Apps in Actioner
Learn about apps in Actioner.
Apps in Actioner
An app is a collection of actions and workflows that are bundled together. Apps work as containers to hold actions and workflows, enabling all of its actions to be run with continuity.
Apps can consist of tool-specific actions and workflows or they can be setup with actions and workflows that run in multiple tools.
Above is an example incident management solution installed from app directory. It contains actions that run in PagerDuty, Statuspage, Jira and Slack. This app bundles all incident-related actions together so that actions can be executed with continuity. When there is a PagerDuty incident, this app notifies incident assignees and incident responders, creates a dedicated Slack channel and invites all stakeholders to this incident war room. In the war room, incident can be tracked and managed through its lifecycle. You can create Statuspage incidents when there is a new PagerDuty incident and continue to update it with updates of the PagerDuty incident.
App directory
App directory helps you discover and use what Actioner Community has built as ready-made actions and workflows.
Discover apps connected with the most popular tools and solutions for sales, support, incident management use-cases.
You can install an app in seconds, add up multiple actions and workflows to your stack. You can use them as is or customize them to fit your exact needs.
Building your own app
Actioner app directory has apps designed to connect the most popular tools and work more efficiently within Slack. But every company has unique needs to meet internal processes. That's where building your own apps that work in Slack come into picture.
Whether you're a developer or a knowledge worker, building your own Slack apps is the way to improve workflows and customize your tools for your team.
You can create a bot in Slack to help employees open up IT requests, or automate on-boarding of new hires. Actioner lets you extend and automate your flows in Slack. All it takes is a grasp of Actioner's key concepts and know-how of building an interaction between Slack, your tool's API and action components.
Actioner workflows enable you to automate your processes by listening events from your tools and Slack workspace. A workflow can listen a webhook, a Slack or a HubSpot event. By add new steps to your workflow, you can connect them with actions.
You app can consist of workflows that
- listen events happening in your tool and execute Slack-specific functions, such as notifying a user or creating a collaboration channel.
- and listen events happening in your Slack workspace and perform an operation in other tools, such as creating a record or updating an entity.
My apps page
To see the list of your apps, go to My apps page from the left menu. This page lists the apps that you are an admin of and the apps that you have the right to run its actions.
You can add new apps to your workspace or clone from existing ones. If you are the admin of an app, you can update its properties, connections, workflows and actions.
Creating a new app
All users can build an app from scratch or install from app directory.
To create a new app, go to My apps page from left menu and click yellow + Add new app at top left corner.
There are two options for creating an app. You can install from directory or build your own app from scratch.
App properties
You can view an app's name, description and icon can be on Description tab. If you are an app admin, you can update them on this tab.
Name: Name of your tool or process can be used as an app name. An app's name is also used to identify which app the action belongs to when running it. The name is visible while running an action in Slack through /actioner shortcut.
Description: It is used to provide a summary of the app and its capabilities. This field can also be used to provide instructions about the app.
Icon: It can be the logo of your tool or an image representing the functionality of your app.
Actions: Lists the actions of the app. You can search and filter actions by their names or tags.
Workflows: Lists the workflows of the app. You can search and filter workflows by their names or tags.
App settings: It is only visible to app admins and lists the connections and users of the app.
Connections section lists the connections of the app. You can add new connections or update the existing ones.
Permissions section lists the users and their roles added to that app. You can add users to your app, remove them or update their roles.
Cloning an app
By cloning an app, you can create its copy in your stack and customize your own version of actions on the cloned version.
To clone an app, navigate to its Description tab, click ellipsis … at top right corner and select Clone.
When an app is cloned, a new app is created with the same properties, connection and workflow configurations and with the same actions — including their inputs, outputs, requests and functions.
When you clone an app;
- You become the only user on the cloned version. You can add users to your app on Permissions in App settings tab.
- Connection configurations and their sharing scopes are copied to the new app.
- Connection credentials are not copied. Depending on the sharing scope, app admins or app users will need to enter credentials to run the app's actions.
- Workflows are copied to the new app. Since the new workflows are created with new webhook URLs, you will need to setup webhooks with the new URLs in your tools.
- Cloned app has no relations with the app it is cloned from. Changes in either of these do not impact each other.
Required and optional connections
Connections are used to listen Slack & HubSpot events and send Slack & API requests. On the right side of Description tab, you can see the list of connections to run the actions of your app. Click Connect to complete authentication for a connection.
Required connections are essential to run the actions whereas Optional connections can be skipped. Optional connections are typically referenced in actions that run in helper tools.
Actioner's incident management solution for PagerDuty contains connections with Slack, PagerDuty, Statuspage and Jira. Since the app manages incidents through PagerDuty and Slack, these are required connections.
However, Statuspage and Jira are helper tools. If you are using Statuspage to create incidents when there is a PagerDuty incident, you can connect Statuspage. If you are not using Statuspage, you can skip that connection. Likewise, if you are using Jira to create follow-up tasks, you can connect Jira. If you are not using Jira, you can skip that connection.
App admins
All users added to an app can run its actions and view its properties, action and workflow lists. However, only the app admins can update its properties, actions and workflows. You can see the list of app admins on Description tab.
Updating an app
Only app admins can update an app's properties, actions, workflows, connections and users.
To edit an app's name, description or icon, navigate to Description tab of your app, click on the field you want to update.
To view or update connections and to authenticate a connection, go to Connections section on App settings tab.
To view and update user permissions of an app, go to Permissions section on App settings tab.
To edit the actions of an app, navigate to the action you want to update and open it in Design mode. You can browse through Inputs, Outputs, Requests and Functions.
Deleting an app
Deletion of an app can only be performed by app admins. When an app is deleted, its actions, connections and workflows are removed from your workspace. Deletion of an app is irreversible.
To delete an app, navigate to your app's Description tab, click ellipsis … at top right corner and select Delete.
