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Before starting to model applications using Visual Composer, you should first take time to plan your models and the components used to create them. Careful planning enables you to create usable components in the most efficient manner.

Understanding Reusability

Reusable components are core building blocks that you can use in building multiple components. By design, each component represents a specific part of an application model. Each component comprises several application steps that are logically performed together in a specific order. When combined, components are incorporated into an application model in a serial flow that represents the main tasks performed within a particular business process. For example, a model for a flight reservation application may include a log-in component, a search flights component, a book flights component, an order flights component, and a log-out component. The search flights, book flights, and order flights components might be reused several times within the same application model for multiple reservation scenarios. These same components might also be used in other application models that include the same business processes.

Modeling using reusable components markedly reduces model maintenance and improves model creation efficiency, enabling you to more quickly assemble models that reflect specific business processes. Through the use of reusable components, you can leverage these same reusable assets in the design of other models with little or no modification necessary.

Reusable components can also be built from other reusable components. Rather than building an all encompassing single component, you can assemble a component from multiple smaller components. You can then reuse these smaller components in other models.

Planning for Reusability

When modeling applications, you should have specific knowledge of the application logic, a high-level understanding of the entire system, and a detailed understanding of the individual elements and tasks that are fundamental to the application model being created. This enables you to determine the operating scenarios or business processes that must be modeled and identify the key business activities that are common to multiple business processes.

To take advantage of Visual Composer component reusability, you should first invest time in planning your models, and decide how to create components that can be reused the most. You should analyze your model requirements and attempt to break the models down to the smallest level of reusable components. However, you should also keep in mind that if you use one component in several un-related application models, future changes that may be required in the component due to one application may have an undesired effect on the other applications that reuse the same component. So when planning for reusability, consider any future changes that may be needed and take them into account at this stage.

When planning your models, consider the following:

  • Which processes and views do I want to include in my model? For example, search forms, report tables, specific process workflows, and so on.

  • Which processes in my model are self-contained processes that occur in multiple applications?

  • What are the smallest building blocks into which I can divide each process to enable optimum reusability?