Development in VTEX IO: 2 tools developed by Corebiz to make your routine easier 

Desenvolvimento em VTEX IO: 2 ferramentas que você precisa conhecer e que vão facilitar sua rotina

Corebiz’s technical team creates two new tools on the market and reduces by 70% the development time of applications that are key to the routine of professionals in the area. Both devices are low code and open to all partner agencies and VTEX customers. Check out all the details below!

When we talk about e-commerce development, it is widespread to think of the numerous processes to implement small and large changes and the comings and goings of approval during this somewhat complex flow.

And those who develop in VTEX IO are certainly already used to the facilities offered by the low-code platform. Anyway, if there are tools that can further optimize the day-to-day of these professionals, it is undoubtedly an advantage to know and use them.

And in this article, we brought exactly two handy tools for developers who work with VTEX IO. If you want to know more about them, keep reading!

Applications for VTEX IO

More agility in the validation flow with VHelpx

As we mentioned above, validation processes usually require a longer time than necessary for a developer, mainly because it depends on the professional to structure it to visualize and validate the changes or configurations made in e-commerce.

It was also our routine in the projects. Regularly, we needed to validate with the customer and the technical team if the settings made in a product or another item in the store were following the need. Despite the analysis of this return being very simple, the process to validate if everything was correct required some level of technical knowledge in programming and the VTEX platform, making it impossible for non-technical people to be able to do this task without the involvement of a developer, which transformed the process more complex and time-consuming than necessary.

Motivated by the need to improve this reality and streamline processes, Raphael Barbosa Rodrigues, Developer at Corebiz, created VHelpx, a browser extension that enables POs (Product Owners), Developers, customers, and anyone else involved in an e-commerce project can access information about the store, products and order (orderForm), quickly and intuitively, and with complete autonomy.

VHelpx application screen – Menu view

In this way, all customizations made by the developer are visible to be validated and tested to understand whether they meet the business’s needs and objectives. This considerably reduces the time invested in this process, allowing teams to continue focusing on other strategic demands

VHelpx application screen – Order Form View

The application is entirely free and can be used by anyone working with the VTEX ecosystem. In addition to being customized, it can be installed on any Chromium-based browser (Google Chrome, Opera, Brave, Microsoft Edge). Although other applications identify IO stores, only VHelpx provides access to carry out tests in e-commerce, being a complete application on the market for this purpose.

VHelpx application screen – Login View

How the application works

The information is extracted from different sources by the extension; for example, the orderForm and product data are consulted through requests made by the e-commerce itself to the VTEX public APIs and carried by messages and listeners to the extension to avoid CORS errors and the need to use AppKey and AppToken. Other sections, such as general store information, are captured by mapping HTML, cookies and URLs using regular expressions.

Access the VHelpx repository by clicking here.

Creating custom components simply and quickly with Compio

One of the main demands of developers who use the VTEX platform is to carry out customizations to meet the company’s business model’s needs or optimize certain aspects of e-commerce. Most professionals dedicate a few hours to creating necessary customized components.

With this process in mind, Sander Paniago, Developer at Corebiz, created Compio, a command-line interface (CLI), which allows the user to create custom components and contexts within VTEX.IO more quickly and easily.

Compio application home screen

The App, a pioneer in the market, is entirely free and open-source, allowing other people to contribute to the continuous improvement of the project and customize the features. This functionality aims to optimize the routine of VTEX IO developers, and it certainly makes the performance of these professionals a little easier!

Access the Compio repository by clicking here.

The culture that fosters technology

At Corebiz we believe that all knowledge must be shared. Our culture breathes this concept into our daily lives with initiatives that foster technology based on important rites for the growth of professionals, customers, and the company.

Get to know the “Pot of IO” initiative.

Born from the need to promote VTEX IO technology and the exchange of experiences and skills among the team’s developers, Papo de IO is an initiative that creates debates on the VTEX IO technology from forums, aiming to discuss the platform’s best practices, answers questions, advance scenarios and bring cases developed within Corebiz to be analyzed together.

“People united in the same purpose tend to evolve much faster due to exchanges and belonging, which is translated by the feeling of support”.

Gisele Clemente, Product Owner at Corebiz.

The dynamics we have created allow professionals to form a support and technical support network and exchange insights (teaching and learning) informally and dynamically. And far beyond the internal impact, we realize that the maturity that the “IO Chat” has gained within the company has been directly impacting the projects with our customers, as we create a group that technically evolves at each meeting and manages to take the lessons learned to the projects in which each one works, and solve challenges in a more agile and collaborative way.

Our agility tribe has generated guidelines similar to this one. We will undoubtedly have new initiatives emerging, always aiming at the team’s high performance and increasingly effective delivery for our customers.

“Through these meetings and exchanges, we are training our internal team and redefining the intellectual use we have at home, in addition to contributing in a way to VTEX and the market as a whole.”

João Paulo, Operations Manager at Corebiz

Corebiz is one of the largest VTEX partners globally and has cutting-edge professionals conducting projects for more than 140 clients and in more than 40 countries. Our exponential growth reflects our commitment to delivering solutions that increasingly enhance our customers’ business.

We hope that the two tools we present here will be handy for your day-to-day. And if you have any questions, feel free to leave them here in the comments, and we will be happy to answer them.