Coming soon: a faster, easier New Application workflow

UPDATE: The New Application workflow has been rolled out for all AppCloud customers. You can read more about it in the follow up post from Andrew Collins.

In AppCloud, when you select the Create New Environment button, you begin a long journey of actions to get your instance up and running. As of today, those actions look like this:

In this workflow, you first create your environment, then add a new or existing application to that environment. Then you can optionally configure your gems. Finally, to configure and boot an instance from the dashboard, you hit the “boot instances” button in your environment.

AppCloud also features a Quick Start workflow which is what you first see if you don’t have any applications or environments yet. That workflow looks like this:

In this workflow, you provide your application information (like your git repository URI) first, followed by your environment details. Next, you can configure your gems if necessary, and you can also optionally add an SSH key. You then go straight to the configure & boot instances page (instead of going there through the boot instances button on the dashboard).

We are currently working on a major user experience improvement to AppCloud which will both unify the two workflows and simplify the process. Soon, the AppCloud experience for creating a new application and environment will look like this:

Instead of having both a New Environment workflow and a Quick Start workflow, we will only have one unified workflow. This workflow will feel a lot like Quick Start, because you will enter your application information first before adding a new or choosing an existing environment. You will also be able to automatically configure and boot your instances instead of going there from the dashboard.

We will also be removing steps that are not necessary for this workflow (like adding your SSH key and configuring gems). You will still be able to add your SSH key on the SSH Public Keys page, and you will still be able to configure your gems by clicking on the gems icon in the Applications tab of your environment.

We also will be removing the “Add Application” link from the Applications tab of your environment to avoid any confusion. You will be able add applications to existing environments from the Applications page, or when creating a new application.

This update will happen very, very soon, and we wanted to give you the heads up so you know what’s coming. We have many more exciting improvements planned out but this next phase has us pretty excited. We think it’s going to be a better, more efficient process. As always, we love your feedback so let us know your thoughts!

UPDATE: The New Application workflow has been rolled out for all AppCloud customers. You can read more about it in the follow up post from Andrew Collins.