26 articles about Getting started, in reading order.
Parsware Platform
New to Parsware Platform? This is the reading list. Every article in the series, in the order that builds step by step, from your first table to processes, reports, portals and AI, with each one linked as it is published.
Parsware Platform
What Parsware is and how its parts fit together, shown through one real application, from the tables underneath it to the phone screen, the approval process and the printed report.
Parsware Platform
How Parsware names your work, packages it and moves it between environments. Create a publisher and its prefix, build a solution in development, export it, import it into test as a managed solution, and uninstall it cleanly.
Parsware Platform
A step-by-step walkthrough, from an empty solution to a working app. Create a table, add five kinds of field, build a filtered view, and open it with real rows in about ten minutes.
Parsware Platform
A tour of the maker portal, where Parsware applications are built and run from. Home, the rail, the environment picker, help, languages, appearance, and the list and drawer controls every screen shares.
Parsware Platform
The first time anybody signs in to a new Parsware tenant, it starts with an email: the welcome message for its first administrator. We followed one from the inbox to an open app: the link, choosing a password, the link refusing a second use, signing in, and the apps list.
Parsware Platform
BS Lang runs in two places. A form rule runs in the browser, in TypeScript; a plugin step or a Custom API runs on the server, in C#. Those are two separate interpreters of one language, so we keep them the same with one shared set of test scripts that both must pass. This is a developer's look at how that works, and at the two cases where they still disagree.
Parsware Platform
Parsware has several places to put a rule. Form rules make a form respond as you type. Plugin steps decide what may be saved, however it's saved. Custom APIs answer other systems, scheduled jobs run on a clock, and processes carry work between people. This guide says which one to reach for, with a real example of each.
Parsware Platform
A drawn process that nobody's software follows is a poster. In Parsware the drawing is what runs: you draw who does what on swimlanes, publish a version, and the engine starts it from a record, sends each step to the right person's task list, and keeps a history of every run. This is how the three parts fit together.
Parsware Platform
A new user is an email, a name and a password you hand over yourself. We added Alex Morgan, had a short password refused, gave Alex the Field Sales role, and watched their first sign-in open on the one app that role is shared with.
Parsware Platform
Every account that signs in to the Shell or the Admin Control Center needs an authenticator app as well as a password. We followed Alex Morgan's first sign-in: the setup screen, a code refused because it was out of date, ten recovery codes, and the next sign-in asking for a code.
Parsware Platform
There is no forgotten-password email for the people who use the Shell and the Admin Control Center: an administrator sets a new password and hands it over. We reset Alex Morgan's while Alex was signed in, and watched what Alex saw: the open tab signed out, the old password refused, the new one working.
Parsware Platform
Every list in the Admin Control Center has the same tools: a search box, a Sort button that orders by several columns, and a Filter that asks AND/OR questions. We used all three on the Solutions list, and fixed a list that sorted Unmanaged before Managed and asked for a number to filter by.
Parsware Platform
Every screen in Parsware has a Help link in the same corner, and it opens the page about that screen, not the front of a manual. It opens it in your language, too: a Persian maker gets the Persian page, an Arabic reader the Arabic one. We followed it from the maker portal and from an app, in three languages.
Parsware Platform
Parsware is for organisations whose work runs on forms, approvals and spreadsheets passed around by email, and who want those turned into real applications without running the servers themselves. This is what it's for, who it's for, and what a tenant actually gets, shown on the capital planning sample.
Parsware Platform
The people who use Parsware apps never see three products. They sign in once to the Platform Shell, and every app in the environment is a tile on its home page: model-driven apps, drawn Studio apps and custom React apps, all in the same page, the same top bar and the same session.
Parsware Platform
Parsware is built only on open-source libraries whose licences cost nothing to ship, per seat, per server or per customer. That isn't a preference, it's a rule every dependency has to pass before it's added, and it's why a Parsware price can't grow behind your back. What the rule refuses, what it cost us to keep, and what we counted when we checked.
For Power Apps
The reading list for Parsware for Power Apps, the managed solution that adds pixel-perfect reports and drawn screens to Power Apps. Every planned article in order, linked as each one is published.
For Power Apps
Parsware for Power Apps is a managed Dataverse solution that adds two things to model-driven apps. Reports laid out to the pixel and bound to your tables, and screens you draw and place on a form. It runs entirely inside your tenant, and your data never leaves it.
For Power Apps
Parsware for Power Apps arrives as three managed solutions. The runtime goes into every environment and goes in first, the designer only into development, and the samples wherever you want to try things. This is the whole install, in the maker portal or with the Power Platform CLI.
For Power Apps
A Parsware for Power Apps licence is one line of text, signed for your tenant and the environments it covers. You paste it into a form in the Parsware app, and the form tells you what the key covers before you save it. Nothing is sent to us to check it.
For Power Apps
Parsware for Power Apps installs two model-driven apps. Parsware Studio is where makers draw reports and screens, and it only exists in development. Parsware is what every environment gets, and it starts almost empty on purpose, because the reports and screens your users open belong in your own apps.
For Power Apps
The Parsware Samples solution brings two small tables, eight finished reports, two Studio apps and an app that opens them. The tables arrive empty, because a solution carries components and not rows, so one page fills them with 200 rows each. Here is what's in it and how to fill it.
For Power Apps
Every Parsware report and screen is drawn in one designer, which runs as a page inside the Parsware Studio app. This is a tour of it, from the list you open a design from to the toolbar, the layers, the components, the canvas and the properties panel, and what changes between a report and a screen.
For Power Apps
When a paid Parsware licence passes its date, nothing stops. Reports and screens keep working for your users, the designer keeps working for your makers, and makers see a notice that renewal is due. A trial is different, because a trial is meant to end. Here are both, pictured with expired keys.
For Power Apps
Parsware Platform and Power Apps are both platforms for building business applications out of tables, forms, views, processes and reports. They differ in where they run, how they're priced and what they connect to. Here is an honest comparison for teams choosing one, and when the right answer is to keep Power Apps.
