Application Assets
Application Asset is a self-contained, reusable code related to a particular application and tested independently from the project business logic. Creating Assets separates the application-related development from the rest of the project. It supports best practices and makes project governance easier by arranging testing levels and setting clear responsibilities at each development stage. Once created, tested, and deployed, you can use Asset in multiple projects without the need to have a detailed understanding of the application implementation details.
The Asset consists of the following elements:
- Application methods - to navigate through the application and update or retrieve data from its forms,
- Customized properties - to indicate a state of application controls and enclose application logic,
- Customized events - to reflect actions performed on the application controls,
- Global variables and components stored in the Asset Globals,
- Application forms - to create custom interface elements like dialog boxes used to communicate with the application.
Principles of Application Assets development
Using Assets helps develop better design practices. For example, a less-experienced developer can create simple scenarios while a more experienced developer adds error handling and complex cases. These modular development methods help team reviews and iterative project development. Application Assets also help structure and simplify test scenarios, as the verification of the interface and behavior of an application occur separately before deployment.
For example, a car rental company uses a YourCarNowData webpage that contains customer data and vehicle fleets. The company implements an attended robot that helps the customer service representative to create a car insurance agreement.
The development team prepares an Application Asset for the webpage, which includes application methods for the following scenarios:
- Search for a customer.
- Get customer details.
- Search for a vehicle.
- Get vehicle details.
The Asset defines application properties and events to interact with the application; for example, to indicate that the customer data form is correctly displayed or that the operator selected the desired vehicle on the webpage to proceed.
In the following image, click the + icons to view details about using the YourCarNowData webpage in a robotic project:
After implementing and testing all required scenarios, the development team includes the application interface in the versioned Asset. Then the team shares the Asset through the file system or the Asset Catalog that is stored in Pega Robot Manager. You can use deployed Assets in many scenarios and multiple projects. For more information about publishing Application Asset to the Pega Robot Manager, see Re-using Pega Robot Studio Assets.
A significant advantage of using Application Assets is that the team creating the robotic project doesn't need to test individual application behavior but can focus on solving bigger problems of the entire project.
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