The ContextThe Covid-19 crisis and the restrictions placed over a great number of businesses (changes in the way services and goods are provided, business hours, if they are allowed to even operate at all) as well as the movements and habits of the population – are forcing us to reinvent most of what we took for granted until a few weeks ago (going to a restaurant or getting a haircut).While the big retail giants will survive this crisis (some players in this economic landscape will even thrive) – the small business owner is in a very fragile position right now. The small neighborhood restaurant or Mom and Pop Store aren´t equipped to handle this new reality – they need to adapt and overcome. The ConceptThis concept is called: My Local Business AppWhat we propose is an app that connects the small local businesses to the local consumers – and even beyond, via delivery services – if applicable. The  My Local Business App  would allow consumers to know exactly what goods and services are being provided by small operators in their vicinity and resorting to them instead of using the great retail chains.This app would be more that a directory of local businesses – think of a one-stop-shop for addressing your needs using local vendors.Need some meat to cook the family dinner? Use this app and check immediately your local butchers, promotions and discounts, and place your order via the App or a phone call.Don´t want to cook, but you´re still in lockdown and can´t get out? – maybe the restaurant down the street is making one of your favorite day´s specials.Define what you need – See the alternatives available – Select your option. Simple as 1-2-3. The ValueEconomic Stability - small business owners will be most affected by the Covid-19 ´s impact on the economy. If the economic fabric is to remain healthy and dynamic and If we don´t want to see the extinction of these businesses in the short and medium term, they need to be reinvented to adapt to this new reality. If walls and movement restrictions are being created – bridges must be created too: digitally.Social Stability – “saving” the small businesses is not a mere philanthropic effort. Helping these businesses adapt to the new post-Covid reality is a way of ensuring there is less unemployment, less bankruptcies, less stress on the social security system – and ultimately guaranteeing more prosperity. The ChallengesDigital Literacy – some local business owners may not have the degree of digital literacy required to operate a dashboard relative to their business.Awareness – business owners needed to be made aware of the existence of this app and the processes necessary to be included in this directory. The same goes for the consumers. Extension Possibilities / Other ApplicationsIn a post-Covid scenario, this platform could be a valuable resource by providing real-time information about all types of goods and services providers in a given geographical location.Further down the line – as the movement and circulation of people returns to normal levels, it can be adapted to server other industries such as tourism – when on holidays the user can have quick access to information about small businesses in the area he´s located. Technical FeaturesThis solution will be divided in three working areas: the mobile app, the web app and the Backoffice:My Local Business Mobile App   and My Local Business Web App   – Both the mobile and the web app, are used by Subscriber Users and Local Business Users to connect the suppliers and the consumers. Both apps will also include a GPS tracker so that it can narrow down the Local Businesses available to the specific request of the Subscriber User.Backoffice web app – platform only accessible by users with an administrator role and where all the platform’s configurations are set, including:User’s management Payment system structured so that the services can be paid directly through the app The TeamWe are a team of professionals from the OutSystems partner: Outfit – Tailored Agile Solutions, aiming to give our contribution to mitigate the public health, social and economic impacts and consequences of the Covid-19 crisis in our society in both short and long term. https://www.outsystems.com/partners/PartnerProfile/54622/OutFit/

Currently, developers in OutSystems must publish their changes to validate them, which can result in unnecessary merges and conflicts in the published version, impacting other developers. By adding a “Test Before Publish” button alongside the existing One-Click Publish, developers can validate their changes in isolation before committing to the main application. This would significantly reduce unnecessary merges, minimize code conflicts, and introduce a branching-like development approach within OutSystems. To achieve this, we can enhance the system tables by introducing an additional entity to store a temporary test version (OML file). The process would work as follows: When a developer clicks “Test Before Publish”, their unpublished changes are stored in the new system table as a test OML version. The system loads and runs this test version in a browser, allowing the developer to verify their changes without affecting the published version. Once testing is complete, the developer can either: Proceed with One-Click Publish to merge the tested version into the live environment. Discard the test version if changes need further refinements. When a test version is published, the corresponding temporary test OML is deleted, ensuring no unnecessary version history is created in the system. Key Benefits: Reduces Code Conflicts: Developers can validate changes independently before merging, minimizing disruptions to other team members. Prevents Unnecessary Merges: Avoids publishing half-baked changes just for testing, keeping the main application version stable. Optimizes Version Management: Instead of creating multiple versions per developer, each user gets a 1-to-1 relationship with their own test version. Enhances Development Workflow: Aligns OutSystems development more closely with a branching strategy, improving efficiency and collaboration. Focus Areas & Considerations: Database Schema Changes & Data Consistency Since pointing tables remain the same between the actual and test version, database structure changes could affect the actual version. A strategy needs to be devised to prevent schema conflicts or ensure changes don’t disrupt the live environment. Resource Utilization & Performance Considerations Running a test version as an independent worker process could create additional load on the server. A more efficient way would be to execute the test version within the same application context, ensuring that no extra server overhead is introduced. Handling Application Hosting Since the test version is treated as a separate execution instance, we need to define how it will be hosted while still sharing the same application resources to prevent unnecessary performance degradation. By addressing these potential challenges, we can make the Test Before Publish feature a powerful addition to OutSystems Studio, enabling safer, faster, and more efficient development.

Creation of a shortcut key set for the main widgets (If, Switch, For Each, Run Client Action, Run Server Action, Aggregate, Assign ...) to make development time easier and faster. Can be used for screen widgets too (If, Container, Expression, Label, Input ...).

It would be great if the list of forum posts could display the name of the person who posted the question. Currently, we can only see the name when we open the post, but it would be helpful to have this information visible in the list. We already display the name of the last person who replied, so it should be feasible to also display the name of the person who posted the question.

Hi guys,I looked to see if this idea had already been launched. In my opinion and that of countless colleagues, the autonumber of static entities is a danger. Because, we do not control this ID (autonumber), when tables are passed between environments, and this can cause bugs. I don't think it brings any added value. I can give the example that all the static that I create, and the people who work in the companies I have been to in the last 3 years, nobody uses the autonumber.Regards

we having an only one forge for excel to json convertion dynamically any excel file we gave it convert to Json that call the third party apis, sometimes getting an error on that not working fine, if we have to do that from outsystem, that is my idea need to do from our outsystems we upload a excell file and it convert to as an Json

It would be helpful to be able to import/export OML data about a module to a structured plain text file. This would allow developers to use git for storing code changes. Using git could solve branching/merging and code review concerns for changes to modules in the platform without having to build those features in Service Studio or other management tools. Features that would be helpful related to this Export an OML to structured plain text (xml, json, yaml, other). Import from plain text into service studio. Deploy using this format (ties into using third party CICD to deploy to various environments. Ideally, branching/merging, code reviews, unit testing would be more fully implemented in OutSystems but this feature would allow a "quick win" for teams trying to achieve this functionality.

Now that we have the Personal Environment we can have multiple developers using their own environments to develop code. What I (and others) hadn't realized is that if you do this you cannot share the eSpaces unless you have an Enterprise license or you upload to the Forge. Obviously if you are using PE you don't have the Enterprise license and if you are developing something that is not finished, proprietary or something that you might want to charge for, uploading to Forge is unacceptable. Just need an easy way to be able to share eSpaces so we can encourage development using PE.

In the screen shot below, I'm trying to quickly see where in the Screen Action/ Server Action the variable named LeadBroker is being used. I'd like to click on the variable name so that it is selected on the right and then each node in the left where the variable is referenced would highlight on the screen so I can quickly see how/why it is used there.Find Usages here works well, however if there are many usages on the screen, it can be difficult to quickly see all the nodes.This feature will save a lot of time when we want to assign another property of a variable or something like that.

Currently interaction with other forum users is not a chat style like social media, but sending individual messages.In the same way a floating chat icon exists for support (image below), a chat feature with other users would be a great add to the community.