I noticed that in the ODC Portal, the sidebar contains an "Agents" tab. However, when navigating to that page, the description below the title says:
"Select an agentic app to view its details and the agents it contains."
The page also correctly displays all Agentic Apps created in my environment, rather than the individual AI Agents defined within them.
Given that behavior, would it make more sense for the page to be named "Agentic Apps" instead of simply "Agents"?
According to the documentation:
AI agent: The system you build around the model. It gives the model access to tools, data, and context, allowing it to perceive, decide, and act.
Agentic app: An application that uses one or more AI agents to perform tasks, automate workflows, or handle complex multi-step interactions.
I'm curious whether the current page title is intentional, or if renaming it to "Agentic Apps" would better align the UI with the terminology used throughout the documentation.
Yes, I agree that the naming can feel a bit confusing. Based on the current behavior, the page is actually listing Agentic Apps first and only then allowing users to view the agents inside them. Since the documentation clearly differentiates between an “AI agent” and an “Agentic app,” renaming the sidebar item to “Agentic Apps” would likely provide better consistency and align more accurately with the terminology used across the platform and documentation.
Hello Gustavo :)
Naming is an inglorious task, right? ;)But it's so important that there are best practices related to it.
In any case, the menus in the Portal's sidebar follow a certain pattern.
You have the Apps menu, where you will find all app-related things, including web, mobile and libraries.
You could argue that libraries are not applications, so it should be on it's own menu. Then someone could argue that libraries are always used by an application, and that's why they are there. Then someone could argue you can use libraries in Agentic Applications, so why they are not there? OR why Agentic Applications, being applications, are not in the Apps menu?
As you can see, organizing things is... complicated.
So, I would say, the main menu is not related to something "specific", but to a more general category, and they help keep concepts separated.
So, Apps, Workflows and Agents.
While what you will find, when you click on Agents, are "Agentic Apps", the most important "concept" here is the Agent (that you can find inside those apps). Same with the Apps menu, where you will not find only apps, but the main concept is the application.
I have much less problem with the idea of an Agents menu, than with the definition of Agent itself.
Like, what is really an "Agent"? The Element you create in the Process tab, or the system around it?, that basically includes the Agent Flow, with all the RAG, Memory and everything else around the "CallModel" action you build inside the Agentic App? I find the documentation calls "Agent" both things, and this is much more confusing to me.
But, as everything, I may be wrong and in the future, maybe OutSystems changes things.
Cause naming is a pain... xD
Cheers!