Organization of complex apps

Questions
1

So a lot of app builders out there and this question is for all of you. When an app gets increasingly complex it becomes more and more difficult to remember and understand the effects an action or change might have on the rest of the app. To keep track of everything becomes increasingly challenging. What methods do you use for organization? Anybody have a template I can print or use that will help me understand the implications of changing x or y? Or how to list things in such a way that i can easily reference it later when adding a new function or area? As a new developer with big ambitions as far as apps go I would love to hear how you all organize…and maybe get an organizational template or two…thanks

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2

I did a bunch of work in my desktop version, and now that I’m starting the mobile versions (using groups instead of pages), I felt that I needed to be very neat so that’s what I did:

  • Renamed all the elements to something meaningful

  • “Group A” > “Profile main buttons”

  • Choose a color code to workflows

  • Server actions>orange, navigation>blue, etc

  • Rename workflow after setup and test

  • Rename “when click button A” to > “Login process”

  • Fill out all the notes/comments!

  • Fill out while it’s fresh in your head - they’re in the data and elements tabs, for example

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3

I find that the ‘and when’ type conditions in workflows makes things visually complex.

For example consider a button ‘expand/collapse’ where
if a list is expanded it should collapse and if its collapsed then it should expand.
To achieve this simple thing, you’ll need to create a data variable / custom state and 2 separate workflows which differ in the ‘and when’ condition.

Personally, I feel it could be made visually simpler by changing the way bubble displays workflows a bit: If there was main workflow ‘displayed as current: When button is pressed’; and Sub-workflows for the ‘and when’ options in kind of a tree structure underneath the main workflow…

Has anyone else found this painful and been able to come up with an elegant approach ?

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4

How did you manage to rename the “Group” elements? I am not being able to

5

in the property editor the “element name” is it’s header. Click the header and change the name. :slight_smile: That’s reflected everywhere in bubble.

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6

What are some best practices for using the notes field? …What information are you writing down, etc.?

7

I am working on a project management app that’s all about tasks for teams. Tasks are a single data type in my database, but tasks can have a lot of different “statuses” for the user: Completed, Assigned to Current User, Assigned to Others, Waiting On Something, etc. There are actually about a dozen statuses, and I made great use of the notes feature to keep track of how and where they’re assigned a status or when their status has changed. A SUPER big help was writing down the case-sensitive spelling of each status (because the status field is just a text).

The bigger my apps have gotten, the more I’ve had to write things down so I don’t forget how I built a feature or why a workflow is set up a certain way. Labeling goes a long way, but after you literally have hundreds of pieces working together, it’s smart to to take notes for yourself or even collaborators… maybe especially collaborators :slight_smile:

Gaby | Coaching Bubble

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8

Thanks. Do you take notes on each element or on the page as a whole? …I can see pros and cons with each.

9

It really depends on the case. For the example I just mentioned, I took those notes on the data type in Data Tab.

I’ve had payment workflows with a few conditionals that I just wanted to explain to myself, so I wrote those down on the workflows.

I try to keep things organized by placing the notes on whatever it is they’re referencing, but for global things, I’ll place on the page. I also try not to have notes in too many places because then it’s kind of counter-intuitive to be spending time hunting down all my notes haha.

10

Yeah, makes sense. Thanks.

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11

I take notes on specific items only at the moment. When apps grow like @romanmg talks about it makes A LOT of sense to have a better system for taking notes. An idea for an added feature I’ve been thinking about would be to be able to print a wireframe or flow chart or something like it for the app. That’d be helpful.

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