IBM MAF is the replacement for Application Designer and was specially developed by IBM for IBM MAS and IBM Maximo Mobile. In the future, it will be the basis for all IBM MAS and IBM Maximo Mobile applications. Existing applications will also be adapted. The advantage of having one framework for your desktop and mobile applications is that you no longer need in-house knowledge of different techniques. IBM MAF contains all the tools you need to develop and continuously improve both your IBM MAS and IBM Maximo Mobile applications.

IBM MAF is based on IBM’s award-winning Carbon Design. This open-source design system was developed by IBM to create consistent products and digital experiences through a recognizable, intuitive user interface. The design system includes all kinds of ready-made and reusable building blocks, from components, styles, and guidelines to code. This makes it possible to quickly develop software with a modern and uniform look & feel that is also easy to use. This also applies to the IBM MAS and IBM Maximo Mobile applications that you build with IBM MAF.

With IBM MAF, you can configure IBM Maximo in many ways. For example, you can have one common dashboard for your traditional desktop and mobile applications. Or you can shift columns as desired: with the dynamic columns of IBM MAF, you decide whether columns are visible on the screen and in what order they appear. And how useful is it to be able to drill down into data from all sources, not just asset and location data?

Line graphs are ideal for displaying trends, while bar charts are less suitable. With IBM MAF, you can now also create line graphs in IBM MAS and IBM Maximo Mobile applications. You don’t need separate BI tools for that. The possibilities for visual representation of KPIs have also been improved. You can now choose your own colors for your KPIs and work with symbols such as checkmarks and exclamation points in a color of your choice.

IBM MAF not only offers you more freedom in designing applications, but you also see exactly what you are doing. This is because the XML code and the design of your application are next to each other on the screen. For example, if you change a color or the size of a font in the XML code, you will immediately see how this turns out in the design. Soon, this will even be possible in reverse: changes in your graphic design will automatically be converted to XML code. This way, people without XML knowledge can also determine what your IBM MAS and IBM Maximo applications look like.
In the next blog about IBM MAF, we will look at a number of parts of the framework in more detail.