large and/or multiple project design

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large and/or multiple project design	5/19/2020 11:18:09 AM
ASPRunner.NET General questions
T Tim author Hi all, I want to outline a couple of challenges I have with project design and I would love to find out if others have similar struggles and how you approach the design. Here are two scenarios: I have several applications for a company - like HR Portal, Staff Portal, Supervisor Portal, Sales Data, etc. Each one is a distinct project/application with unique URLs, menus, securities, and data connections (but many of these are the same and could be shared between apps). On the Staff Portal application I have a "Links" page, which is a database table that stores links to all the other apps. This works ok, but it lacks a cohesive feel. Each app is really independent (though I do try and make them look similar, and have a "home" link back to the staff portal). It would be great if all applications could share a menu - or maybe a "top level" menu, which would allow you to navigate to the other applications, and then get the sub-menu associated with that app. I know there is a robust menu editor in ASPR with the ability to do sub-menus, but I have never really figured out how that works. And in this case, the sub-menus are actually another application, so not easy access to their page links in ASPR - they would all be "external". The second scenario is kind of the other way around: I have one application that is huge with many sub functions (job/process functions, not software functions) within it. Building this all in one project is good because all sub functions share a menu and it's easy for the user to navigate around. But from a development standpoint it's a bit unruly. Inevitably I am doing some work in one section, and then need to quickly fix something in another section and publish, which publishes my half finished work from the first section. In 10.3, the new "draft" mode for pages helps quite a bit, but isn't perfect (especially with projects that I upgraded from previous versions, seemingly). And these large projects just don't perform as well in the ASPR development app - the app seems more clunky and can take a very long time to build. What would be great is if there was some kind of "master" project that managed data connections, menus, securities, shared code/functions,URLs, headers, styles, etc. - and you could associate "child" projects, and in the child projects you could just focus on a smaller group of tables/views, pages, and events. I haven't fully thought this through, but the concept seems like what I'm after. So am I missing something in my approach? Does anyone else struggle with this, or have a good solution? Would project templates be a way to achieve this concept of smaller projects pulled together into one larger, cohesive application? Thanks for reading. Tim

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	jadachDevClub member 5/19/2020
	Where I work we have about 70 ASPRunner.Net apps in the environment. They range from small to large and very complex. All access is driven by AD security groups and all apps use dynamic permissions. We have one master app that includes our entire portfolio of work. We keep track of things like app name, app purpose, app owner, system dependencies, servers used, etc, etc. We also keep track of where each app is published (URL) and AD group(s) associated. Then on the home page of our Intranet we show, what we call, "My Custom Apps" section. There authenticated users who have access via AD will see the name of the app they have access to via a clickable hyperlink as soon as we add them to the appropriate AD group. This has worked well. We bypass logging in to apps by setting up the permissions allowing Login automatically from the security tab of ASPRunner.Net. Now everyone has easy access to what they need access to.


	Pete K 5/20/2020
	I like your approach, Jerry.


	FrankR_ENTA 5/20/2020
	Where I work we have about 70 ASPRunner.Net apps in the environment. They range from small to large and very complex. All access is driven by AD security groups and all apps use dynamic permissions. We have one master app that includes our entire portfolio of work. We keep track of things like app name, app purpose, app owner, system dependencies, servers used, etc, etc. We also keep track of where each app is published (URL) and AD group(s) associated. Then on the home page of our Intranet we show, what we call, "My Custom Apps" section. There authenticated users who have access via AD will see the name of the app they have access to via a clickable hyperlink as soon as we add them to the appropriate AD group. This has worked well. We bypass logging in to apps by setting up the permissions allowing Login automatically from the security tab of ASPRunner.Net. Now everyone has easy access to what they need access to. Considering developing future apps with the REST support, or will you continue to just use the database support?


	jadachDevClub member 5/20/2020
	Considering developing future apps with the REST support, or will you continue to just use the database support? Not really understanding the question, but we are definitely going to be using the new Rest API, it is awesome!!


	FrankR_ENTA 5/21/2020
	Not really understanding the question, but we are definitely going to be using the new Rest API, it is awesome!! Good. Looking to network with others who use it. I have a first app with 2 REST connections and 5 or so views, and I'm interested in learning more about what can be done programmatically. Such as: Inside an event, initiate a connection, get status, and say something to end user Inside an event, initiate a REST view, and retrieve the results into my own list, not necessarily immediately binding to a page Not just consumption of existing REST APIs, but Creation, and then securing and scaling I created a REST thread for discussion.


T	Tim author 5/21/2020
	Thanks all. Jerry, that is exactly how we are setup, but you store more info about the apps in your master app (which I think I'll start doing now; good idea!). When you launch a subsequent app are they completely independent with their own menus? Is there any menu sharing between apps, like a "home" button? As I was typing this I just had a light bulb go off. What I'm looking for, basically, is a shared menu that allows you to navigate to any app from any app. It occurred to me that this is the list of apps that exists on the master app. All I need to do is query this table from each app and either build a menu from this or just show a list page, similar to the master app. I could even create a details table of the apps table to be able to create a tree-like menu structure. Basically, make the menu data driven. Wow, I'm embarrassed I hadn't thought of this sooner. Some mornings the coffee is stronger than others, I guess. Thanks. Stay Safe. Tim


	jadachDevClub member 5/21/2020
	Thanks all. Jerry, that is exactly how we are setup, but you store more info about the apps in your master app (which I think I'll start doing now; good idea!). When you launch a subsequent app are they completely independent with their own menus? Is there any menu sharing between apps, like a "home" button? As I was typing this I just had a light bulb go off. What I'm looking for, basically, is a shared menu that allows you to navigate to any app from any app. It occurred to me that this is the list of apps that exists on the master app. All I need to do is query this table from each app and either build a menu from this or just show a list page, similar to the master app. I could even create a details table of the apps table to be able to create a tree-like menu structure. Basically, make the menu data driven. Wow, I'm embarrassed I hadn't thought of this sooner. Some mornings the coffee is stronger than others, I guess. Thanks. Stay Safe. Tim Our apps are so very different and unique to one another. We have different audiences and different purposes. Our Intranet is current SharePoint. For users, they see what we deliver and use those links to navigate app to app. This works really well as users only see links to apps they have access to. So this part of our home page is very dynamic. I don't see a big need to have one apps to link to others when our Custom Apps Access serves that purpose. The master app is for my team only. This is our control area. We also use it to show our leaders our portfolio.


	admin 5/22/2020
	Just wanted to add that we understand the importance of the issue of handling large projects. We were thinking about having sub-projects that you can build separately and that will inherit menu and security settings from the master project. Unfortunately, there are too many other things that need to be taken care of and that are more important.


T	Tim author 5/22/2020
	Wow, that will be great! I see how this is maybe not the highest priority, but it will be very helpful. It'd be great if the sub-projects could inherit code (custom buttons, field events and custom_functions.cs) too. Thanks!


F	francg 5/23/2020
	Just wanted to add that we understand the importance of the issue of handling large projects. We were thinking about having sub-projects that you can build separately and that will inherit menu and security settings from the master project. Unfortunately, there are too many other things that need to be taken care of and that are more important. Hi, Sergey can you advance us what are those things more important... I think was very good idea when you did it with the version 10.4 so if you can do the same with version 10.5 would be nice. Also I like the idea aboout large projects, having sub-project, is just my case and can be a very good new function to this great tool. Thank you...

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