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Building an App in Clappia is very simple. The steps given below show you how to create an app.
1.   Prepare your Workplace

Sign up on Clappia and you should see an option to create a Workplace. A Workplace provides a virtual boundary to your organization so that admins can have an organization-level user and data access control. You should land on the dashboard as shown below –

2.   Start building the application

Click on the plus button to start building the application. This should land you on the page where you need to provide the app name, icon, and icon color.

3.   Familirize yourself with the App Designer

You are now in the App Designer. You can now add a Section which is a group of fields. Add the first section and then you can add a field. You need to use these fields to build your app interface.

4.   Add logic and calculations

We promise that you don’t need to know any coding to build an app. How do we do it? We have provided an auto-generated variable name to each block that you add. You can call these variables just by typing @, use them like Spreadsheet cell numbers and then add calculations and logic to your app by writing Spreadsheet formulae. Isn’t it awesome?

5.   Get data from other Clappia apps or from your existing data sources through APIs

Till now we have seen a simple application but the actual world apps are complex and require a lot of data flow from one place to another. That’s where our data connectors help. You can use “Get Data” blocks to get data from some other Clappia app or from your legacy systems like SAP through REST APIs.

6.   Add additional configurations

There are a few more configurations that are there to enhance the capabilities of your app.
App Info: View the details of the app and customize the app icon and color
Status: Add statuses like Approved, Rejected, In Progress etc. so that admins can assign these status to the submissions made by the users. These status changes can act like triggers for different kinds of workflows.
Print Settings: Configure print templates so that you can create a merged PDF file from the template and application data. These PDFs can be sent to your users based on the requirement.
Google Sheets/Drive: Connect a Google Drive/Sheet from your Google account so that the data flows into the drive/sheets in real time. You users will use the apps and a copy of the data entry will flow into this Drive/Sheet.
Validations: You can add complex app level validations so that your users don’t commit a mistake while filling data in the apps.
App Publish: Enable or disable the publishing of you app.
Clone App: Create a duplicate copy of your app.

7.   Configure workflows and automation

Automation is the heart of an application. You can add several combinations of workflows and automations by using different workflow blocks. You can call all the variables of your app just by typing @ here as well.

8.   Build your live dashboard

The admins and decision-makers of your organization need to know what’s happening. Why download data, add upload to a BI tool, and then analyze the data which is practically dead. Create a live dashboard so that you can see what’s happening on the ground.

9.   Start distributing your app

Your application is ready to be used. All the database schema, hosting, coding or anything too technical has already happened in the backend. You don’t need to worry about anything now. Start distributing the app.

User Access: Add a group of internal team members and set their permissions so that only they can access the apps.
Link Sharing: Make this application public so that anyone with the link can access the app like a form and start using it without installing anything.
Embed on a Website: Embed the app on your website.
Mobile Apps: Download the android version or the iOS version of the Clappia App Launcher.
Whitelabeled App: Request for a whitelabeled app.

10.  Access Web App

The users that you added in the step above need to sign up on Clappia and visit your Workplace to find the app on their dashboard.

11.  Access Mobile App

They can access the mobile app by installing the standard Clappia App Launcher already hosted in the Android Play Store and iOS Appstore. You can also get a Whitelabled version of these apps with your own logo and branding.

12.  Search, edit and download data

You and your users can search, edit and download the data based on their permissions. You can use this as your MIS.

Congratulations! You have learnt how to create an app.
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