding and move to //go:embed
  • Messaging code and endpoints removed
  • OAuth2 server with Authorization code and client credentials flows
  • Compose record federation now supports Activity Stream protocol
  • Codebase cleanup and removed With(ctx) anti-pattern
  • Added Envoy file encoders (export support)
  • Fixed UserBeforeUpdate/UserBeforeDelete
  • Auth web application is now deprecated

View the full changelog.

How to install Corteza

You can follow the local setup instructions for a local development or demonstration instance of Corteza. If you are looking for setting up a live deployment, check out the extensive production setup instructions. If you have questions, you can engage with other community members on the Corteza forum.

How to upgrade your Corteza instance

To upgrade your instance to the latest version of Corteza, please check out our Upgrade Guide.

Online demo

Crust Technology has an online demo available of this latest release. In it, you can try out the Low-Code platform, build your own apps, try out the existing apps (such as the CRM or Service Solution)  and much more.

Screenshots

 

Crust Technology releases the first Low-Code Platform with Federated Cloud capabilities

Cork, Ireland, 22 December 2020.

Crust Technology, the leading open-source Low-Code Development platform and Salesforce alternative and the driving force behind the free and open-source project Corteza, is excited to announce a new major release: Corteza 2020.12. This release comes with many new features and improvements, and includes experimental support for record federation. As a result, this makes the Corteza platform the first open-source federated cloud solution for record sharing in the world.

Read more

What Can You Build With Low-Code?

For businesses in the 21st century, low-code application development is a game-changer. Open-source low-code application development is an enhanced and improvised version of the then software development life cycle that results in instant output without the usual hustle of coding. Businesses can meet their deadlines by providing comprehensive graphical interfaces that have an effective and quick deployment of output. From keeping track of the personal details of the customer to tracking of attendance of the employees to getting a sharp insight into the data inputs, low-code gives all that it takes to run a business smoothly. Read more

How is Cloud Computing Used in Healthcare?

Rising at a CAGR of 5 % from 2019-23, the healthcare industry is certainly one of the most rapidly evolving sectors in the economy. Owing to the various drivers like the aging population, infrastructure investments, eruption of chronic diseases, etc., the demand, as well as supply of the healthcare sector, continues to grow. Over time, with digital disruption, the focus is shifting towards the IT healthcare industry. All these forces combine to give rise to the role of cloud computing in the healthcare industry. Read more

How Does a Smart City Work?

If you ask Wikipedia, it explains, “A smart city is an urban area that uses electronic devices and sensors to collect data.” What are these smart cities? Why do they collect data? How do smart cities work? Apart from answering these questions, there’s a lot more to know about technology in smart cities. Let’s dive right in.

By 2050, 68% of the world’s population would be living in urban cities. The gradual shift in preferences and lifestyles creates the need for technological innovation and vice-versa. The emergence of smart city initiatives is the outcome of the growing challenges and necessity for accommodation for the huge population. Read more

What are the steps to introduce CRM in your company?

Firstly, congratulate yourself for having crossed the first and the biggest barrier – choosing to opt-in for a CRM. You are about to unleash a huge business transformation. Your CRM will soon replace all your slow, manual tasks with lightning speed automation. It will allow you to get rid of the myopic view of your customers and unveil the incisive data points. Your customer relationship management software would literally amplify your customer engagement and nourish your customer relationships. But before all of that happens, you need to set it up the right way.

No lesser than 3 years ago, the CRM failure rate was anywhere between 18% and 69% on average. The figures raise the need to follow a sustainable approach to plan and implement your company CRM. Read more

What is a Low-Code Solution?

The IT era is ruling every business in today’s world. Every day, multiple businesses are transforming their core operations into digital entities. We’re witnessing a huge transition of physical products, services, and processes into digital systems. However, the adoption of digital transformation in business leaves most CIOs with a primary concern – the lack of digital strategy and expertise within the team. The existing organizational structure and the absence of software development expertise can be detrimental to a digital transformation strategy. As a result, we see numerous businesses giving up on the dream of a 100% digital transformation success too early. Read more

Is There Any Free CRM Software?

Are your sales teams still working on tables and spreadsheets? Do you still use emails and other conventional means to keep track of your team’s progress? Well, if this is true for your business, it is a sign of danger.

The danger here lies in the fact that manual processes of managing leads and customers slacken the pace of the entire organization. Customers start getting frustrated, teams lose their time and efforts in sluggish paperwork, and eventually, customer relationships degrade. Read more

Do We Need Digital Transformation?

If something unconventional tries to change the way you do business, apprehension arises as clear as day. Digital business transformation is a revolutionary concept that is looked upon with the same hesitation. Digital brings in disruption, and often it appears to be more expensive as compared to traditional practices.

But the bird’s eye view reveals a different scenario. Technology is an essential enabler. It no longer remains the hurdle in the race. Technology is providing great opportunities for businesses to expand and grow beyond any limitations.

To decide whether you need digital business transformation, let’s find out what it actually means.

Read more