Following the previous chapter, we talked about the product form of low code, why so say, I personally know that there is unlikely to be a universal low code platform in the market, the purpose of low code is to adapt to a specific field, to solve the problem of lack of developers, complex process, low development efficiency in this field. Therefore, it must be applicable to a certain field, such as the construction of marketing H5 page, the definition of workflow and so on.

There must be a strong dependency on the domain model, which is the product form of that domain. And the design of the product is crucial. I’m going to give you a couple of cases, just for discussion, right or wrong.

Let’s take a look at the shop decoration backstage, in fact, the components in the field of marketing are relatively complete, but also suitable for small programs.

Compare the normal left, middle and right patterns

  • The Component Add button on the left is responsible for adding components
  • Intermediate visual preview, both delete and sort functions
  • Select component properties on the right, including page Settings and component list

I have also done similar work, but the demand on the components is not big, should have all. Version control is added, which is the historical operation record. This will be covered in detail in the next technical implementation article. We are only talking about product form here.

We see this type of page-type editor, one of which is business-neutral, similar to a simple H5 generator. Personally, I like Maka, but other things are also good

The other type is e-commerce platforms like Youzan and Ali. These products are related to platforms because they are connected by e-commerce ecology, commodity system, sales system and other data. These systems can provide many characteristic components, such as seckill, search, commodity display, shop information and so on.

Marketing page generation system advantages are obvious, users visual use, no professional skills, only need to configure according to some documentation.

There are also some limitations:

  • Flexibility is limited by components, although a large number of templates are used to compensate. The problem mentioned in the previous article is that users can hardly be satisfied 100%, only users compromise, the possibility of fine-tuning is very low
  • Loading efficiency is a problem because components are usually loaded once, and components are created dynamically based on the contents of the configuration list. Component code still has to be loaded in, and as the number of components increases, the amount of code to be loaded increases
  • Data loading amount, for example, generally such a system can have goods module each commodity components are made according to the page Settings when commodities dynamic request information, if a page, similar to the activity venue page, there will be a lot of commodity components, 30 total some personal experience, this time problem is too much ajax requests will slow down the speed

Generally, the above problems also have corresponding strategies to solve. This needs to be explained in the next chapter. For a moment, let’s talk about the impact of product strategy on technology. Similar to this kind of show-centric page-type operation, an inappropriate idea of the product can make the front end busy and confused. But there are sound product strategies to respond to. Examples are as follows:

  • Display effect requirements, stability, no error, no white screen. It needs to be fast. We can’t keep our customers waiting too long.
  • Business needs, rich components, is the market we have to have, do not have the hope to have. For example, in order to show more products in an organized way, similar to the classification of components, for better control of page structure, similar to layout requirements
  • Routing demand, with the improvement of marketing operation ability, many activities are carried out in the form of theme activities, not a single page of publicity, often a conference concept, will set a lot of single pages to form a series of pages to conduct activities, so it needs to control the ability of routing
  • There will be a need for targeted placement on the activity page. For example, some activities will only be carried out in Hangzhou, and regions outside Hangzhou will not participate in the event. The page should have the ability to display according to the region, and some activities will be carried out in a certain channel, while other channels will not be carried out.
  • The need for data collection, the purpose of the campaign is still to retain customers, and hopefully there are portals for users to leave some information. So that the subsequent liquidation.
  • The need of data analysis, generally speaking, the page to access the data in the future will can improve effect of activity, after the user behavior data analysis, in order to provide policy support for the follow-up activities, simple uv, pv already cannot satisfy the needs of the present operation, but with 3 d data, such as commodity clicks, users in the retention time of the page, User access links throughout the activity.

The above points are my personal practice of low code platform in marketing page construction should be considered. Can not say that every direction is perfect, just targeted optimization. See the next section for specific code ideas.

Back to us, let’s discuss the low code in the field of workflow. Due to experience, I have only developed the workflow platform of Alibaba Intranet, that is, the approval module of Dingding. There is also a questionnaire system for the medical industry. Workflow system, from the definition of workflow, to the development of self-service forms are involved. Dingpin Approval was developed in 2015 and the current developers have taken the product a big step forward.

A typical feature of this type of product is to accomplish a certain amount of work, which can be composed of nodes of various independent functions to form a directed acyclic graph. Generally divided into

  • Start node, conditions for service initiation
  • Operation node, with certain service execution capabilities, such as approval, with certain permissions, such as judgment conditions, operator Settings, etc
  • Conditional nodes, that is, according to the execution results of the previous node to judge the conditions, to different branches
  • End the node, reach some result, and exit the workflow.

This kind of operation is actually very simple to develop, the reason is that it is basically background operation, there is no special flow pressure, and display effect requirements. And the operation is often done on the PC side, the code is high fault tolerance. The only requirement is to cooperate with the workflow engine according to the business definition, the UI and corresponding function Settings of each node can be completed. There is also the completion of the work in the workflow, almost all need some data, that is, the form in the current workflow, initiator or process node operations are often around the most initial form operation. Such as leave, travel, equipment acquisition, entry, exit, all require a raw form, which carries business data. Along with this comes a self-service form system, or a questionnaire system, or whatever it’s called, which is a data entry tool.

This type of form system is not complex in terms of UI, and many tool component libraries provide form components. Personal experience suggests that there are several important points worth noting (2 projects, an Alibaba workflow, a healthcare industry questionnaire system).

  • Validation of data, since it is data input, there are some necessary validation, such as mandatory items, as well as some format validation required by data analysis. For example, a mobile phone number, a form collector doesn’t want you to fill in unnecessary text. Form components in general provide some basic validation, but there are exceptions where the user has some special validation, such as combinatorial validation, and the results of several form items do not combine correctly
  • The control operation, which often appears in many questionnaires, is the control ability of the form field, judging what content to fill according to the value of a certain content. This is especially true in healthcare. For example, if you choose gender, male, then you can’t fill in the date of menstruation. So in a medical questionnaire, this is a very simple example, usually it’s gender, age, department, height, weight all together to determine what you’re going to fill in.
  • Automated filling, why do we talk about this, this is also found when doing a similar form system, when there is a lot of data to fill in, the form-filling people always hate. Or the medical industry for example, my name, gender, age, department, height and weight and other fixed information is not in the doctor or multiple check-up hospitalization are filled in, but also filled in together, not humanized. With the use of many AI technologies, the filling of forms is becoming more and more intelligent. If it can be filled automatically, it will be filled automatically, and if it can be selected, it will not be input by users.
  • Form effect: In the early days, everyone was used to the structure of waterfall flow. With the development of mobile, the form structure has changed, and there are more styles. At this point, I still appreciate the approach of Material – UI. Although the form is mainly to collect data, isn’t it nice to make it beautiful and novel

Conclusion: Product form determines the technical solution of the front end. So I always think that an excellent product will really make an Internet company. You want to destroy a product, you get the wrong product manager. There is a low code platform general product managers do not do well, so you front-end students must think more about the product, only the front-end can do a good job of low code, not to argue.