NocoBase 2.x saw the introduction of 5 major features, along with keeping up with its rapid release cycle.
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Introduction
This is Sugiura. This is the second installment in the NocoBase series.
In the previous article, I organized the basics of NocoBase, including the separation of data models and UI, plugin architecture, and self-hosting. If you're wondering "What is NocoBase?", I recommend reading Part 1 first.
Version 2.0 was released in February 2026, and it has progressed to 2.2 within six months. It's no longer at the stage of being a brand-new release. In this article, I'll organize the major features introduced in 2.x. This covers version history, how to read the official documentation, and the five major topics that the official team is highlighting. I came to NocoBase from the 2.x series and have been using it in production. I've written this as content that will help people just starting out understand what's possible with NocoBase 2.x.
NocoBase 2.x Version Status
The first thing people starting out want to know is which version is currently stable.
- 2.0 beta: Announced January 2026
- 2.0 Official Release: February 2026 (Official announcement)
- 2.1 Official Release: June 2026 (Official announcement)
- 2.2 Official Release: August 2026 (Official announcement)
- Current stable version: 2.2 series (latest at time of writing is v2.2.5)
- In development: 2.3 series beta and 3.0 series alpha are listed on GitHub Releases (no official blog announcement for 3.0 yet)
That works out to progressing from 2.0 to 2.2 in six months. The most recent 2.2 introduced an independent /v/ frontend entry point and a new mobile version, and the file access mechanism was also revamped (Official announcement). The five major topics covered in this article are mainly things introduced between 2.0 and 2.1, so please refer to the official release notes for details on 2.2.
If you look at GitHub Releases, you'll see that the release pace is quite fast. Patch releases come out every few days, and minor versions are bumped on a monthly basis. The latest state changes at considerable speed, so it's recommended to decide early on your policy for version pinning and upgrades (discussed later). There's no need to track alpha or beta numbers — if you're just getting started, choosing the stable version is fine.
How to Read the Official Documentation
The official documentation is available in multiple languages, and knowing the URL structure will prevent you from getting lost.
| URL | Content |
|---|---|
| docs.nocobase.com | English version (the reference documentation) |
| docs.nocobase.com/ja/ | Japanese version (add /ja at the beginning of the same path) |
It's great for Japanese-speaking newcomers that the Japanese version covers 2.x content. However, the Japanese version appears to be AI-translated, and you may encounter descriptions that don't match actual behavior or read unnaturally in Japanese. When something seems off, it's safest to cross-reference with the English version. I recommend using the Japanese version for a quick grasp and the English version when accuracy is required.
Other official information channels include:
- Official Blog — Release announcements and feature introductions
- GitHub Releases — Primary source for changelogs
- Forum — Community Q&A (mainly in English)
- dev.to / Medium — Tutorial series, etc.
Note that web searches will return many articles and information from the 1.x era. Since the UI and documentation structure differ between 1.x and 2.x, it's a good idea to first check which series the information you're referencing belongs to.
Key Topics to Know in 2.x
From here, I'll introduce five topics that the official team is highlighting as major features of 2.x. The order is based on what I think people just getting started are most interested in. All screenshots in this article were taken from OSS version v2.2.5 running on Docker.
Note that among these five, Multi-App and Approval Workflows are paid edition features, while the remaining three are also available in the free Community Edition. When you actually launch the OSS version and look at the plugin management screen, AI Employees (plugin-ai) and MCP Server (plugin-mcp-server) are enabled from the start.
AI Features (AI Employees and the AI Ecosystem)
The first thing the official team highlights as the centerpiece of 2.0 is the AI functionality (NocoBase 2.0: Meet Your AI Employees).
Since I haven't used the 1.x series, I rely on official information for comparison with that era, but the design placing AI at the core is something that came with 2.0.
AI Employees are agent features embedded in business systems. The official description is "not just robots that can 'chat,' but 'digital colleagues' that understand context within business screens and can directly execute operations." They can recognize the current page, blocks, and selected data, then call skills to perform tasks such as querying, analyzing, inputting, and configuring.
Pre-defined AI employees are available for specific roles, like "Atlas: Team Leader," "Viz: Insights Analyst," and "Lexi: Translation Assistant," and you can also define new ones yourself. Configuration is a combination of role (character settings), the skills (tools) available to that AI, and permissions (Ask / Allow) for whether human confirmation is required before executing a skill.
When I launched the OSS version and checked, the list was divided into "Business" and "Developer," with 6 registered under Business and 2 under Developer from the start.
The edition is Community Edition or higher, meaning it's available even in the free OSS version (based on official documentation labels as of July 2026). However, to use it, you need to separately configure an LLM service (register a provider and model), and model usage fees are your own responsibility.
Another thing worth noting is the AI ecosystem developing outside the core product.
- Official Skills Repository — Domain knowledge about NocoBase's data modeling, permission settings, etc., packaged for AI agents (CLI agents like Claude Code)
- Official integration documentation with AI agent CLIs — The official documentation covers a setup for operating NocoBase from Claude Code
- MCP Server support — An official plugin that allows AI agents to operate NocoBase data has been included as standard since 2.1. Authentication is via API key, and what's possible follows the permissions of the role tied to the key, allowing controls like passing a read-only key
I think the official team's shift toward "building business apps together with AI agents" is a major consideration for people starting with NocoBase in 2026. This area is changing rapidly and there are still parts under development, so I plan to write about it in more detail in a later installment of this series after actually trying it out.
Multi-App / Multi-Space (Multiple Application Management)
This is a set of features that allows running multiple independent applications within a single NocoBase instance (Documentation).
- Multi-App: Creates independent sub-applications within an instance. In "Shared Memory Multi-App" mode, multiple apps can coexist within a single process group
- Multi-Environment Hybrid Deployment: Links multiple NocoBase nodes together, enabling a configuration with a control plane plus multiple runtime nodes
- Multi-Space: Creates logically independent data spaces within a single application (multi-tenant style usage)
Note that both Multi-App and Multi-Space are paid edition (Enterprise Edition or higher) features (based on official documentation labels as of July 2026). The point from Part 1 about "checking which edition has the features you need first" applies here as well.
This is a design that didn't exist in 1.x, and it expands the scaling options for organizational use, such as "running independent apps per department in parallel" or "dividing and managing business domains." If you're considering NocoBase as the foundation for a business system, it's worth knowing from the start that the design question of what unit to divide applications by already exists.
UI Templates / Popup Templates
The mechanism for reusing screen components has been enhanced (Documentation).
Block-level templates existed in the 1.x era, but in 2.x, entire popups (units including tabs, blocks, and actions) can be templated and reused from other pages. Two operations are provided: "Convert current popup to template" and "Duplicate current popup as template."
In business systems, you tend to create similar screens like "application forms" and "detail confirmation screens" in many places, so having a common template at the popup level means fixes only need to be made in one place. This is also available in Community Edition or higher.
Note that templating at the block level also offers the same two save methods, distinguished by whether the operation name contains block or popup. What was added in 2.x is the popup side.
ECharts-Based Data Visualization
The data visualization plugin has become Apache ECharts-based (Documentation).
- Configuration supports three modes: "Visual settings mode," "SQL mode," and "JSON mode"
- Supports chart events (highlighting on click, screen transitions, drill-down, etc.)
- Works with page-wide filter blocks to filter multiple charts together
You can build with just the GUI, but with SQL mode and JSON mode (writing ECharts configuration directly), there's room for engineers to fine-tune as needed. The positioning is that it's now easier to complete business dashboards within NocoBase. This is also available in Community Edition or higher.
As a test, I placed a pie chart and bar chart side by side using sample data from a book collection management system. Both used SQL mode, with aggregation written using just GROUP BY.
Approval Workflows v2 (New Approval Flow Layout)
The UI for the approval flow feature has been revamped to be block-based (mentioned in the 2.0 release announcement). The approval request screen and the layout of CC nodes for sharing information with stakeholders have also been updated.
Approval flow configurations created in 1.x will continue to work, but those migrating from 1.x should note that switching to the new 2.0 layout cannot be undone (irreversible). Conversely, people coming in from 2.x only need to learn the new layout from the start, so this isn't a concern for them.
One important caveat: the Approval feature is a paid edition (Professional or higher) feature (Official pricing page as of July 2026). It cannot be used with the free Community Edition alone, so if you're considering NocoBase specifically for approval workflows, please check the edition scope first.
Other minor improvements include the addition of Inline Edit / Popup Edit modes for editing sub-tables, with UX around data editing being continuously enhanced.
Dealing with 1.x Information and Fast Release Cycles
Here are some points that proved useful when actually following 2.x information.
Distinguish between 1.x and 2.x information. Search results, blogs, and forum answers contain a large amount of 1.x-era content. Getting into the habit of checking "which series is this about?" by looking at the UI in screenshots or the documentation paths being referenced will prevent confusion.
Prepare for the fast release cycle. With patches coming out every few days, it's not realistic to "always upgrade to the latest." I recommend pinning your version and deciding in advance when you'll upgrade and what your verification procedure will be.
However, you can't just leave it pinned and ignore updates. Patches can include security fixes. In NocoBase, fixes for vulnerabilities rated Critical (CVSS 10.0) have been released. You can check GitHub Security Advisories to see if the version you're using is affected, so it's a good idea to decide that security fixes will be tracked separately from your regular upgrade plan.
Information on new features tends to be available in the English documentation first. As mentioned in Part 1, when checking version differences or features immediately after release in particular, it's safest to use the English documentation and GitHub Releases as primary sources. Pay especially close attention to release information when you're dealing with a bug in your current version and waiting for a fix.
The caveats from the basics section — the commitment to self-hosting, the line between OSS and commercial, and the Japanese language information situation — are summarized in Part 1. Operational topics like SSO integration in practice and standard approaches to monitoring and backup will be verified and covered in order throughout this series.
Plans for Upcoming Installments
The next two installments are planned in this order (but please note that the order and content may change):
- Part 3 (tentative): Starting NocoBase 2.x locally with Docker Compose
- Part 4 (tentative): Building your first business app — from defining a collection to placing it on a screen
In Part 1, I wrote that NocoBase is a tool for building business systems through a stacking approach: "create a table → place it on a screen → add operations and permissions → add automation." I plan to work through that in order.
Summary
- NocoBase 2.x continues to evolve in three directions: "AI," "Scale (Multi-App)," and "UX (templates, visualization, approval UI)"
- Releases have been moving at a fast pace from 2.0 (February 2026) to the 2.2 series, making it important to determine the version series of your information sources and decide on a version pinning policy in advance
- If you keep the English documentation (as the reference) along with the Japanese version, plus GitHub Releases, as your primary sources, you can keep up with the changes
Japanese-language 2.x information is still sparse territory. I'll be sharing my own operations and learning process through this series. If you have feedback or requests, please let me know in the comments.