How to Develop Capabilities
A basic definition of a capability can be found in the Rokwire dictionary. Capabilities provide new abilities to a Rokwire powered app. A single capability is built upon a building block, or hosted via external web application. However, a capability can have multiple types of user interfaces based on user preferences. In short, capabilities allow you to be in control of your own experience! The relationship between building blocks, capabilities, and talents can be found in following diagram:
Here is a table of present and future building blocks. Future capabilities are denoted as "proposed":
| Capability | Contributor | Dependency |
|---|---|---|
| Dining/Meal Plan | Internal | Web service |
| Laundry | Internal | Web service |
| Financial Transactions | Internal | Web service |
| Converge | Alchemy/NCSA | Building Block |
| iClicker | Proposed | Building Block |
| MTD Scheduler | Proposed | Building Block |
For external developers, we have have more advanced capabilities with varying degrees of integration with the Rokwire platform. These include:
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third-party integrations and systems.
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vendor integrations.
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external integrations.
Capabilities can be either open- or closed-source. All closed-source capabilities must undergo a cursory community review. One example of an existing Rokwire capability for potential developers is the Converge engine, which is a recommender system that can operate on top of multiple building blocks.
Once you have developed a capability, you will need to develop talents to allow for customization of the user interface. A basic definition of a talent can be found in the Rokwire dictionary. Talents allow for people to interact with your capability in various ways depending on their needs, from voice to touch to extended reality (XR). The basic talent in the Illinois app is a touch screen menu, but could involve localization for different languages or alternative presentations in different modalities.
See the stub What is an Application Talent for more information.
Once you have developed your capability, please submit to the Rokwire Community using our packager interface. Talents can also be submitted for review to prevent duplication of efforts and backwards incompatibility.