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Plan a Product Application with support #
Start with what the customer needs to accomplish. Nutria can help map that work to Dataplicity capabilities and a practical rollout. Bring Pingüino into technical integration questions and Equidna into hardware and firmware design. Work privately or invite specialists into your team's conversation.
Describe the product and its operation #
Give the specialist enough context to make concrete recommendations:
- Equipment: the Linux device, board revision, sensors and actuators, and software you already have.
- Users: who operates the equipment, who supports it, and what each customer should see or control.
- Work: the records, decisions and recurring tasks around the equipment.
- Constraints: connectivity, offline behaviour, existing systems and the smallest useful first release.
For example:
We build tank-level monitors using a Linux gateway and a sensor on RS-485. Customers need to see levels at each site, receive a low-level alert and request service. Our team needs remote diagnostics. Readings must continue locally during connection outages. Help us decide what belongs in a Device Class, a Customer Portal and a Product Application, then propose a first release we can test on one unit.
Ask for a design you can review #
A useful follow-up is:
Give us a proposed design with records and relationships, device data and controls, customer permissions, and the main workflow. Identify what runs on the device, what Dataplicity supplies, and what our software must implement. State the assumptions and the first end-to-end test.
Use the result to work through these decisions:
| Design question | Where it leads |
|---|---|
| What does this hardware expose? | A Device Class and its data and control contract |
| What should a customer see and control? | A Customer Portal, scoped to that customer's devices |
| What work needs records beyond current readings? | Product Application record models |
| What happens after a user request or event? | A Process with explicit conditions and outcomes |
| What must keep working without connectivity? | Process placement, local device behaviour and recovery |
| How will we know the design works? | Application scenarios and a test on the real device |
Ask the specialist to explain why each suggested capability fits your operation and whether it is available on your plan. You may find that a Device Class and Customer Portal are enough for the first release.
Move from the outline to a working application #
Support helps you reason through the design and plan the work. Author the records, controls and Processes in the application workspace, and implement the device integration in your software. A proposed design is ready for implementation when the team understands its inputs, permissions, failure cases and expected result.
Keep a shared checklist for the first release:
- Connect one device and confirm the relevant hardware interfaces.
- Publish the measurements and reported state the customer needs.
- Define permitted controls and validate them on the device.
- Create the customer view and any required records or workflows.
- Test permissions, missing data, retries and connection loss.
- Verify the customer's actual task from request to observed result.
When something fails, bring the exact error, relevant configuration and redacted logs back into the conversation. Ask Pingüino to help with the technical investigation; keep Nutria involved in whether the resulting workflow meets the customer's needs.
Example: from a reading to a service workflow #
For the tank monitor, a current level reading belongs in device data. A customer's sites, service requests and their status may need application records. A Process can coordinate the service request and follow-up. The sensor-reading software remains on the gateway, including the local behaviour required during an outage.
Ask the specialists to review that division before adding more features. Then prove one customer can see the right tank, understand the reading's freshness, raise a service request and see its outcome.
Continue with Build your first Product Application and hardware and container integration.