Today, I’m going to talk about the automatic application generation from templates.

When PickaForm was a cloud-only solution, we could rely on IBM Domino server functionality to copy / paste entire application structures and their configuration documents.

From the moment PickaForm started to become on-premise, then multi-instances, this solution posed a major problem: where to centralize the application models? How can an X server access the databases of a Y server without cross-certification between servers?

Clearly, we could simply no longer rely on the basic functionality of the Domino server, and we had to find a new system to centralize the application templates.

For this, we have created a JSON format to define all aspects of a PickaForm application: forms, lists, tags, document templates, workflows, and plugins.

PickaForm is able to export an application in this format, but most importantly, can rebuild a complete application from this format.

In this way, when an X server wants to download an application template from a Y server, it no longer needs a cross-certification: it just accesses the application’s public and static JSON file.

Concretely, this also means that we can share PickaForm applications simply via a simple text file!

This new system for sharing applications via simple text files (JSON) will be finalized very soon, and will undoubtedly open new perspectives of use to PickaForm!

We will write a more comprehensive article on the subject when the new PickaForm store is officially put into production in February.