Automate your applications and processes
Process flows in Thinkwise
Thinkwise is a low-code application platform for complex business software. In this blog, we zoom in on the platform's process flow engine, which enables you to automate processes in the application. These can be process or user interface steps performed by users, or system actions that run in the background. An example of a flow can be when the software automatically switches a user to another screen or performs an action in the background such as automatically sending a mail with a PDF as attachment. These flows are drawn and configured in the Thinkwise development environment and save your end-users an incredible amount of time.
You can initiate these flows through user action in an application screen, but also from other tools or an API. Additionally, these flows can be executed automatically at planned times in the background.
New business models
What makes the flows particularly powerful is that they easily communicate with external messaging services such as Azure Service Bus or AWS Simple Notification Services. This lets third parties remotely execute actions such as calculations, reports, or data manipulations. These flows enable the creation of entirely new business models, which can be made available as a (potentially paid) service. An external service provides the input values, and the flow makes a calculation and returns the result in, for example, a PDF or XML file.
Protocol independent
As a developer, you can natively expose these flows using the OData protocol, but they can also be made protocol independent. In that case, the Thinkwise Service tier listens to external endpoints and receives all kinds of http-based requests such as XML SOAP or RESTful JSON messages. This is extremely useful in a complex application landscape to connect applications and link to IoT devices.
The number of possible actions with the Thinkwise process flows will continue to increase with new versions of the platform and uploads in the Thinkstore. The flows are also extremely flexible in terms of maintenance. Thanks to clever architecture, you won't even need to compile or redeploy code since services are automatically updated as soon as you change the process drawing.
Try it for yourself?
Would you like to try this for yourself, or do you have a good idea for a new business model, then ask Thinkwise to set up a trial environment!