Mendix 10.13: Complete Summary of Version Updates

Mendix 10.13: Complete Summary of Version Updates

Following thesuccessful release of MTS 10.12 last month, this month’s 10.13 release is designed to empower developers and enhance the overall user experience across various aspects of the Mendix platform.

From enhanced performance in Studio Pro to the addition of new features—such as Maya Domain Model generation, improvements to UI Builder, mobile enhancements, AI features, Governance updates, OIDC Provider enhancements, and Cloud improvements—this release is packed with valuable additions.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the key highlights of Mendix 10.13, including the new features, improvements, and updates that will enhance your development experience and enable you to build even better apps.

Pro Studio

Performance

We’ve improved performance in Studio Pro once again. The text editor is now much more responsive and provides immediate feedback, and copy-and-paste operations are also much faster. These improvements will allow developers to create apps even faster!

Maia: Domain Model Generation

In this release, we are extending Mendix Maia with support for generating domain models. After enabling this experimental feature in Studio Pro preferences, you will see a "Generate Domain Model" button on an empty domain model. By selecting it, you can tell Maia what data you want your domain model to capture. This can be very detailed, for example, “Create an ‘A’ entity with ‘B’ and ‘C’ attributes,” or it can be very generic, such as “I need a domain model for a time-tracking app.” With this first version, you can use Maia to generate the skeleton for a new domain model, which you can then refine and complete. This should save you considerable time when modeling a new domain model, but it will also help you consider the right entities for your application.

Improvements in UI design

Combobox – Automatically populate the label and display the selection

The Combo Box widget has been updated with two improvements. First, the widget now automatically sets the label based on the selected attribute, simplifying the configuration process for developers. Additionally, we’ve added the ability to expose the selection. This means that the selected object can now be used directly for data visualizations, microflows, or nanoflows anywhere on the page, without needing to use non-persistent entities and associations. This provides developers with enhanced flexibility and control.

Data Grid 2 – Export Custom Content Columns

The Excel export feature of the Data Grid 2 widget has been improved. Previously, users encountered challenges when exporting data grid columns with custom content, as the default was to export the value “n/a.” In response to user feedback and a highly upvoted post on the Ideas Forum, we have introduced the ability to set a specific export value for custom content columns. This allows users to set a dynamic text value that accurately represents the data when exported, addressing previous limitations and ensuring a more consistent export process. Additionally, users now have the option to leave the export value blank, preventing the export of unnecessary data and maintaining the integrity of the Excel spreadsheet.

Improvements for mobile devices

Push notifications for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

Push notifications are a highly sought-after feature in mobile apps, offering a direct line of communication with your audience. Thanks to Mendix’s Push Notifications Connector, integrating push notifications into native mobile apps has been a breeze. However, push notifications were not previously available for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
Good news: push notifications are now available for PWAs too! The setup process mirrors that of native mobile apps, ensuring a smooth and familiar experience for those already familiar with the system.

The new web-based push notifications work on PWAs on iOS and Android devices, and the module is compatible with Mendix 9.24 and later versions.

React Native Update

Mendix is committed to providing cutting-edge technology that ensures your applications are reliable and secure. For native mobile apps, this means we frequently update our key dependencies—including React Native and its associated modules—to enhance your native mobile apps.

In our latest release, React Native has been updated to version 0.73.8. This significant update improves compatibility with the latest Android and iOS operating systems and boosts JavaScript performance thanks to the integration of an updated Hermes engine.
Please note that a new version of Make it Native is required to take full advantage of these improvements.

Enhanced data recovery in offline-first applications

Filtering objects across multiple associations is a common practice. Imagine an inventory app that tracks products across multiple warehouses and sections. While displaying a comprehensive list of all products in a specific warehouse—including all its sections—is easy in online Mendix apps, it poses a challenge in an app designed primarily for offline use.

With this release, we are introducing the ability to traverse one or more associations in data sources and Nanoflows for offline-first applications. This enhancement simplifies the retrieval of the right objects, especially within complex offline domain models.

Fallback page for page/microcast URLs

Mendix offers enhanced flexibility in URL management, allowing you to create custom URLs to trigger specific pages or microflows. In the past, encountering an unrecognized URL would result in a standard error page.

But that’s a thing of the past! Now you have the power to designate a specific page or microflow to respond to these requests for unknown pages. It’s as simple as setting a fallback page within your navigation profile. For those seeking a more customized approach based on the accessed path, assign a microflow equipped with a ‘Path’ parameter. This update is designed to simplify your application modeling process, giving you the tools to build the applications you envision with greater ease and precision.

Mendix Connection

Snowflake: OAuth for the Mendix Data Loader

With the latest update to Mendix Data Loader, developers can use OAuth as the authentication method. Mendix Data Loader leverages Snowflake’s native application framework and is designed to simplify the extraction of operational data from Mendix applications directly into the Snowflake environment. Unlike our other Snowflake connectors, Mendix Data Loader is available on the Snowflake Marketplace.

Endpoint Configuration for OData REST APIs

Some REST best practices and guidelines require that API endpoints use a specific naming convention. For example, all endpoints must use Kebab case. To ensure that your OData REST APIs comply with these guidelines, we now allow you to specify an alternative location for your endpoints in version 10.13.

AI

ChatCompletions with the Converse API within the Bedrock connector

ChatCompletions operations have been updated to use the Converse API, making it even easier to get started with your favorite conversation model. The Invoke model operations within ChatCompletions operations are replaced by a call to this new API, as it was designed specifically to create conversational applications that send and receive messages to and from any Amazon Bedrock conversation model.

We recommend using the new Converse API, as it provides a consistent experience, is easy to use, and makes it easier to “evaluate” different models within the context of the application. Depending on the model family itself, the following features are supported as an integrated experience: System prompts, Vision, and tool usage (function calls).
When new models or conversation families become available, they are automatically supported as part of this new Converse operation.

Image generation with Bedrock and OpenAI

Last month, we introduced a unified way to use text generation and chat responses with OpenAI’s GPT models, Anthropic’s Claude, and Amazon Titan from Bedrock. We’ve now introduced the same for image generation. You can now switch between DALL·E 2 and 3 in the OpenAI connector and Amazon Titan image generation in the Bedrock connector to easily compare the different images generated. Check out the OpenAI Showcase app for an implementation example.

Simplified embeddings and the PgVector knowledge base

In the latest version of the Bedrock Connector and the OpenAI Connector, we’ve made it easier to create your own augmented retrieval configuration. Typically, you can take advantage of our out-of-the-box integration with hyperscale services, such as Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases, for use cases where you want to feed your own data into the large language model. Sometimes, however, this isn’t a good option, and you need a “do-it-yourself” solution. The PgVector Knowledge Base module does just that for you.

With a simple set of toolbox items, you can now define knowledge related to Mendix Objects, generate embeddings for it, and store it in your PgVector-based knowledge base. To do this, you can use the Amazon Titan and Cohere Embeddings models via the Bedrock connector or the text-embeddings models from the OpenAI connector. In the latest version of the OpenAI Showcase app, you can see how you can train your LLM on your private data using a Retrieval Augmented Generation configuration and how you can use this to make suggestions to the user based on historical data.

Click here to send a message in the chat

We’ve implemented one of the most requested features in our Conversational UI module: press Enter to send, or Shift+Enter to start a new line. We’ve made it possible to align with the experience your users expect when interacting with any large language model in your conversational UI. This is also included in the AI Bot Starter App so you can get it right away when building your own private, enterprise-grade solution similar to ChatGPT.

Developer Portal renamed to Mendix Portal

We are no longer using the name “Developer Portal”; instead, we have renamed it Mendix Portal. We feel this better reflects the multifunctional and multi-user capabilities of Mendix Portal going forward.
Mendix Portal covers all aspects of our platform, including development activities such as

• Apps
• Implementation
• peaks
• App Information
• Portfolio management

…as well as entities such as Marketplace, Governance in the Control Center, Academy, and Community.

This change aligns with our broader vision of supporting digital transformation, not just faster application development. We delayed this update until now to ensure a comprehensive approach, and we have updated all documentation accordingly.

Simplified "Create New App" workflow

We’re excited to announce the redesigned workflow for creating new apps on the Mendix Portal, making the process faster and more intuitive than ever. All you need to do to create an app is choose a name, select an image (or use the automatically generated one), and select a Starter App. Adding a description is optional, but we strongly recommend that you do so for any apps that others in your organization might be interested in accessing.

Now you can take advantage of a curated selection of Starter Apps to help you get started on your next app in Studio Pro. If your company has an official Starter App, it will appear at the top of the list. And if you’re looking for more inspiration, there’s also a wealth of Community Starter Apps to discover in the Marketplace!

In the new workflow, you will always create an app in the latest version of Mendix. If you need to create an app in a different version, you can easily do so in Studio Pro or the Marketplace.

Governance

Improvements to Mendix Pipelines

Mendix Pipelines enhances the platform’s native low-code CI/CD capabilities, helping you automate software packaging and deployment without requiring DevOps expertise. With a set of configurable steps, you can design a pipeline in Mendix Portal to trigger automatically based on specified conditions, such as after a commit in TeamServer Git. Sit back and relax while automation with Mendix Pipelines saves you hours of effort. It is currently available for unlimited use in public beta. Check it out!

Mendix Pipelines continues to evolve. Here are the key features we’re introducing in this release:

Manual trigger

Deployments in higher-level environments, such as Acceptance and Production, typically begin with an explicit click after the release checklist is completed. To support these use cases, we have introduced a new trigger type—“Manual.”

Promote a phase of the implementation package

Once a deployment package has been tested in the test environment, it can be easily “promoted” to higher-level environments, such as acceptance or production, using the newly introduced “Promote Package” step.

Deep links for seamless collaboration

Have you ever wanted to share a specific pipeline run with a colleague to collaborate or debug? This is now even more seamlessly integrated with deep links to runs, run details, designs, and the configuration guide. The formats for these links are as follows:

• link/project/{projectid}/ is executed
• link/project/{project_id} /run/{run_id}
• link/project/{project-id} /Designs
• link/project/{projectid} /settings

Feedback loop

Try out the new features and let us know your thoughts using the Feedback widget on the right side of the screen on the Pipelines page. Your feedback helps us continuously improve our platform in ways that matter to you.

Use case example

Let’s look at a use case to illustrate how to use these features. A Mendix developer wants to set up the following pipelines. Watch the video below to see how you can get this up and running in just a few minutes!

Stay tuned for more updates!

OIDC Provider: Issuance of Client Credentials

The Mendix Marketplace offers Single Sign-On (SSO) modules that allow your Mendix application to delegate end-user login to your Identity Provider (IdP), such as Entra Id, Okta, etc. However, in some organizations, configuring SSO for each Mendix application creates an overhead that is either too costly or slows down innovation. In such cases, an SSO broker between your IdP and your growing portfolio of Mendix apps can be helpful. You can create a Mendix app that acts as an SSO broker using the OIDC Provider module, which is already available to you on the Mendix Marketplace.

In addition, if you are an Independent Software Vendor (ISV), you may want to create a multi-app solution that behaves like a single app. Again, the OIDC Provider module helps you do this. By including it in a central Mendix app, that central app can act as an IdP for the other apps. End users of your solution can log in to your central app using local credentials and enjoy an SSO experience across all apps in your multi-app solution without using an “external” IdP.

So, what's new in the OIDC Provider module?

We have now enhanced the OIDC Provider module to support an additional use case: API consumption. API security can be configured to use API keys, but this is not a recommended security practice. If you prefer to use OAuth tokens (also known as bearer tokens or access tokens), you have two options.

• Use human identities. An end user of your application (a customer) logs in using SSO, and the client application can call the API on behalf of the end user using the OAuth access token it received as a result of the SSO process.
• Use a machine identity. Machine identities are also known as service accounts or application accounts. In this case, access tokens are used by the client application to consume the API on its own behalf. The end user is not relevant in this scenario.

The OIDC Provider now supports the so-called Client Credential grant. This means that a client application can obtain a “client access token” by authenticating with the OIDC Provider and presenting that access token to the API it is calling. The API can validate the token by performing token introspection on the IdP or by validating the signature.

What's next?

Stay tuned for the next release of the OIDC SSO module, which will include a ready-to-use microflow that allows your API to validate the client’s access token.

Cloud

No more irrelevant alert notifications

We collect metrics for all applications running on the Mendix Cloud. This includes resource metrics, such as CPU and memory usage, as well as application metrics, such as concurrent users and requests received.

Based on these metrics, Mendix Cloud triggers alerts. If metric values exceed a specific threshold, the alert status will change. Users who subscribe to the alerts will receive an email notification, and alert notifications will also be sent via webhooks.

The alert thresholds for Mendix Cloud were the same for all applications, regardless of the cloud resource plan on which an application was running. This means that some alerts—specifically those related to resources—were triggered more frequently on smaller cloud resource plans, since these smaller plans have fewer resources and therefore use up a larger percentage of available resources more quickly.

We analyzed the alerts sent from Mendix Cloud and identified several types of alerts where we could set different thresholds for specific cloud resource plans. With these new alert thresholds, the number of irrelevant alerts for these plans has been significantly reduced. Alerts are now sent only when action is required. We will continue to analyze the alerts to see if we can make further improvements in the future.

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Eduardo Salerno

Eduardo Salerno is a specialist in IT portfolio and project management, with extensive experience in Planview implementations and digital transformation. At TWRT, he leads initiatives that bridge the gap between business strategy and technological execution.

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