The Business Agility Blog

Microsoft Outlook

Integrate with Microsoft Exchange Server

Mendix offers an out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft Outlook Exchange server.

Advantages:

• Associate emails with data in your app (for example customers)
• Synchronize contact information
• Synchronize your task list

Technical features

• A .net based plugin in your outlook client to retrieve meta data from your web app
• A server side Exchange connector allows you to synchronize or use data from your Exchange Server

Thank you for taking the time to take the features tour. To get an in-depth look into the Mendix Agile Business Platform, please:

Documents

Easily create document templates

With Mendix you can generate documents based on document templates. A document template consists of layout information and the data it should contain. Document templates can be created within your modeling environment and they can produce documents in several formats.

Advantages

• Export your application data in user-friendly formats
• Easy and fast adaptation to new requirements; no custom coding needed
• Easy -to-use WYSIWYG editor

Technical features

• Export to various formats: PDF, Word (.doc and .docx), HTML, and RTF
• Use application data as input
• Customize document layout using the modeler or CSS for advanced layouts
• Document templates are based on familiar form builder widgets such as data grids and data views
• Support different images formats for logo’s etc

Learn all about generating documents with Mendix:

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Single Sign-on

Single sign-on enables users to sign in once to get access to multiple web applications, Mendix or otherwise. Using Mendix, user authentication and management can be integrated in your existing IT infrastructure.

Advantages

• Sign in once for all your Mendix applications
• Integrate user management with your existing infrastructure
• Users only need to remember one password increasing the likelihood that they choose a safe password

Technical features

• Single sign-on can be used to centralize user management and authentication in your company environment
• It can be used in combination with both Mendix and non-Mendix applications
• The application bar allows you switch between different applications
• Integrate with existing LDAP, NTLM and Kerberos services

Learn all about setting up Single Sign-on with Mendix:

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Theming

Apply your own look & feel

Mendix makes it easy to integrate your application into your corporate branding using themes. With a theme, your own look & feel can be applied to any Mendix application using your own CSS. It is even possible to switch themes runtime, or use different themes based on the current user.

Advantages

• Customize the graphical user interface of your application to integrate it into your corporate branding
• Switch themes based on the current user (for example his user role or his department)
• Create a theme once, and apply it to any Mendix application you want

Technical features

• Easily theme everything you want by using consistent widget templates
• Build your theme upon a well-tested browser compatible default theme
• Re-use your CSS by defining classes on almost every element in the modeling environment

Learn all about theming Mendix applications:

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Plug-ins

Extend Mendix yourself

The Mendix platform gives you the option to create your own plug-ins both for the web client and the server. You can create your own library of reusable components which can be shared through the AppStore.

Advantages:

• Create your custom widgets using an Eclipse based SDK (Dojo, Jquery or other Javascript frameworks)
• Import custom widgets to the modeling environment to easily configure and apply them to your app
• Create your own Java libraries to extend the Mendix Runtime Server
• Share your plug-ins with others via the Mendix App Store

Learn all about extending Mendix with plugins:

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Custom Code

The Mendix framework can be extended by custom code written in the Java programming language. Even though for most applications the standard functionality is more than sufficient, custom code enables you to fall back on a general purpose language in the case that you need extensions.

Advantages

• Use Java to write highly specific code for your application
• Tap into the vast ecosystem of existing Java frameworks
• Add features you need without having to wait for a new Mendix release

Technical Features

• Proxies for entities of your domain model are generated by Mendix
• Add your own library files (.jar) to extend the functionality of the server

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Integration

Integrate your app with almost any other system

In essence, Mendix is a 100% Java based application, meaning you can use all integration options the Java community has to offer. On top of this Mendix offers templates to quickly integrate with systems in different ways, including the Web Service DSL.

Advantages

• Use the complete Java stack to integrate with other systems
• Use the Web Service XML mapping DSL to import and export XML files
• Use templates to quickly import data from:
• • Excel and CSV files
  • Relational databases
  • Directly use BAPI’s from SAP

Technical Features

• Supports XSD files to quickly define XML structures
• Provides out of the box synchronisation features

Learn all about Integration with Mendix:

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Web services

Web services make it possible for two applications to communicate in a standardized way. A simple example of web service is a service that returns the street name for a given zip code. The Mendix platform makes it not only easy to call services in other applications, but also to expose functionality of your application as web services for other systems. All the low-level details are handled under the hood.

Advantages

• Import web services in just a few clicks. There is no need to deal with all the low-level intricacies of the web service description language
• Expose functionality of your application by publishing a microflow as a web service
• Visually define the mapping between your domain model and the XML world

Technical features

• Call web services directly from microflows
• Import a web service description (WSDL) into the Modeler and define a mapping between Mendix objects and XML
• In more complex cases, microflows can be used to convert and combine values and to customize the mapping in other ways
• Two-way visual mapping of domain model and XML to allow for complex parameters and complex return values
• When publishing a microflow as a service, the necessary code (WSDL) is automatically generated and can be used by external systems (Mendix or otherwise)

Learn all about Webservices with Mendix:

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Reporting

Get real-time access to management information

Forget about weekly or monthly report runs. With Mendix you can create real-time management dashboards directly in your web app. Aggregated data can be presented in the browser using matrices, pies and graphs.

Advantages

• Zoom to other more detailed reports enabling data mining
• Show the data in different kinds of graphs such as: line, bar, pie charts
• Export to Excel, easily export your reports to Excel
• Easily apply filters in your reports (Show me only the results for this option)

Technical features

• Create datasets using Object Query Language (OQL) Java and SQL
• Dynamic OQL queries for filter options
• Easily constraint data in reports for different users and roles through the integrated security DSL

Learn more about Reporting:

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Security

Security in Mendix has two sides: you want different people to see different parts of your application and you want to prevent unauthorized access. Both of these can be managed from the modeling environment. Access to forms, data and microflow can be limited to authorized users with our award winning security features.

Advantages

• Allow different people to see different forms and data
• Prevent unauthorized people from meddling with your system
• Role-based Access Control

Technical Features

• Specify security at the level of forms, microflows and data in the domain model
• Advanced instance-level security: “People in this department cannot see orders from other departments”
• The menu bar is optimized based on the forms you are allowed to access
• Disable security temporarily while prototyping to increase development speed
• Map your app userroles with exisiting user role repositories LDAP, Kerberos and NTLM

Learn all about Security with Mendix:

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