Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. Mendix

Overall, there are many use cases for which Lightning Forms provides a slick, easy to develop and extremely useful solution. Request forms that need to be actioned and inspection forms are the scenarios that we have used them for so far, which have seen a lot of success. We have decided that other scenarios that are perhaps more sensitive, for instance forms that may contain special category data relating to our customers, are less appropriate given the permissions/licensing constraints of both SharePoint and Lightning Forms.

Mendix excels in scenarios involving Business Process Automation, making it a strong choice for applications requiring workflow automation, including processes like request approvals, document management, and other business workflows.Conversely, Mendix may be less suitable for projects that demand highly customized solutions with extensive custom coding. Its primary focus on low-code development may not align well with the requirements of projects that heavily rely on intricate and specialized coding.

Incentivized

• Simple user interface - users of the forms intuitively aware of how/where to input information. This is in part due to being able to show or hide different questions or areas of the form, and making them required or not, based on previous answers.
• Low/simple code - building complex forms with automation and multiple dependencies or lookups is relatively easy once you get started. You have the power of JavaScript to use and do some quite clever things if you can get to grips with it - a lot of solutions are only a Google away.
• As it is based on SharePoint, it integrates perfectly with the rest of the M365 suite. Things like PowerAutomate enhance its functionality even further.

• We're able to really easily develop different views that are very specific to a customer's needs or customer's different types of user needs. So for example, the production managers can have a certain view that's relevant to them and then certain line managers can have views that are specific to them that allow them to run different scenarios which they define. So it allows us to easily build customized apps for each different type of user.

Incentivized

• The styling of the form can sometimes be slightly awkward to use depending on what you're looking to do. For instance, if I was looking to highlight fields that users have missed (left empty), I would need to set up a validation for that question and then set a style for that particular field for when it is invalid. When you have a large and complex form with lots of dependencies, this is awkward.
• Support for complex and niche issues is slightly lacking in my experience. I submitted a helpdesk ticket for help with a strange issue I couldn't figure out, which took several weeks to get a response to. Because it is niche, it's more difficult to find an answer by searching the internet. Luckily, knowing there is likely to always be a fix if you find the right place/use the right formula, I manage to resolve the issue with some trial and error.
• It is disappointing that Lightning Forms does not integrate with the MS Lists app. Having the ability to access the form through the list app would add in a lot of useful functionality, including a better experience for users when taking photos to add as attachments.

• Earlier versions lacked in UI/Ux. This is still improving.
• Since everyone and anyone can create custom add ons (widgets), Mendix could improve their quality checks (but not as rigid as eg Apple).
• Upgradeability used to be somewhat of an issue. Version 7 looks to be handling this better than previous versions.

It is very user friendly both to me who is building the content (with little background knowledge of coding etc., other than what I have picked up from using products like PowerAutomate, PowerBI, a bit of html etc.) and to end users of varying levels of IT proficiency. This has been extremely important as we have used the forms to make relatively large process changes, and need to have our users on board and seeing that it is actually easier than it was before.

A 10 would say I have nothing to wish for. A 9 means I haven't seen anything better.This tool really helps you in the whole creation and maintenace cycle, so from requirements to building/modeling to testing to deploying to capturing feedback.

Some support has been okay, but in one instance of a fairly complex problem, the support team were not able to provide me with a fix within a few weeks, before I was able to find a workaround myself.

Response times are quick and you will get updates regularly about the status of your request. Even with very technical questions they have specialists that can help you with your problems it will give you an answer or help you with a work around.

We were using Microsoft Forms, SharePoint Lists and PowerAutomate to attempt to do much of what we are currently doing. Functionality is very limited in comparison. The ability to make questions required based on previous answers was a massive improvement from normal SharePoint List forms and has greatly improved the quality of data. Also just the very visual display and customisation is much better.

Mendix would be my preferred system all the way. The system is designed for these kinds of works. I've worked with WP and DNN but they should be used just for websites. To create an app for a business value, I would suggest Mendix. Also, the offline capabilities of Mendix have greatly improved since the deployment of Mendix 7.13.

• We changed the process by which site colleagues report repairs on behalf of customers. Instead of emailing them into a shared inbox, they now report them using a lightning form. We have seen a great improvement in the time taken for our team to log the repair issue from the time is arrives with them.
• We anticipate that streamlining our void property reletting process by using a SharePoint kanban board view with lightning forms (providing a single platform for all things void) will reduce avoidable days vacant and therefore reduce our void loss.

• It helps to speed up application development because of its low code by the fact that it's low code. It allows professional developers to focus more on specialized application development rather than the more routine application development that business IT and super users can do for themselves with some coaching from the IT department. So it's just allowing the more specialist professional developers.net, for example, Java in our organization to focus on more complex engineering application developments.

Incentivized