Please Share your Product Ideas with us!

With the move from Cransoft to DSP our standard webapps have been removed from the Admin -> Webapp screens and the Design option in the toolbar has been disabled.  I understand the intent here in that we don't want users modifying our standard content.  I am finding several large unintended consequences with this though and would propose we allow access on a limited scale.

• Debugging
  • When we experience an error on a page or functionality that is not expected we no longer have any means in which to debug the page.  This is causing substantial overhead on the product support team as we cannot provide clear information as to what is causing the issue and cannot resolve simple issues on our own.  While we get an error message on hard errors, we don't have any means to debug issues when the behavior is not expected.  Previously we could look at the page properties and have some understand of expected behavior.  It is also more difficult to debug the user error issues that really should not have to go to support in the first place.
• Report Pages
  • Since we cannot add additional pages in a webapp, we are not able to add reports.  If we could add pages and the drop down for page type was restricted we could add additional reports as we always have.  Alternatively, an alternate interface for report creation could be implemented.  When we go into a webapp and navigate to a report page, it used to be simple to click 'Add Page' and add additional reports.  I think there is still a strong need to be able to quickly create and register these reports in every webapp.
• Service Pages
  • Similar to report pages, we are no longer able to add service pages in webapps.  As a workaround we are able to add them to Construct.  However, this is not always logical or clear when many of the service pages relate specifically to a standard application.  If we are intended to use Automate in lieu of service pages then it will need a number of enhancements to be a fully functional webapp.

To be clear, I am not proposing that we give Admins full developer access to the webapps like they had previously.  I think if we can some combination of read-only access and restricted access to add/customize certain features that would be sufficient.  I would certainly like to avoid having to coach users on how to go through the back-end database to work around these limitations.  I fear that knowledge could easily be misused.

An alternative approach would be to allow more customization options in the settings for DSP and each webapp.  If we had an alternative place for webapp settings rather than webapp design that developers use we could allow report creation, service pages, help pages, etc.  I think it would also be beneficial to include custom fields that can be used for client specific purposes and other user and/or client customizations that can be implemented without modifying the actual code of the application.  Appearance settings such as color scheme, look and feel, etc. would be a fairly obvious one.

Thanks for reviewing this.

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