Release 30th of May 2022
It’s been a while since we did a major release, but we haven’t been sitting still 😉. You might be thinking, did they rename ACR? Well, kind of, but there is more than meets the eye. So first, let us explain the rationale behind this release and what we want to achieve.
Why the release?
Through our years of bringing software quality to the Mendix community, we’ve gathered valuable feedback from the community and gained valuable knowledge on the Mendix platform and its missing elements. We created several products that truly empower Mendix teams, but they do it on a stand-alone basis. If we are to deliver on our mission:
“Create lovable products that empower Mendix teams to deliver an out-of-this-world software experience for their end-users”
We need to go beyond what we know; we need to evolve. Our products need to work together. Through that synergy, we need to deliver a single lovable experience for all members of the Mendix team and empower them to deliver that out-of-this-world experience to their end-users. But how can we evolve?
We know that software quality plays a crucial role in the end-users experience. So how can we help organizations and their people to take control of quality further while at the same time making it more efficient and generating more business value?
One of the best methods to increase the quality of your software, and the experience for your end-users, is by going DevOps. Ultimately, DevOps is about meeting software users’ ever-increasing demand for frequent, innovative new features and uninterrupted performance and availability.
But doesn’t Mendix already facilitate DevOps? True, Mendix has drastically simplified the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) with its low-code approach and brought Dev and Ops closer together to the extent they are largely intertwined. However, no organization can do it independently. When we look at the concept of DevOps, there are still some crucial missing pieces. Mendix brought the most value to the deployment side, drastically simplifying the process and required effort. But when we look at the testing side, the automation of quality checks is still lacking. It is here where we can genuinely empower Mendix teams with our solutions.
With great pride, we announce our first step in that direction. Today, we introduce to you the CLEVR Dev Suite. This single platform DevSecOps add-on for Mendix empowers organizations and their people to gain the most value out of Mendix. In the end, we want to achieve the following:
- We complete the Mendix DevSecOps practice by adding the missing elements such as static and dynamic analysis for code and security while reducing the effort to automate deployments.
- Empower organizations to govern and control the overall SDLC of Mendix applications built by professional developers or citizen developers without negatively impacting innovation and velocity.
- The powerful synergy between static and dynamic analysis allows us to provide powerful insights and help Mendix teams prioritize and divide their attention. Answering the critical question, where do you need to improve your Mendix app to gain the most value?
- Reduce the complicated tech stack, a single solution for every member of the Mendix team. From developers and delivery managers to operation and security specialists. We adhere to the DevOps principles of bridging the gap between the people involved in bringing your Mendix applications to your users.
So let’s dive into what this first step means for you.
What we changed
No, we did not just give it another name 🙄. It is not just a rebrand; we worked effortlessly to make drastic improvements to your experience. We believe user experience is the backbone of every software application. We don’t only want to empower you to deliver an out-of-this-world experience to your end-users; we want you to feel that same way while using the CLEVR Dev Suite.
We don’t want to ruin the entire surprise, so let us go through the most significant changes so that you can experience the hundreds of small changes yourself.
Overall rebrand, style change, and landscaping
We rebranded and restyled ACR, AMS, and CI/CD and made them more consistent. We also took a critical look at our screen landscaping to optimize it. Don’t underestimate the effort!
At the same time, we set up our Design System for the future. A wise investment that will pay us back in the future by allowing us to release a consistent and lovable experience quickly. We hope you enjoy this more pleasant experience across the various modules and that it feels more cohesive and intuitive. We want you to fall in love with the CLEVR Dev Suite while using it.
It is about you, not about us.
Previously the navigation of our products forced you to decide between a product, for example, ACR, and then you could choose your app. It was a product-centric approach.
We got a large amount of feedback on this way of navigation. It felt counterintuitive, disconnected from your goal. You are right; it was counterintuitive. You are using our products because you want to gain insight into your Mendix application(s). Whether you are focusing on security or code review, you want to improve the experience on one of your apps; it is the immediate context. With this new release, we made your lives easier. You now choose your application before going into a specific product, and we provide the option to quickly switch apps (aka switch context) without all the clicks.
We hope this user-centric approach improves your lives and is another step towards true empowerment.
ACR, AMS, APD, ATS, wait, what? Which was security again?🤔
The amount of demos we’ve given where people got confused about the naming of our products is tremendous. If we got Nickle, well, you know the saying 😉. We recently found out via Support that a customer refers to us as the “A-tools.”
Now, that doesn’t sound too bad, but still. We want people to understand what problems we are solving for them and not confuse them with naming conventions. This new direction means we have a single platform solution that empowers you to govern the quality of your apps through code review, security, CI/CD, and performance. As part of this direction, our current products become modules in the CLEVR Dev Suite.
- Application Code Reviewer (ACR) becomes Code Review
- Application Model Security (AMS) becomes Security
- CI/CD, well, remains CI/CD. It was pretty clear from the start.
- Application Performance Diagnostics will, over time, become Performance. But that is the next step 🐾.
You don’t have to worry about licensing and your contract; this is purely a product change. We will let you know when these changes impact the business side.
Powerful violation filtering
We gave a massive update to the filtering of violations. In the ‘old’ filtering of violations, you might have experienced the following pains:
- The filters were already in use, meaning you first had to reset the filtering before applying the filtering you wanted.
- The filtering deviated from expected standards, making it less intuitive to use.
- You could not quickly see the category of a rule.
- The filtering was slower, with a large number of violations.
- It was difficult to see what violations were selected when many rows were present.
- And more.
With this new release, we addressed these pains.
Of course, this is a continuous journey, so if you have any feedback on we can further improve, we love to hear your thoughts!
Thank you
Last, we want to thank all our users and customers for their time and the valuable feedback you’ve given us. It is the foundation on which we built our solutions; we wouldn’t exist without it. So keep that feedback coming and empower us so we can empower you 😁.
We hope you enjoy the new release!
This major release has a totally new look and feel.