App Studio overview

Turn your application development into a no-code, user-friendly experience by working in App Studio. In this authoring environment, you can configure the main elements of your applications that include templates for your business processes, personas that are involved in the processes, interaction channels, and data.

App Studio purpose

App Studio provides you with tools to develop your applications in a way that is convenient and understandable for a citizen developer with little or no knowledge of any programming language. In App Studio, you can prepare the following application elements:

reusable templates for your business processes that Pega Platform refers to as case types, and that users complete at run time to reach a successful outcome.
personas that you create to visualize groups of users that interact with your application, such as customers, workers, or managers. You can define access settings for each group so that users view and process only relevant information.
data objects to ensure that the users have information required to resolve cases.

The approach of building your business processes on case types, personas, and data objects is a part of the Pega Express methodology, the method of delivering projects in a no-code and user-oriented way. In the Pega Express methodology, you use App Studio to model your business processes by creating case types, personas, and data objects. A single business process that results in an expected outcome is a Microjourney.

App Studio roles

App Studio targets business analysts, citizen application developers, front-end developers, and data engineers. For improved communication between developers and stakeholders, App Studio supports real-time UI design, so that any person that is involved in a business process can contribute to application planning and development, the approach that helps achieve the best effects while providing IT solutions for business.

App Studio tools

In App Studio, you can find multiple tools for developing and maintaining applications. On the Overview page, you can find basic information about your application, for example, case types and personas that your application includes. By exploring work areas, you can quickly view and create the main parts of your application, such as case types, personas, channels, and UI elements. Each work area offers no-code solutions that you can use to model your business processes in the most efficient way. The following figure shows what you can find in each work area:

To see the results of your work at run time, preview an application display on a device, and launch portals associated with your application. While in a preview, you can turn on the design mode to conveniently make any necessary adjustments by interacting with UI elements. Apart from building applications, in App Studio you can work with tools to collaborate with other developers and track your development work, for example, by posting messages and toggling Agile Workbench. To ensure that you maintain a good health and quality of your application, explore options that you can use to monitor and maintain your application performance. The tools include Clipboard, Tracer, and Accessibility Inspector.

App Studio access

To access App Studio, you associate the pxExpress portal with your access group. For more information, see Granting portal access to an access group.

From App Studio you can switch to another workspace any time and change the tools and features that are available in your work environment. For more information, see Changing your workspace.

What to do next: Start planning and implementing your Microjourney. See Creating a Microjourney for customer success