Additional App capabilities

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Exporting an App
• Understanding App Permissions
• Understanding the App & Workspace Lifecycles
  • Creating new Workspaces with the Creation Service
  • Archiving Workspaces
  • Auditing Apps
• Other Platform Capabilities
  • Meetings
  • Chat
  • Audio and Video
  • Assets
  • Workflows

Exporting an App

There are many good reasons why you export an App, including wanting to share configurations with other developers, create new Apps that either extend the functionality, or make use of some of the same components. For example, in this training you import an App that includes all of the external data source configuration that you need to call into a web API.

Important: Exporting an App may expose secure data, such as the authentication mechanism for web services, or internal configuration. Do not export and share Apps without checking for confidential or sensitive information. 

To export an App: 

1. Go to your App Overview.
2. Go to Configure > Details.
3. Click Export.
   
4. Your App downloads a zip file that contains the definition of your App.

Understanding App Permissions

It’s more than likely that a team of people need permission to make alterations and configure aspects of an App.  Across and organization administrations and teams of people require permission to do these tasks.

Tenant Administrators can see all Apps—They always have full administrative rights to configure the App.

Tenant Administrators can grant permission to other members of the tenant to allow them to become App Builders. An App Builder can create news Apps and access the App Studio.

Each App has:

• A set of App Builders, who can edit the App.
  • If the list is empty, any App Builder can edit the App.
• A set of App Users who can create new App Workspaces.
  • If the list is empty, any member of the tenant can create the App.

Understanding the App & Workspace Lifecycles

The lifecycle of an App depends on the purpose of the App and its audience. As an App Builder, you already know that the Workspace is where data persists for an App, and you can create Workspaces using the CafeX interface.

Some Workspaces may only last a short period of time, such as handling a call from a customer. Some may persist indefinitely, if they record or track data across the organization, for example.

You may also use a Workspace to limit who has access to the App data, for example you may limit which users can see a specific customer’s data. Alternatively, you may want users to share the same data, or only retrieve data from a dedicated service. Sometimes there may be no information held in the Workspace allowing all the users to use the same one.

The important thing to understand is that the App Studio and CafeX can support all of these activities, and your App Users can use the Workspaces to meet their data access needs, without you having to rethink solutions for them.

Creating new Workspaces with the Creation Service

It is often not appropriate for users to navigate into a CafeX App to create a new Workspace. You may need to streamline the creation process, to bring people into the App interface as quickly as possible, and often users need information to begin using the App. CafeX provides a mechanism for creating Workspaces using an authenticated URL that takes parameters and passes them to the App.

Other applications can make use of this URL format to provide your users with new workspaces with parameters they provide.

The format of the URL is:

https://app.cafex.com/be/api/create/workspace/{{Service_Name}}?{{URL_Parameters}}

You can specify {{Service_Name}} in the configuration of your App. The {{URL_Parameters}}, are URL parameters that you configure on each Workspace.

For example, you can create an URL such as:

https://app.cafeX.com/be/api/create/workspace/MyApplication?npi=1223432&stateCode=AL

In this example, a contact center creates a URL in this to pop on an agent’s screen. The agent’s browser then loads the URL, and the CafeX Workspace Creation Service authenticates the user, then creates a new Workspace for them with the information that the IVR captured. The App loads for the agent and the interface uses the data to evaluate a Data Set to start pulling data from the back-end systems immediately.  

Although it is out of scope for this article, you may use the brief instructions to set up the Workspace Creation Service:

You configure URL parameters under: Configure > Workspace Fields.
  

You specify the service name under: Configure > Templates > select a template > Overview > Configure > Creation Service.

Archiving Workspaces

By default, Workspaces persist indefinitely. If you create many Workspaces that your users only use for a brief time, eventually you may find that they have a performance impact on the user’s browser.

As an App Builder, you can change this duration that a Workspace persists with User inactivity before CafeX archives the Workspace.

To configure the automatic archive:

When CafeX archives a Workspace it means that a user won’t be able to View the content any more. The data is not permanently deleted, a Tenant administrator can always restore a Workspace.

Auditing Apps

It is almost always necessary to report on App usage, or audit behavioral patterns within the applications you write. As an App Builder, you can write audit events from the App Studio. CafeX provides an audit log that you can retrieve data from using an API. 

See: Accessing Audit Information Programmatically

To raise an audit event, add an event handler, and set the Action to Raise an audit event.

Other Platform Capabilities

This article introduces the basic knowledge and skills to start developing Apps in the App Studio. You can now further your growth and exploration of the platform on your own. It is important to recognize that these platform capabilities do not require any additional coding. Your App Users can make use of these Components to start benefiting from the collaborative features they provide.

Meetings

The Meeting Component initiates a browser-based meeting to provide real-time communications with the App Users presently in the App. It’s important to realize that Meetings are held within the underlying Workspace, so App Users need to be in the same Workspace to be in the same Meeting. You can save Meeting recordings as Workspace assets to review or apply transcriptions. You can add Meetings to your Apps when your App requires the following:

• Your App Users need support escalations, or handling tasks that need supervisor assistance.
• Your App schedules regular Meetings to review metrics and dashboards.

Chat

The Chat component provides your App with a designated and isolated Chat channel within a Workspace. Workspace members can use the Chat to discuss decisions and use Context Cards to track their outcomes. As an App Builder it can be difficult to capture all the collaborative work that goes on between team members. Chat can provide your App Users with a way to make free-form decisions, while maintaining the context of your App and Workspace. You can add Chat to your Apps when your Apps requires the following:

• A way for App Users to share thoughts or discuss asynchronously.
• A way to track the history of decision making.
• A way to capture teams that rely on free-form decision making.

Audio and Video

These Components allow you to embed video and audio files into your App. Sometimes App Users benefit from these resources more than written cues. Typical uses for the Components are the following:

• Producing training courses and capturing participant feedback.
• Using them along-side the Business Rule Engine to select in-App mentoring for new Users.

Assets

Asset management is one of the most powerful tools for collaborating and sharing documents and resources that may be critical to your business. Each Workspace can contain files relevant to your App. In addition, CafeX Workspaces provide your Users with the ability to share assets between external applications, such as Microsoft Office, and Google Drive, without having to update the native sharing permissions for users.  This means that documents can stay in their native application, but your App Users can see the latest versions of assets. You can use the Asset feature in your Apps when you require the following:

• A secure location to hold documents relevant to your App.
• Providing App Users with documentation, instructions, or descriptions as reference.
• Displaying web-content, such as reports from external applications or teams.

Workflows

This section of the knowledgebase introduces how External Data Sources can integrate your Apps with web APIs. CafeX Workflows provide a low-code environment to build end-to-end processes with integration and automation capabilities. Automate Workflows to reduce the number of steps and shadow-operations that are difficult to track. As an integration engine, CafeX provides over 300 pre-built connectors that manage access to these applications. Apps can receive triggers or initiate complex business processes. You can use Workflows in your Apps when you require the following:

• Each time a new invoice arrives in your CRM system, you need to create a new Workspace for your App Users to process it.
• Interactions from App Users need to create new records.
• Connections with legacy, on-premise database systems.
• Eliminating silos within applications to unify data into a single view.
• Apps that need to send notifications, or emails, to groups of Users.
• Transforming multi-team, multi-application business processes.
• Manage documents and content using secure management.