Intro to apps
Learn about the types of apps you can set up
Overview 
Apps give you the flexibility to use Copilot for exactly what your team and clients need, and let you disable what you don’t need so that you can keep the user experience simple and modern. You can turn on just a single app, like the Billing App, if you just want an easy way to invoice clients. Alternatively, you can enable dozens of apps to provide your team and clients an all-in-one experience.
Best practices
It's quick to enable or disable apps and the impact on the client experience is seamless. This is why we recommend you start simple with just the apps they need, and add complexity over time as more functionality is needed.
Types of apps
Apps can be client-facing or internal-only and this is represented by visibility. In addition, apps can be created by Copilot, a partner, or custom-made, and this represented by the App creator.
Visibility
App type | Definition |
|---|---|
Client-facing | Client Apps are apps which are visible to your team and clients. For example, the Messaging App is a Client App because clients can also view and send messages. |
Internal-facing | Internal Apps are apps which are not visible to your clients. For example, the QuickBooks App is an Internal App because clients cannot see it. |
Type
App type | Definition |
|---|---|
App | An App, like our Billing App or Messaging App, is secure and generally highly interactive and feature-rich. Apps can be made by Copilot (and this is indicated in the app directory) or by our of our approved partners. |
Embed | An Embed, including the Airtable Embed or Calendly Embed, is a simple iFrame that's visible in the Copilot Dashboard for your team and in your portal for clients. We've listed some of the most popular Embeds in our documentation but you can technically connect any product that support embedding. |
Link | A Link is a way to direct clients to an external website. Usually we recommend using Embeds because it makes for a more integrated experience, but for applications that block embedding, Links are a good alternative. |
Custom App | A Custom App is an app that is built by you or one of our software partners exclusively for your workspace. |
Embed setup type
Client embeds can be configured to be available to all clients or to specific clients only. When adding a Client Embed, you'll select the setup type from the dropdown.
Automatic setup means the embed is visible to all of your clients and can be set up in a single step. For example, if you want all your clients to be able to schedule a call with you using Calendly, you will probably want to use an automatic app.
Manual setup requires manual setup for each client, group of clients, or company. For example, if you are sharing a project status dashboard from Airtable, you will probably want to use a manual app because each client would have their own project status dashboard.
For manual setup, you will not be able to embed the content during the initial setup, you'll need to manually connect the content for each client after creating the app.
Previewing Client Apps
To preview the app as a client, connect the app to your test client. Then, click Portal at the bottom of the sidebar and click Open portal. Once you're logged in as your test client you'll be able to view the connected app.
Frequently Asked Questions
Restricted Embeds Some websites or applications have a policy that restricts link or iframe embeds in external applications. If you try to embed an app that has these restrictions, you will see an error after pasting the link or code into the content box.
It is still possible to connect these apps as Partner Apps using the Connect as link setting. Instead of embedding directly into the portal, the connected content will open in a new browser tab. The Partner App will appear as a regular item in the client's sidebar, but the link will open in a new tab when the client clicks on the app.
Unsupported Embeds Some apps that offer external embeds cannot be supported by Copilot because the embed code contains JavaScript or other unsupported HTML tags. This is seen most commonly in widgets or other interactive embeds.
There are multiple ways you can customize your apps. To do so, navigate to the App Setup page. Click Edit on any app to:
Delete or disable the app Change the app's icon Update the content of Partner Apps Change the global settings for Copilot Apps
You can reorder the apps directly from the App Setup page by dragging and dropping the apps in your preferred order.
*Note: When apps are reordered, the changes will not be visible to internal users, but they will be visible to your clients in their sidebar.
The default app clients will see in their sidebar is the Messages app, but you can rearrange the order for your clients. Note that the order will not change in Copilot Dashboard, only in the portal.
To rearrange the order of Apps, simply go to App Setup in your sidebar and drag and drop apps into the desired order.
Be sure to click Update in the top-right to save your changes. Once you've updated, go to the portal to preview your changes.
You can disable core Copilot Apps and delete Partner/Custom Apps on the App Setup page in your sidebar.
Click the ellipsis next to the App to go to the App's setup page. At the bottom, click Disable if it's a Copilot App (Messages, Files, Forms, Billing, Helpdesk/Knowledge base) or Delete if it's a Partner or Custom App.