March: Data explorer, multi-resizing, new components

Summary

• 🧭 Data explorer: You can now examine the schemas of your data sources and inspect the data of each table within the workspace, regardless of whether it is a SQL database, Google Sheet, or MongoDB collection.
• ↔️ Multi-component resizing: To save time, resize multiple components simultaneously, rather than resizing them individually one at a time.‍
• 🔢 Data Grid component: This new component is designed to help you display large amounts of tabular data easily. With a dynamic set of columns and powerful conditional formatting options, you can customize it to fit your needs. You can also use custom HTML and markdown - the possibilities are endless!‍
• 👷 Editor environment switch: Tired of switching between the app editor and the deployed app in the workspace? With our latest update, you can seamlessly switch between staging and production data without ever leaving the editor!‍
• 🏞 Image component: With our new Image component, you can now embed pictures in your apps using their public URLs.

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Let’s break it down

Data explorer

We are thrilled to announce the release of our most powerful feature yet - the data explorer! As you know, integrating your apps with your data sources is essential to app development. However, so far it has been difficult to understand your underlying data structure without querying it within an application. Our data explorer changes all of that! You can now explore your data schemas and tables, and inspect the content of every table without having to write any queries. With this feature, data that was once hidden in your sources is now accessible and transparent to anyone with appropriate access rights.

The data explorer is available for various sources, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, Snowflake, MongoDB, and Google Sheets. You can conveniently switch between staging and production sources using the environment selector.

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Multi-component resizing

You can now resize multiple components at once, eliminating the tedious task of resizing each component individually.

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Data Grid component

The Data Grid component allows you to display tabular data in a dynamic and flexible manner. Unlike the regular Table component, you can work with a flexible set of columns. Additionally, you can freeze a configurable number of columns, which remain sticky when scrolling horizontally. This feature is particularly useful when dealing with a large number of columns, allowing for easy navigation through your data.

You also have full control over the content displayed in each cell. You can use custom markdown or HTML to render cells, giving you maximum flexibility and control over the data displayed. Customizing cell colors is also possible, enabling you to highlight specific data points or apply conditional formatting based on the values.

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Editor environment switch

You can now switch between data source environments directly within the app editor. This feature is particularly useful for those who follow best practices and keep their staging and production data separate.

By default, the app editor uses the staging environment of your data sources, which is important for testing and developing applications. However, it's often useful to test an application or investigate bugs with production data. Previously, this involved a time-consuming process of adding debug logs, deploying the application, going to the workspace, testing, and then going back to the editor.

Now, with the ability to switch between environments within the app editor, this process has become much easier. You can switch to the production data environment with just a few clicks, allowing you to test your application with real data without ever leaving the editor.

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Image component

Images are essential for many apps, whether to display product pictures or partner company logos. With this new component, you can easily embed image URLs.

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Additional improvements

• Assigning permissions to open invites: You can now assign app permissions to pending invites, so when a user signs up, they'll automatically receive those permissions immediately. This streamlines the onboarding process and ensures a smooth experience for everyone involved.
• Whitelist Google Sheets: The Google Sheets integration is a favorite among Uify users. However, we understand that you may not always want to share your entire Google Drive with your colleagues. That's why we've added the ability to whitelist specific sheets, with access to all other files in the same account being denied. With this feature, you have more granular control over your data, ensuring that only the necessary information is shared.
• “View as”: Customizing app functionality for different user groups or permissions is a common use case. However, testing it has traditionally been difficult, as it requires multiple logins for different user types. With our latest update, you can now preview your app for any user in your workspace, ensuring seamless functionality for everyone. No more guesswork or multiple logins required!
• Highlighting unused actions: In complex applications, there are often a substantial number of actions involved, making it challenging to determine which actions are actively utilized and which ones are redundant and can be removed. To assist with this issue, redundant actions are now highlighted with a lighter font and a tooltip, making it easier for you to keep your actions organized.
• Performant JSON preview: Previewing and debugging the outcome of action runs is an extremely useful aspect of app development. However, sometimes the preview contains very large structures that cause performance issues. This issue has been resolved, and the preview now runs seamlessly even with extremely large objects and lists.
• Bug fixes & improvements: On top of all the features mentioned above, we applied 34 additional bug fixes and improvements 🚀.

We hope that these new features will help you build powerful apps with ease. Our team is already working hard on the next round of updates, so stay tuned for more exciting developments!

As always, please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or feedback!

Happy building,

Dom