Changelog

The Response block in Retool Workflows allows for synchronous webhook runs. Workflows can now return data as a webhook response at any time during a run or upon completion.

The Response block works in conjunction with the Webhook trigger and enables you to configure your own responses. You can specify the HTTP status code and a JSON response body to return, which can include any data from the workflow. For example, use a workflow to look up a customer's mailing address based on their email, use multiple blocks to return different types of data depending on execution logic, or even use a Response block as an error handler to signal that something went wrong.

Response blocks are represented as a new block type; just drag out a block, select Response in the context menu, and your webhook will now wait until the Response block is executed to return. Check out the docs to learn more.

Introducing the Smart Block, bringing the power of GPT-4 and AI into Retool Workflows.

Treat the Smart Block like a natural programming step in any series of tasks you want to automate: just drag a Smart Block onto the canvas, identify the dataset you want to pass in with your request, and complete your prompt with a set of natural language instructions. Then, just run the block and return your data for use in your automations: summarize hundreds of rows of raw product data, create entirely custom systems to classify or filter requests, or even execute AI-authored code––all in Retool.

The Smart Block is free to use and available now for all cloud organizations. To learn more, read the full announcement, or check out the docs.

Offline mode in Retool Mobile enables users to continue performing read and write actions whenever the internet connection is lost.

Reads: Screens and parts of the app that users have visited while online are cached and available when the device is offline.

Writes: Users can continue performing write actions with cached data. Once the connection is restored, Retool Mobile syncs the changes back to the server.

You can now run Retool Mobile apps on Zebra Android devices to utilize Zebra scanners and hardware sensors.

You can now add an interactive map to Retool Mobile apps. Users can view their current location and interact with specific location markers.

Previewing an app used to require navigating to presentation mode and waiting for all the queries to reload. Today we’re launching Preview Mode, a faster way to preview apps directly in the editor without automatic query re-runs!

You can access Preview Mode by clicking on the icon in the top right corner of the editor, or using the Option+Command+Enter keyboard shortcut.

Along with this new Preview Mode, we’ve also released some changes to the app header.

Updated share modal

You can now select viewer app links of the latest release or live release to share with your organization.

Consolidated app details and documentation

You can now edit all page information by clicking the app title. This includes the app title and description, Editor README, and end user documentation.

Quick access to resetting app state

To make resetting the app state easier, we’ve added a button on the Status Bar at the bottom of the editor. This can also be accessed using the Option+Command+R keyboard shortcut, or in the App actions menu. We’ve also made this action more clear by renaming it from “Reload all queries” to “Reset app state.”

We’ve added the ability to work with Plotly charts inside of Retool Mobile. Now you can take your dashboards on the go with built-in support for line graphs, bar charts, scatter plots, and more.

You can now take multiple photos, preview them, and upload all at once with our upgraded Image Input component.

We're releasing improvements to our drag-and-drop system to make it easier than ever to build UIs within Retool. With our new preview experience, adding and moving components around the canvas is easier and more predictable, especially in nested and dense contexts.

Nested Contexts (e.g. Containers)

Containers no longer change size as you’re dragging over them, making it easier to drag and drop in and out of nested areas:

Dense Contexts (e.g. Forms)

Surrounding components no longer move unpredictably. For example, dragging a Text Input into a dense form is easier than ever:

We want to hear from you! Reach out to dworsky@retool.com if you have any feedback on drag and drop. We’re continuing to add more improvements over the coming weeks.

At a high level, migrating to Source Control entails the following:

• One-time set up: Source Control can be set up on any of the instances you are hosting. Once you’ve set it up once, you can share the same configuration/secrets across all your instances.
• One default branch, one repo: Instead of having multiple branches (development, staging, and production), Retool recommends one main branch. All your instances configured with Source Control can be pointing at that branch. Instead of merging from branch to branch to manage and promote changes, Releases can be used to manage what end users see, and how applications get updated.
• Granular control at the app level: There is no longer a need to use VERSION_CONTROL_LOCKED=true to disable editing on an instance. Instead you can lock down and sync specific apps under Source Control, leverage releases, and/or use permissions to manage who (or if anyone) can edit and create apps in a particular instance.

Depending on whether you’ve already set up Source Control or not, follow the respective guide below.

From Git Syncing to Source Control​

1. Upgrade to version v2.69.17 or higher.
2. While internal or external users should not be affected, all builders should be alerted and requested to not make any changes during this migration.
3. Set up Source Control on an instance, following our Source Control documentation. If you have multiple instances, this is typically your development instance.
4. On all instances, disable Git Syncing.
   1. Set DISABLE_GIT_SYNCING=true, and VERSION_CONTROL_LOCKED=false
   2. Remove the Git Syncing configuration repository URL and branch name in Advanced Settings:

5. For multiple-instance setups:

   1. In all previously read-only instances, copy over Source Control related ENV vars from the instance that’s already configured to use Source Control: GITHUB_APP_ID, GITHUB_APP_INSTALLATION_ID, GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY
   2. Configure Source Control on other instances. If you are using a Git Flow style of development with multiple branches, you now have the option to move to a single branch flow and use Release Management to gate what end-users see. Retool strongly recommends using one branch, typically called main.

6. After a few minutes, across all instances, apps that are protected will now be marked as such and edits will not be able to be made directly to those apps. Releases will continue to pin any apps. If there are apps you do not want to appear in any particular instance anymore, you can manually delete them.

7. You can now archive the git repository associated with Git Syncing.