Introduction

Cordys Process Factory (CPF) is a Web browser-based, integrated cloud environment where business users can rapidly build complete applications, allow organizational users to use them, sell them in the marketplace, and also subscribe for applications built by others in the marketplace. All of this is achieved through visual modeling, without having to write a single piece of code.

Building Applications Using CPF

The idea behind CPF is that business users who are closest to the business problem should be able to quickly create applications to solve their problems and help them and their teams become more productive faster.
When a user gets a CPF account, the user can access the 'CPF Composer' from where the user can create new applications. The Composer allows the user to use the following features, all through graphical modeling:

1. Create Forms

The Composer enables users to create rich Web UI forms (webpages) by dragging and dropping from a wide variety of UI widgets such as text, date, currency, number, and float fields, check boxes, radio buttons, buttons, picture fields, URL Viewer, etc. Users can also create tabs, groups, grids, attachments, and comments, and embed external gadgets. Users can drag and drop Web services on to the form. The UI for the Web services will automatically be created by adding the input and output fields defined in the Web service and a button to trigger the Web service.
The user can also add form rules to dynamically display messages, hide, unhide, enable, or disable UI widgets, assign values, create formulas, etc. Apart from all these modeling capabilities, if at all required, users can also add Java scripts that will get triggered during the various form events.

2. Create Application Objects (Tables)

When a user creates a form, optionally, application objects can be created by the system automatically to persist the information entered in the forms. Users can also model the application objects, specify the primary key fields, unique fields, and required fields, and relate application objects to one another, model the logic on what has to happen when records are modified, etc.

3. Create Business Process Models (BPM)

CPF enables users to create business process models through modeling. The models can be as simple or as complex as required and can be triggered by various events such as on modifying database records, on click of a button, or on invocation of a Web service.

4. Consume Web Services

It is very easy to consume third party Web services such as those exposed by Google, Sales Force, Strike Iron, other CPF applications, etc. Web services can be used directly in forms (E.g., trigger the Web service on click of a button and display the results on the form) or in business flows (Web services can be triggered during the flow – the inputs for the Web services can be mapped easily and also, the output of the Web service can be mapped to other components.
CPF can also automatically create Web services for the application that is being built so that other applications or third parties can invoke these Web services. Users can also model advanced Web services.

5. Build Reports and Charts

One more cool feature of CPF is the ability to enable end-users to create reports and charts instantly. Various types of reports such as standard reports, group reports, and matrix reports can be created and the output of the reports can be as PDF, HTML, MS Word, or MS Excel. Users can also select the fields that they want in the reports, group and sort on multiple fields, set the layout properties, etc.
Charts can be positioned in reports as well as in forms, and they can be 2D or 3D bar charts, pie charts, line, area, doughnut, scatter, and bubble charts for either single-series or multi-series. Charts can also be configured to be drill-down charts.

Out-of-Box Features Provided by CPF

To build applications of enterprise quality quickly, CPF provides a lot of out-of-box features including login page, home page (displaying user tasks, notifications, etc.), security, user management (users, privileges, roles, groups, direct reports, responsibility delegation, etc.), organization structure, personalization, mailing, organizational announcements, data uploading, allowing anonymous access to forms, exposing forms as gadgets and viewing them from iGoogle, integration with Google spreadsheets, etc.
Applications built on CPF can be easily packed and sold to other organizations. So, this enables ISVs to build applications and sell them from CPF’s marketplace as SaaS products. Organizations can sign up for products available in the marketplace and if needed, easily customize the product (forms, flows, etc.) to suite their requirements.

Conclusion

Visual Basic was one of the early Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools that redefined how Windows-based applications can be developed quickly. CPF goes a step further and offers a Web environment where users not only develop SaaS-based Web applications, but also pack, sell, and customize their applications from within the same environment. It provides one of the most rapid and complete development environments to build enterprise-ready applications through complete graphical modeling and a whole range of out-of-box features, and thus reduces the time from “idea to market” very significantly.

Trivia

1. Enterprise Quality:CPF, a high performance, highly secured, multitenant, PaaS platform running on ‘High Available’ servers in reputed data centers provides an enterprise quality on-demand environment for developing, advertising, selling, and running applications.
2. Base Platform:: CPF runs on the proven and highly scalable Cordys platform.
3. Private CloudsIn scenarios where running applications from "public clouds" is not feasible due to several factors, such as Government regulations, compliance, etc., CPF can be deployed as a "private cloud".
4. On-premise Data:On-premise data can be brought into CPF using Web services. In case the data is behind firewalls and the corporate IT policy blocks Web service calls into their network, the data can be securely accessed using Google App Engine and Google's Secure Data Connector (SDC).
5. MashApps:Applications built on CPF are commonly referred to as MashApps. A MashApp® is a process-centric Web application that is available on demand. Users can combine capabilities from two or more existing systems to build a value added single MashApp®.
6. Environment Friendly:: CPF, by reducing the resources (servers, cost, time, and developers) that are needed to build and maintain applications, helps your company 'Go Green'.
7. Learning Curve:: Learning application development in CPF is very quick; intuitive UI, detailed tutorials, and online help available from within the Composer help the user do self-learning and master the platform within no time.
8. Cost and ROI: It reduces the development cost dramatically (much lesser number of developers are needed to develop applications; applications are built much quicker with high quality and much reduced maintenance efforts; there is no need to buy a lot of hardware for development servers, test machines, build machines, etc.), thereby enabling a faster ROI for the ISV and lesser TCO for the customers who use the applications built on CPF.
9. Applications:Some of the applications that have been built or are in the process of being built using CPF are: Employee On-Boarding, Expense Management, Sales Quote Approval, IT Service Request, Leave Request, Requirement Management, Issue Tracker, Contact Management, Weekly Time Card, Purchase Order Management, Service Invoice, Class Schedule, 24-Month Sales Forecast, Simple Budget Planner, etc.