🚀 Turbocharging Low-Code Development with AI Resources
Introduction
Low-code development has rapidly emerged as a game-changer in the world of software development. By enabling both developers and non-developers to build applications with minimal hand-coding, low-code platforms are accelerating the speed of development, simplifying complex tasks, and improving overall efficiency.
OutSystems, a leading low-code platform, is setting new benchmarks by integrating advanced AI capabilities, making it possible for organizations to “turbocharge” their development processes.
This article explores how AI-driven resources within OutSystems elevate low-code development to new heights.
Smart Process Automation and Workflow Enhancement
Smart Process Automation (SPA) is redefining how businesses manage tasks, and with OutSystems’ AI-driven capabilities, workflow automation has become smarter, faster, and more adaptable. Here’s how OutSystems leverages AI to drive workflow enhancements and streamline processes in low-code development
In OutSystems, AI-Assisted Development is a powerful tool for smart process automation and workflow enhancement. This feature leverages AI to guide developers in building efficient workflows by providing context-aware suggestions for the next logical steps. This not only accelerates the development process but also reduces the chance of errors, making it especially valuable in complex applications.
Automated Condition Checks: By suggesting conditions based on previous steps, OutSystems AI eliminates the need to manually define logic, which is especially useful for developers working on complex branching workflows.
Built-In Best Practices: The AI suggestions are based on OutSystems' best practices, which means developers, especially those new to the platform, can follow standardized approaches to structuring workflows.
Reducing Errors in Workflow Design: By recommending accurate steps, AI helps developers avoid mistakes, improving the reliability of the application from the ground up.
Enhancing Developer Confidence: For developers who are new to the platform, AI guidance acts as an assistant, helping them build with confidence and adhere to best practices.
Real-Time Feedback: Stakeholders can see how the workflow logic is structured and can provide input as the AI suggests steps, enhancing collaboration across technical and non-technical team members.
Visual Workflow Mapping: The AI suggestions integrate seamlessly into OutSystems' visual editor, helping users visualize the process map and understand how each part of the workflow fits together.
Intelligent Data Mapping and Integration
One of the standout features of OutSystems is its ability to simplify complex data mapping and integration tasks. With the help of AI-driven intelligent data mapping, OutSystems streamlines data connections, auto-fills relevant fields, and offers explanations of code suggestions to help developers make precise adjustments. This is especially useful for integrating applications with existing databases or external data sources.
Automatic Data Mapping for Faster Integration
OutSystems uses AI to automatically map data fields when connecting to external systems or databases. This reduces the manual effort required to map every data attribute individually, which is time-consuming and error-prone.
- Autofill for Data Types and Relationships: As seen in the screenshot, OutSystems can recognize the context of an entity attribute (e.g., "Owner") and suggest an appropriate data type, like "User." This smart mapping aligns data types and relationships, ensuring compatibility across data sources.
- Smart Data Recognition & Generation: OutSystems’ AI identifies and auto-suggests the best match for each field, minimizing inconsistencies and making it easier to integrate data from multiple sources.
OutSystems can connect with external CRM databases and map data fields, ensuring that customer information is synchronized across systems without manual intervention.
OutSystems intelligent data mapping and integration significantly accelerate development and improve data accuracy. By automating much of the setup process, OutSystems enables developers to focus on building functional features rather than on configuring data structures.
Automated Interface Generation and Optimization
OutSystems has integrated generative AI to make low-code development even more efficient. With OutSystems, developers can leverage AI to automatically generate data tables, forms, and other UI components by simply dragging and dropping data into the design canvas. This not only saves time but also minimizes manual coding efforts, making it easier to build complex applications faster.
Traditionally, creating a data table in a development environment would require manually defining fields, data types, and database structures. OutSystems' generative AI eliminates this by allowing users to drag and drop a dataset directly into the canvas. From there, OutSystems automatically generates a fully functional data table, which can then be customized as needed.
Beyond just data tables, OutSystems’ generative AI can also create basic UI components based on the data structure. This means that by simply dragging and dropping data, developers can get a head start on creating forms, lists, and dashboards tailored to that data.
Auto-Generated Forms and Lists: For data tables created with generative AI, OutSystems can automatically produce corresponding input forms and lists, eliminating the need to manually design these elements.
Built-in Data Binding: The generated UI components are pre-configured to be linked with the data table, making it easy to create CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations.
AI Mentor Studio Dashboard
OutSystems’ AI Mentor Studio Dashboard is a powerful tool that leverages AI to oversee the complete lifecycle of applications. With four key mentors—Architecture Mentor, Maintainability Mentor, Performance Mentor, and Security Mentor—this dashboard ensures that applications are built according to best practices, perform optimally, and remain secure and maintainable over time.
By automating critical checks and providing actionable insights, the AI Mentor Studio Dashboard enables development teams to reduce technical debt and focus on delivering high-quality applications.
Firstly, you must ensure that you have everything configured so that AI Mentor Studio works for the intended OutSystems software factory and with the intended users. In order to ensure that this step is resolved successfully, you must follow the OutSystems instructions at the following link
How to set up AI Mentor Studio : https://success.outsystems.com/documentation/11/monitoring_and_troubleshooting_apps/manage_technical_debt/how_to_set_up_ai_mentor_studio/
Once everything is configured and the data is synchronized, we can then analyze the technical debt of our applications on the Apps canvas
Each representation on the canvas (rectangles with rounded corners) corresponds to an application. In the content of each representation you can check the name and type of application (Traditional, Reactive, Mobile, Library, Service) represented.
The color each representation has identifies the severity and how high the technical debt of the related application is. Technical debt translates into the difficulty and effort required to maintain an application and its modules.
The AI Mentor Studio Dashboard in OutSystems provides a detailed report that highlights opportunities for optimizing application performance and reducing technical debt. With insights from AI-powered mentors—Architecture, Maintainability, Performance, and Security—this tool identifies specific issues and recommends fixes to streamline application development and ensure sustainability.
Architecture Mentor: The report highlights an "End-User module providing services," which goes against best architectural practices. The Architecture Mentor advises restructuring this element to ensure modules are used as intended. This keeps architecture clean and minimizes dependencies, enhancing app scalability and lifecycle independence.
Maintainability Mentor: With issues like “Duplicated Code” and “Long undocumented flow,” the Maintainability Mentor can suggest removing redundant code and documenting complex flows. These adjustments simplify the app’s codebase, reduce clutter, and ease future modifications, ultimately lowering technical debt by nearly 20%.
Performance Mentor: For flagged issues like "Long Server Requests Timeout" and "Large image" elements, the Performance Mentor offers suggestions for speeding up response times and reducing resource usage. By optimizing these areas, your application will run faster and more efficiently, improving the end-user experience.
Security Mentor: If there are any security vulnerabilities detected the Security Mentor would immediately highlight them and provide actionable fixes to safeguard sensitive information and ensure compliance with security standards.
By applying the insights from the AI Mentor Studio Dashboard, development teams can achieve a more optimized, secure, and maintainable application. This powerful AI-driven tool automates essential checks, offering clear action steps to enhance overall application health and streamline future updates, making OutSystems a valuable asset for modern, high-performing applications.
Conclusion: Smarter Development with AI
In a world where speed and innovation are key, OutSystems’ AI-powered tools redefine what's possible in low-code development. From Smart Process Automation to AI Mentor Studio, OutSystems integrates advanced AI resources to streamline workflows, boost productivity, and reduce technical debt, empowering developers to deliver high-quality applications faster than ever.
By turbocharging low-code development with these AI resources, you’re not just building apps you’re creating scalable, optimized solutions in record time.
Ready to experience rapid, intelligent app development? Dive into OutSystems and see how AI can accelerate your next project!