If you still live in SEU, PDM, WDSC, RDi, or what-have-you, and you’re ready to take the leap into Visual Studio Code, then this post is for you. Combined with the IBM i Development Pack extensions, you can use VS Code to quickly and intuitively edit, compile and browse IBM i source members and IFS files, along with many other nifty...Read More

While many Nitro App Builder users are well-acquainted with the common formatting options for dates, currency, and numbers, the Miscellaneous category tucked inside the format configuration window often flies under the radar. Yet these readily available formatters for certain types of values can instantly make your grids and forms far more intuitive and visually polished...Read More

In our previous NAB tip we described a new feature for designating certain filter fields as mandatory in order to minimize record set sizes and ensure desired indexes are used for better performance. In today’s tip we’ll expand on that topic with yet another simple but powerful filter-related feature, this time focusing on the aesthetics behind the...Read More

In today’s world of massive IBM i tables — think millions of rows in customer, order, inventory, or transaction files — it’s easy to unleash an ocean of data on your users (and your system) with just one unfiltered grid load. Developer feedback from the front lines of this phenomenon drove us to add a Required Filter...Read More

In a typical modern business environment, users working with data-heavy grid apps need to locate records quickly without scrolling through hundreds of rows. A single-field global search box placed prominently at the top of a grid can be an essential productivity tool, allowing end users to type a customer name, invoice number, product code, or any...Read More

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a multi-row grid with embedded cell images could be worth… millions! Most users are well-accustomed to the humdrum of spreadsheet-like grids loaded with row upon row of text. In some cases overrides to fonts, text colors or cell background shades can effectively draw attention to abnormal or...Read More

Recently I’ve had some fascinating conversations with people regarding Nitro App Builder, the low-code app builder included with Valence.  In case you’ve never heard of it before, Nitro App Builder is a tool that’s quickly taking over as the development method of choice for many apps that would have been coded manually in Valence just a...Read More

Nitro Query apps containing charts or graphs can make conveying your company’s business trends or performance metrics much more effective than showing raw numbers alone.  It’s particularly common (and easy) to create a dashboard app that includes a grid of monthly sales details supplemented by a chart showing month-to-month performance.  This adds some great context...Read More

Just about every business has a situation where users need to perform a single process against multiple items in one pass.  For example, you might have a list of open invoices that you’d like to flag as ready for payment, or a group of inventory items that you would like to transfer out of a special holding...Read More

Wrapping up 2017 with a simple but powerful tip for Nitro Query grid apps… Very often lists of business data include columns that can be classified as boolean, with text representing values of yes/no, true/false, 1/0, etc.  When you’re creating a Nitro Query grid app that includes such columns, you can make “truthy” values stand out...Read More