Overview

Apps give you the flexibility to use Assembly 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 Payments App, if you just want an easy way to invoice clients. Alternatively, you can enable dozens of apps to provide your team and clients with 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 Assembly, a partner, or custom-made, and this is represented by the App creator.

Visibility

Type

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.

Organizing your apps

Reordering apps

You can control the order that apps appear in the sidebar for both your internal dashboard and the client portal. To reorder, navigate to the App Library page and drag apps into the order you'd like. The app at the top of the list will be the default landing page for clients when they log in.

Creating folders

If you have a lot of apps — especially embeds — you can group related ones together using folders. Folders appear in both the internal sidebar and the client portal sidebar, and help keep navigation clean and organized. For example, you might group several analytics embeds under a single "Analytics" folder.

To create a folder:

1. Navigate to the App Library page.

2. Click Add folder and give it a name and icon.

3. Drag apps into the folder to group them.

You can reorder folders the same way you reorder apps — just drag them into position.

Adding a new app to a folder

To add an app you've already installed, simply drag and drop it into the folder. To add a new app directly to a folder, click the menu button (...) next to the folder and select + Add app to folder. This will take you to the app directory where you can select and install a new app straight into that folder.

You can reorder folders the same way you reorder apps — just drag them into position.

Hiding apps and folders from the internal sidebar

If you want to keep your internal sidebar clean, you can hide any app or folder from it without affecting what your clients see. To do this, click the menu button (...) next to the app or folder and select Hide from internal sidebar.

Folder visibility

Folder visibility is automatic. A folder will only be shown to a client if at least one app inside it is visible to them. If none of the apps in a folder apply to a given client, the folder is hidden entirely. This means you don't need to manage folder visibility separately.

URL Parameters

You can add URL parameters to embeds in the Manage URL Parameters section when creating any app that is an automatic embed. This is applicable to embeds that accept URL parameters, such as the Forms app, which supports these parameters to auto-fill form fields.

To add URL parameters, click Add parameter to add a query parameter. Enter the parameter in the URL parameter input, and the value in the Property input.

For example, if you have a Jotform that supports pre-filled forms, you can add the required parameters to support pre-filled forms for your clients.

Supported properties

Clients

• ID (Assembly UUID, used as a unique identifier for a client)

• Email

• Given (first) name

• Family (last) name

Also, if you have custom fields for clients, these field types will also be available as properties in the Clients section of the Property dropdown.

• Phone number

• Address

• URL

• Text

• Number

• Email

If you have renamed any of these field types, you will see the name of your custom field displayed in the list.

Note: Tags custom fields are not supported as properties for URL parameters.

Companies

• ID (Assembly UUID, used as a unique identifier for a company)

• Name

Also, if you have custom fields for companies, these field types will also be available as properties in the Companies section of the Property dropdown.

• Phone number

• Address

• URL

• Text

• Number

• Email