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Built on Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure and DingTalk’s enterprise digital operating system, YiDA gives every organization a low-barrier, high-efficiency way to produce digital business apps. Every app built on YiDA is inherently interconnected, data-driven, secure, and reliable.

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YiDA Overview

YiDA offers high flexibility and adaptability. It supports a wide range of application scenarios and business models, including enterprise communications, project management, customer relationship management, and internal collaboration. YiDA also provides a rich library of components and templates so you can rapidly build high-quality, reliable apps. YiDA delivers strong extensibility and maintainability. It integrates seamlessly with other Alibaba Cloud products to enable data sharing and collaboration. YiDA also supports custom business processes and data fields, giving users more flexible ways to manage and optimize business processes. Going forward, YiDA will continue to refine its features and performance to deliver more complete and efficient digital business app solutions. YiDA will also actively explore and expand into new application scenarios and business models, offering more choices and support for enterprise digital transformation.

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Feature Overview

  • Visual app building
YiDA provides a large library of graphical development components. Through drag-and-drop and simple configuration, you can quickly build apps with no code or only a small amount of code. Business users without coding experience, such as HR and finance staff, can also become developers.
  • Tailor-made apps
Build apps that fit your business needs through forms, workflows, and data capabilities, digitizing every task around you.
  • Integrated cloud-native and DingTalk-native capabilities
YiDA connects the underlying capabilities and technologies of Alibaba Cloud and DingTalk, linking your existing enterprise systems with DingTalk and lowering the barrier to digital transformation.

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The Evolution of YiDA

The following milestones and figures are historical, reflecting YiDA’s development through 2021.
  • In March 2017, YiDA was officially launched within Alibaba Group. Over the next three years, more than 12,700 apps were built internally, 99% of them by employees without development experience, such as HR and finance staff. According to statistics, these apps saved Alibaba Group nearly 100,000 person-days of effort.
  • In 2019, YiDA was officially released for commercial use. It has since served over 6,000 customers across six major industries: new retail, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, education, and hospitality.
  • During the Spring Festival of 2020, leveraging its low-code advantage of rapid app building, YiDA was among the first to help governments and enterprises at all levels quickly roll out pandemic prevention and management solutions. More than 2,000 pandemic-related apps were built, each going live in an average of just 1.5 days.
  • In January 2021, at the DingTalk 6.0 launch event, DingTalk officially announced its integration with YiDA, making it easier for the 17 million organizations and 400 million users on DingTalk to build DingTalk-native apps. This brings rapid app-building capabilities to every organization, function, and role, so every task at work can be digitized.
  • In October 2021, at the low-code sub-forum of the 2021 Apsara Conference, Ye Zhouquan (also known as Xiaoyong), Head of DingTalk YiDA and Senior Technical Expert at Alibaba Group, announced DingTalk YiDA 3.0. The new version focused on seamless connectivity, powerful data, and enhanced security. The number of low-code apps on DingTalk exceeded 1.2 million, with YiDA apps surpassing 1 million. Low-code is helping more and more enterprises and organizations find efficient, low-cost paths to digital innovation, while also meeting individual needs and giving people a greater sense of accomplishment.

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Why Choose YiDA

Do the following scenarios feel familiar in your daily work?
  • You spend a lot of time compiling data in Excel or on paper forms—tedious and error-prone. What can you do?
  • You want to move your business online, but you have no budget, no developers, and no resources. What can you do?
  • Your organization’s internal systems are isolated from one another, and you want to break down these information silos. What can you do?
  • Your business is unique, and no off-the-shelf software fits your needs. What can you do?
  • You want to describe your business logic to software developers, but their understanding and implementation always drift from your intent. What can you do?

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What YiDA Solves for You

As long as you understand your business processes and have an idea for the app you want to build, you can develop a customized app on the YiDA platform with zero code or minimal code.
  • Build app layouts and settings through visual drag-and-drop—what you see is what you get.
  • Connect the logic of different modules within an app through conversational commands to achieve deep data integration.
  • Link approval workflows to the DingTalk Organization Structure or specify custom approvers, enabling fine-grained, paperless management.
  • Provide multiple association and navigation options, allowing free switching and mutual validation between data, and giving your app powerful interaction capabilities with ease.
  • Multiple access paths (built-in DingTalk apps and browser sign-in) enable access across locations and devices, greatly improving convenience.
  • Industry analysis, low-code insights, and YiDA-related videos
  • YiDA app practices from Alibaba Group and other enterprises

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YiDA Learning Path

Use the following learning roadmap to progressively explore the YiDA low-code app platform, from the basics to advanced topics.

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YiDA at a Glance