On September 11 this year, we hosted the second annual Virtual Tech Summit! This virtual version of our signature community event aims to reach technical Aras Innovator® power users who can’t attend one of our in-person events. The event combines presentations from Aras experts, partners, and community members. It wraps up with an open discussion, where community members can ask questions and connect with other Aras builders.

If this sounds interesting to you, we’ll be holding several in-person Tech Summits at the upcoming Aras Connect Events. Details about those can be found at the end of this blog or on the link above.

Virtual Tech Summit recap

Demos

Unsurprisingly, with the Aras Innovator Edge beta live, we had to show off some incredible stories about Innovator Edge. Anthony Ponceot (Aras) shared stories leveraging the power of Innovator Edge and AI tools. My favorite was using the popular automation tool n8n to generate test data. The ability to quickly create a sample BOM or set of test documents is handy for testing a project. Anthony was able to build a simple flow that utilized Innovator Edge to create AI-generated test data instantly.


The simple flow above is what the process looks like in n8n. Aras Innovator Edge allows us to use external tools with Aras Innovator without exposing large portions of our data to the outside world.

Chris Gillis from the Labs team also did a fascinating demo centered around custom client components within Responsive Forms. This experimental Proof of Concept (PoC) lets builders embed interactive form elements into their Responsive Forms. Chris demonstrated the power of this functionality by taking a standard Google Maps component and dropping it into a responsive form in a few minutes.


Leveraging pre-existing components from external sources can keep you from reinventing the wheel when you need to do something simple. In this example, the map element pulls directly from the address property of the item, meaning you wouldn’t have to set the coordinates for the items manually.

Additionally, we had a demo from Sathish Sathiya, CTO of one of our partners, Altegra, showing off a really cool solution they built related to variant-based cost rollup. The project allows for an on-demand calculation of each variant of your product. Seeing a solution from the community has always been my favorite part of these events.

Wrap-up and future events

Hearing from the Aras community and building connections with our builders is always a treat. While it’s great to have a virtual meeting, our in-person events provide excellent opportunities for connecting with other Aras community members. If you’re based in Europe and able, attending one of the Aras Connect events is a great opportunity. Eli Donahue, our head of Developer Relations, will host a Tech Summit at all the European events. You can expect some great demos from Aras and community members, as well as the opportunity to learn from others who are utilizing and customizing Aras Innovator to fit their needs.

The event dates are below. Hopefully, we’ll see some of you there!

For those of you in the States, our main event, ACE 2026, will be held in Miami next year from April 13 to 16. I cannot wait, but I hope to meet more of you there!

Category:
Digital Engineering