EvonSys Mendix Community - Stay up to date for updates

"Building Better Apps Faster: Leveraging Mendix Templates"

Written by Tharun Kumar Reddy | Dec 7, 2024 5:13:11 AM

Mendix Templates

Mendix templates are pre-configured structures or patterns that help developers kickstart the development of applications within the Mendix low-code platform. These templates provide a starting point with predefined components, data models, user interfaces, and sometimes even business logic. Here’s an overview of Mendix templates.

The primary objective of using Mendix templates in application development is to streamline and accelerate the process of creating robust and scalable applications. Here are some specific objectives that Mendix templates help achieve:

  1. Speed and Efficiency: Templates in Mendix enable developers to start with pre-built components and structures, reducing the time needed to set up basic functionalities and user interfaces.
  2. Consistency and Standards: Templates enforce best practices and coding standards across projects, ensuring consistency in application architecture and design.
  3. Reusability: Templates promote reusability of components and modules, allowing developers to leverage pre-existing solutions for common application features.
  4. Scalability: By using templates, developers can easily scale applications as they grow, incorporating new features and functionalities without compromising performance or stability.
  5. Faster Time-to-Market: With reduced development time and standardized processes, Mendix templates help organizations bring applications to market faster, gaining a competitive edge.
  6. Ease of Maintenance: Applications built using templates are easier to maintain and update, as changes can be applied uniformly across projects based on template configurations.
  7. Empowering Citizen Developers: Mendix templates empower citizen developers and business users to contribute to application development by providing intuitive tools and predefined templates.

As for the functionalities we can divided Mendix Templates as following types:

Mendix offers several types of application templates that serve as starting points for different types of applications. These templates are designed to provide pre-configured structures, data models, UI layouts, and sometimes even business logic, allowing developers to kickstart their projects efficiently. Here are some common types of Mendix application templates:

Starter App Templates

  • These templates provide a basic, general-purpose starting point for new applications. They typically include essential features such as user management, navigation structure, basic UI components, and a simple data model. Starter app templates are versatile and can be customized to fit various use cases.

  • Example:

  1. Blank Web App
  2. Siemens Mindsphere Starter Application
  3. Blank

Industry-Specific Templates

  • Mendix offers templates tailored for specific industries or domains such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, or retail. These templates come with industry-relevant data models, workflows, and UI components optimized for common use cases within those industries. They can significantly accelerate development in specialized domains.

  • Example:

  1. Portfolio Manager
  2. Purchase Request
  3. Approval App

Process-Based Templates

  • Process-based templates focus on automating specific business processes or workflows within an organization. Examples include templates for order processing, customer relationship management (CRM), project management, or inventory management. These templates often include predefined microflows, data structures, and UI layouts tailored to streamline specific business processes.

  • Example:

  1. Complaint Management
  2. Asset Manager App
  3. Event App
  4. Test Buddy

Mobile App Templates

  • Mendix provides templates specifically designed for mobile applications, catering to both iOS and Android platforms. These templates include responsive UI designs, mobile-specific navigation patterns, and device-specific features such as camera integration or location services. Mobile app templates help developers create native or hybrid mobile apps quickly.

  • Example:

  1. Blank Native mobile Application
  2. AR Starter APP
  3. Atlas Design System
  4. Siemens Mindsphere Mobile starter Application

Integration Templates

  • Integration templates facilitate the integration of Mendix applications with external systems or services. They include connectors, APIs, and pre-configured workflows for integrating with popular platforms such as Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. These templates simplify the implementation of data synchronization, authentication, and other integration tasks.

Community Templates

  • Mendix has a community-driven template marketplace where developers can share and discover templates created by the community. These templates cover a wide range of functionalities and use cases, from specific widgets and UI components to complete application templates for niche industries or innovative solutions.

  • Example: News

Each type of Mendix application template serves a specific purpose, whether it’s accelerating development, ensuring consistency, or providing industry-specific solutions. Developers can leverage these templates to build robust applications quickly while focusing on customization and extending functionality to meet specific business needs.

Blank Web Application Template

The Blank Web Application template in Mendix is a foundational starting point for creating web applications with full control over design, functionality, and data structures. It provides a clean slate, allowing developers to build custom solutions from scratch without any pre-existing components or features.

        

Key Features of the Blank Web Application Template:

  • No Predefined Content: The template starts with an empty project, giving you complete freedom to design and build your application according to your specific requirements.

  • Customizable Pages: You can create and design your own web pages using Mendix’s visual page editor. This includes laying out components, adding widgets, and configuring user interfaces.

  • Flexible Domain Model: Set up your data model by defining entities, attributes, and relationships that suit your application’s needs. There are no pre-configured data models or entities, allowing you to create a custom schema.

  • Microflows and Logic: Implement custom business logic and workflows using Mendix’s microflows. You can define how data is processed, how users interact with the application, and how different components communicate.

  • Navigation Setup: Configure navigation elements to allow users to move between different pages of your application. This includes setting up menus, buttons, and other navigational components.

  • Security Configuration: Define user roles and permissions to control access to various parts of the application. This ensures that users only see and interact with the parts of the application relevant to them.

Getting Started with the Blank Web Application Template:

Create a New Project:

  • Open Mendix Studio Pro and select “New Project.”

  • Choose the “Blank” or “Empty” template under the web application options. This will initialize a new project with no predefined elements.

Set Up Your Domain Model:

  • Navigate to the “Domain Model” section in Mendix Studio Pro.

  • Define your data entities, attributes, and relationships according to the needs of your application.

Design Your Pages:

  • Go to the “Pages” section and start adding new pages.

  • Use Mendix’s visual editor to design the layout and functionality of your pages. Add widgets, data sources, and user interface components as needed.

Implement Logic:

  • Create microflows to handle business processes, user interactions, and data manipulation.

  • Use Mendix’s drag-and-drop interface to define the logic and workflows for your application.

Configure Navigation:

  • Set up navigation menus, buttons, and links to allow users to navigate between different pages of your application.

Test and Deploy:

  • Use Mendix Studio Pro’s built-in testing tools to run and debug your application.

  • Once you are satisfied with the development, deploy your application to the Mendix cloud or other hosting environments.

Use Cases:

  • Custom Applications: When you need a fully customized application without the constraints of pre-existing templates or sample content.

  • Unique Requirements: For applications with specific needs that require a tailored approach rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

  • Prototyping: As a starting point for creating and experimenting with unique application designs and functionalities.

OpenAI showcase Application Template

Showcase Application that shows how to use the OpenAI connector, which can be used to integrate generative AI-the Technology powering ChatGPT-into a Mendix app.

This project contains 8 examples use cases: Interactive chat box with history product description generation text complexity reduction Text to JOSN transformation demo date creation postcard (image) generation embedding vector generation Retrieval Augmented Generation in a chatbot scenario clustering of unstructured text data semantic search (books, single column) semantic search (Tickets, single column, Multi column and Multi language) function calling with chat completions Vision with chat completions.

HOW TO GET STARTED: Download the app package (.mpk file) from this open page the app in Studio pro (Double click the MPK to import it) Run the app & Amp; view it Log in configure the connection with API credentials from an OpenAI account or an azure account. Try out the example use cases!

You can find technical documentation about the OpenAI connector and Pg vector knowledge based on MXDocs.

Note: If you have signed up for an openAI account and are using free trail credits, note that this is only valid for three months after the account has been created (not after the API Key has been created). For more details, see the OpenAI API reference.

Use Cases for AI Showcase Applications:

  • Language Understanding: Showcase a chatbot or text analysis tool powered by OpenAI’s language models.

  • Image Recognition: Demonstrate object detection or classification capabilities using OpenAI’s computer vision models.

  • Predictive Analytics: Build applications that predict outcomes based on historical data or user inputs, leveraging AI for insights.

Considerations:

  • API Integration: Familiarize yourself with OpenAI’s APIs and documentation to effectively integrate their models into your Mendix application.

  • User Interface Design: Design intuitive and user-friendly interfaces that highlight the AI capabilities without overwhelming users with technical details.

  • Data Security: Ensure compliance with data privacy regulations when handling user inputs and outputs, especially when using AI models that process personal or sensitive information.

Blank Native mobile application Template

A blank native mobile application in Mendix provides a starting point for developing a native mobile app with no pre-configured pages, features, or data models. It’s designed to give developers a clean slate to build their mobile application from scratch. Here’s a brief overview:

Key Features:

  • No Predefined Elements: Unlike other templates that might come with sample components or layouts, the blank template provides a starting point with no pre-set content or structure.
  • Customizable Mobile Pages: Developers can design and build mobile-specific pages using Mendix’s visual editor, tailoring the app's interface to the target mobile experience.
  • Flexible Data Model: Define your own data entities, attributes, and relationships to create a custom domain model that fits your app’s needs.
  • Custom Logic and Workflows: Implement microflows and custom logic to handle business processes, data manipulation, and user interactions within the mobile app.

Use Cases:

  • Custom Mobile Applications: When a fully tailored mobile app is required, with no constraints from pre-existing templates.
  • Unique Mobile Workflows: For applications with specialized workflows or interfaces that standard templates do not accommodate.
  • Rapid Prototyping: Quickly create and test custom mobile app designs and functionalities.

Overview of the Portfolio Manager Template

Purpose:

The Portfolio Manager template is designed to help users manage investment portfolios efficiently. It includes functionalities for tracking investments, analyzing performance, and generating reports.

Key Features:

  • Portfolio Tracking: Allows users to create and manage multiple portfolios, track investments, and monitor performance over time.

  • Asset Management: Manage different types of assets (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.) within the portfolios. Includes features for adding, editing, and removing assets.

  • Performance Analysis: Tools for analyzing the performance of investments, including historical data and performance metrics.

  • Reporting: Generate reports on portfolio performance, asset allocation, and other key financial metrics.

  • User Management: Features for managing user accounts and roles, ensuring that different users have appropriate access to portfolio data.

Benefits:

  • Pre-built Components: Comes with pre-configured data models, user interfaces, and microflows, allowing you to quickly set up a functional portfolio management system.

  • Customization: While it provides a strong starting point, you can customize the template to fit specific business needs or integrate additional functionalities.

  • Time Savings: Accelerates development by providing a base application structure, which can be customized rather than built from scratch.

Ideal Use Cases:

  • Financial Institutions: For banks, investment firms, or financial advisors who need a tool to manage client portfolios.

  • Individual Investors: For personal use by individuals who want to track and analyze their investment portfolios.

  • Prototyping: As a starting point for developing custom portfolio management solutions.

Complaint Management Template

This is a Mendix Application developed in low code that extends the siemens Teamcenter Quality Management Soultion. It supplies a customer and supplier portal to Manage complaints – a portal that can be easily personalized. And it provides a mobile application with offline capabilities allowing you to use key siemens Teamcenter Quality capabilities on a mobile device such as Teamcenter inbox, the ability to log and view complaints as well as taking corrective and preventive actions.

Benefits of Using Mendix for Complaint Management:

  • Rapid Development: Mendix’s low-code platform accelerates the development process, allowing you to iterate quickly based on user feedback and changing requirements.

  • Customization: Tailor the complaint management system precisely to your organization’s workflows and processes without extensive coding.

  • Scalability: Easily scale your application as your organization grows or as the volume of complaints increases.

Use Cases:

  • Customer Service Departments: Manage complaints from customers regarding products, services, or support issues.

  • Internal Operations: Handle complaints or issues raised by employees related to facilities, IT services, or administrative matters.

AR Starter Application Template

Start experimenting with Augmented Reality experience for native mobile. This app already contains several examples to get you quickly started.

Mendix does not have a specific Augmented Reality (AR) starter application template readily available. However, you can integrate AR functionalities into a Mendix application by leveraging custom development and third-party AR libraries or services.

Define AR Requirements:

  • Determine the specific AR features you want to implement, such as marker-based AR, image recognition, or object tracking. Identify any third-party AR SDKs or services you plan to integrate (e.g., ARKit, ARCore, Vuforia).


Use Cases for AR Applications:

  • Retail: Virtual try-on for clothing or accessories, interactive product catalogs with AR visualization.

  • Real Estate: Virtual tours of properties, visualization of furniture placement in AR.

  • Education: Interactive learning experiences with AR-enhanced content, historical or scientific simulations.

Purchase Request Template

Creating a Purchase Request template in Mendix allows organizations to streamline and manage the process of requesting and approving purchases efficiently. While Mendix does not offer a specific pre-built "Purchase Request" template out-of-the-box, you can build a custom solution tailored to your organization's procurement needs.

Note: For Studio developers who want to explore workflows, we recommend selecting version 9.5.1 of this Template. The Purchase request Template helps procurement Teams capture requests, speed up approvals, generate purchase orders and organize vendor information. It helps Teams to organize and simplify the complex procurement process.

Benefits of Using Mendix for Purchase Request Systems:

  • Rapid Development: Mendix’s low-code platform accelerates development, allowing for quick iteration and customization based on user feedback.

  • Customization: Tailor the purchase request system precisely to organizational workflows and requirements without extensive coding.

  • Scalability: Easily scale the application as procurement needs grow or change over time.

Use Cases for Purchase Request Systems:

  • Corporate Procurement: Manage purchase requests for goods and services across departments within an organization.

  • Educational Institutions: Handle requests for educational materials, equipment, and services by faculty and staff.

  • Healthcare Facilities: Streamline requests for medical supplies, equipment, and services needed by healthcare providers.

Asset Manager App Template

The Asset Manager is an app intended to help organizations keep track of physical assets. Review your assets and inspect them for alerts. Assign actions to engineers for each alert and review workload for engineer. 

Note: This app is DEPRECATED, so it is unnecessary to write the benefits and use cases.

Event app Template

This Event app is an example of a digital event program app. Provide your user with an event program and session details of their preferred device from a single model definition.

Note: This app is DEPRECATED, so it is unnecessary to write the benefits and use cases.

Tasks & Planning Template

Improve your Teams' s efficiency by customizing this app to share and track the workload across the entire Team or organization. Add tasks, create to-do lists, and track task lifestyle all in one space.

Use cases:

  • Project Management
  • Tasks: Used to manage project activities such as task assignment, tracking progress, setting deadlines, and monitoring completion status.
  • Planning Templates: Enable project managers to create standardized project plans or templates that include predefined tasks, milestones, and dependencies. 

News & Content Template

Enable anyone to Manage the content shared across your organization.

 

Use Cases:

  • Communicate policy changes, public service announcements, community events, and civic engagement initiatives.

  • Share product updates, industry insights, developer blogs, and tutorials in technology and software development.

Benefits:

  • Keeps users and developers informed about software updates, new features, and best practices. Fosters a community around the technology platform.

  • Enhances transparency and accountability. Improves citizen engagement and participation in public affairs.

Forms Template

Do you need a survey in a short time? Or do you need to create an onboarding app for your employees? You can easily customize this app and use it right away. The Forms app provides many Mendix featured widgets. Just a few clicks away, your personalized Form is ready to deploy. 

Benefits:

  • Simplifies the registration process for users, captures necessary information efficiently, and automates follow-up actions like confirmations or notifications.

  • Improves efficiency in healthcare settings, ensures accurate patient information management, and supports compliance with healthcare regulations (e.g., HIPAA).

Use cases:

  • Develop forms for event registrations, membership applications, job applications, and course enrollments.

  • Develop forms for patient intake, medical history updates, appointment scheduling, and treatment consent.

Approval App Template

Create an approval workflow in 5 minutes simply specify the item to be approved and get a fully functional workflow in no time. 

Benefits:

  • Ensures content quality and accuracy, maintains brand consistency, and allows for collaboration among content creators and editors.

  • Minimizes risks associated with IT changes, maintains system stability, and enhances communication between IT teams and stakeholders.

  • Controls spending ensures purchases align with budgetary constraints, and tracks procurement processes from request to fulfillment.

Use cases:

  • IT teams submit change requests for system updates, software deployments, or infrastructure changes, which require approval from change advisory boards (CAB).

  • Content creators submit articles, blog posts, or marketing materials for review and approval before publication.

  • Departments submit purchase requisitions for necessary goods or services, which go through an approval chain involving procurement or budget managers.

Atlas Design System:

Welcome to Mendix Atlas Design System App. With Atlas at its core, the app consists of the complete collection of layouts, page Templates, building blocks and widgets that Atlas offers, guidance on use and design variations available. 

Benefits:

  • Accelerates onboarding processes, reduces learning curves, and promotes consistent quality in UI implementation across the organization.

  • Simplifies maintenance tasks, ensures easier updates and upgrades to UI components, and minimizes the risk of UI fragmentation or inconsistencies over time.

Use cases:

  • Managing and maintaining UI consistency and standards as applications evolve and new features are added.

  • Providing a standardized UI framework and guidelines for training new developers and designers on UI best practices and design patterns.

The Atlas design system template in Mendix serves as a foundational toolset for achieving consistency, efficiency, and scalability in UI design and development. It supports organizations in delivering superior user experiences, optimizing development processes, and maintaining brand integrity across their digital products and platforms.

Test Buddy Template

Test buddy app provides users with basic template for test case management where they can write and execute manual test cases.

Benefits:

  • Facilitates continuous deployment, reduces deployment risks, and accelerates time-to-market for new features and updates, in Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) Pipelines.

  • Ensures consistent user experience across diverse platforms, improves accessibility, and addresses compatibility issues early in the development process, in Cross-Browser and Cross-Device Testing.

Use cases:

  • Integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines to automate build verification, deployment readiness checks, and release validation.

  • Validating the functionality and responsiveness of the Mendix application across different web browsers (e.g., Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and devices (e.g., desktop, tablet, mobile).

Plan For Every Part:

It is a use case were a Mendix app takes the complex and large bill of Material from Teamcenter and collaborate with Teams and systems to govern of the status, attributes and the critical due dates on the development timeline of the product and it sub – systems.

Siemens mindsphere mobile starter application Template

Starter application that contains everything you need to start with mobile application development for siemens mindsphere.

Benefits:

  • It provides a foundation with pre – built components and Intergrations, reducing the time required to build an application from scratch in accelerated development.

  • It Allows for easy customization and extension to meet specific business needs or integrate additional features beyond the starter template in Customization and Extensibility.

Use cases:

  • In view data visualization it allows user to view visual representations of sender data (e.g., charts, graphs).

  • It allows users to submit new sensor data to MindSphere.

Siemens Mindsphere Starter Application Template

Starter application that contains everything you need to start with siemens mindsphere.

NOTE: This application is intended to be used with “Mendix on MindSphere”. It is not compatible with “MindSphere IIoT for Makers”.


Use cases:

  • It allows users to add, update, or remove devices and sensors from the MindSphere platform.

  • It allows users to monitor the status and performance of IoT devices connected to MindSphere.

Atlas UI Style guide Boilerplate:

The prefect starting point for when you need to create a styleguide for your customized AtlasUI. The app uses your AtlasUI Resources package, making it the prefect platform to test your resources as well.

Out of the box, the boilerplate offers documentation pages, guidelines and best practices, a commenting framework and even the basis for a tag – driven search.

Use cases:

  • Ensures that all UI elements and components adhere to the guidelines set forth in the Atlas UI Style guide.

Blank:

The blank starting point is an empty project with a basic theme and no additional modules configured. If you need Free App deployment support, please use one of the other starting points.

These use cases demonstrate the versatility of the Blank Template in Mendix for developing custom applications across various domains, ranging from enterprise solutions and prototypes to specialized applications like CRM and data analytics platforms. The template's flexibility allows developers to tailor applications precisely to meet specific business needs and deliver enhanced functionality and user experience.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, the choice of template depends on the project's objectives, industry requirements, and the specific needs of the application being developed. Whether starting from a Blank Template for full customization or utilizing specialized templates for specific functionalities, Mendix empowers developers and organizations to deliver robust, scalable, and user-centric applications efficiently. By leveraging Mendix templates strategically, businesses can accelerate digital transformation initiatives and stay competitive in rapidly evolving markets.