As we prepare for next month's release of Valence 5.1, we thought it'd be both interesting and useful to summarize some of the blog post contents in a single, categorized list.  From customizing the look and feel of the Valence Portal to tips on back-end and front-end development, there's likely to be at least one or two blog posts to pique your interest. Without further ado, here's a categorized breakdown of the more useful blog posts from the past few years: 

• Put a link on it: Launching Valence apps directly from a URL - Send someone a link to directly access a Valence app, with or without the Portal
• Setting up a JSON Web service using Valence - Create your own REST-ful web service using the JSON tools in Valence
• Making a Valence app sticky (non closeable) - How to make an app stay active on the user's launchpad
• Monitoring data going to and from your Valence apps - Keeping track of the data being fed to your apps, and watching for performance issues
• Auto-Creating user profiles - How to control the auto-create user profile function on login
• Customizing the look and feel of the Valence portal - Tips on customizing logos, graphics, etc.
• Adding your own custom settings to the Portal Admin app - Explains how to add custom global values that can be maintained in Portal Admin > Settings.
• Using a dynamically set app path - How to plug special substitution values into the path for launching a Valence app

  Nitro Query

• Adding colorful pizzaz to grids - Draw user attention to cells with unusual values by altering its color properties
• Summary functions and column rendering - Tips for adding summary values and renderers to your grid columns
• Creating an RPG validation program for edit grid Query app - How to set up a more elaborate edit-checking mechanism on an edit grid
• Setting up click events - Explains how to alter dashboard contents based on user events in the app

  Sencha Architect

• Building and deploying apps in Valence 5 - Lays out the recommended approach to creating and deploying Valence apps to the IFS using Architect
• Migrating AutoCode-generated apps from Valence 4 to Valence 5 - Instructions for upgrading AutoCode-generated apps that were created using Ext JS 4.2 in Valence 4 to Ext JS 6 in Valence 5

  RPG Development Tips

• Launching a Valence app from a 5250 Green Screen session - Explains how to use VVRMTCALL to integrate Client Access sessions with Valence apps (i.e., user hits a function key in a 5250 program to see a chart pop up in his browser)
• Creating complex JSON arrays - demonstrates how to use RPG Next Gen's JSON utility to create nested JSON arrays
• Adding "Record in Use" soft locking to your Valence apps - A primer on using Valence's record lock utility to know when someone else is editing a record
• Adding custom styling to Excel spreadsheet cells - How to adjust the template file used for spreadsheet generation
• Uploading and consuming spreadsheets - A walk through the example code demonstrating how to upload and consume a .csv file in an RPG program
• Understanding back-end issues with the Errors app - Explains how to maximize use of back end error logging
• Making your Valence apps hacker-resistant

  Ext JS and other Front-End Development Tips

• Handling null dates in date selectors - How to elegantly handle the "null date" (0001-01-01) in an Ext JS Date Selector
• Making your apps multilingual - Putting Valence's multilingual literals concept to use in your apps
• Using your own PC as a test machine for the front-end - How to test your front-end development work on your own PC prior to deploying to the IFS
• Communicating data between apps - Launching one app from within another app and passing in pertinent data
• Are you sure you want to leave this app? - How to help users avoid inadvertently closing their app tab before clicking Save.
• Fun with date formatting - Tips on formatting dates in Ext JS.

  IBM i Apache Server

• Useful information extractable from the Apache Server -  List of useful CGI environment variables you can extract from your Apache server instance -- i.e., via vvUtility_getEnvVar()
• Setting up external access with SSL - Step by step instructions for setting up an https site for your Valence instance