It would be very nice if Demo Apps that are published together with new version of a Forge Component are hosted by OutSystems instead of ones own Personal Environment or Enterprise Environment. This would solve at least 2 issues that I currently experience.

- Makes sure that a Demo App is not mutated due to development on the forge component. This prevents errors when the owner updates the demo app. It will also prevent the possible expectations because a Demo App shows functionality that is not available via the published Forge component. 

- A PE can be shutdown when some time has passed. Any "Try This" link will then become disabled and thus removes the ability for people to checkout the component before downloading it themselves;

- The "Try This" link is pointing to an OutSystems environment instead of a PE/EE. This will prevent people to find other apps on the current PE/EE environment and try to retrieve certain Intellectual Property (the knowledge of existence of an app can already tell a lot). 

- It will make sure that Forge Components will always have a working demo app. This is in the end a good thing for OutSystems as a working, vivid and living "Open Source" community is valuable for both existing as upcoming customers. 

Good idea! 

Create a public server where forge component examples can be available for users to test.  Currently when publishing examples to your personal environment, it tends to get inactivated frequently and then the samples you include on forge don't work.

Good. Multiple components with 'Try Now' unavailable.

Try Now always available.

So does it sound familiar? 

You press the Try Now button on a forge component, and you get the "HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable."

Most likely most of the demo applications are in a personal environment of the developer and the environment is put to "sleep" because of the rules that put personal environements into "sleep".

It would be nice if OutSystems could arange that personal environments that are used in "Try Now" button on Forge components are not going into "Sleep" mode.

The Forge components let you put a URL for a demo for the component. If that URL is a Personal Environment, and if it is verified that the URL has a demo for the component there, then the PE should never be put to sleep or shut down.

J.Ja

Yes, definitely agree with this, although the recent changes to the Forge allow you to add the demo as a separate upload on the component which is then made available for download. This makes sense, but, as a developer, I want to see how to do something and not necessarily just the final result.

Yes, I know, you know this Justin. Perhaps this is just for some legacy scenarios? Perhaps there should be a push to move away from the Try Now URL and only require the demo uploaded as part of the component?

I was the one who had the idea for the separate demo app on components. ;) So... I like BOTH! This way I can check it out and see if it is worth the download first. :)

J.Ja

Ah okay, makes sense.