Apps: Have your own tools built in the chat

An app is a small tool for a specific task in your team: a sales cockpit with the revenue from your database, an overview of properties or appointments, a list that several people maintain together. You describe in the chat what it should do. The assistant builds the app, checks it itself and publishes it. After that you open it like any other page in 9brains.

You find apps in the Apps area in the sidebar. They are available with a Business license.

In the video (in German, with German subtitles), one sentence in the chat becomes a service control center: a map with all machines from the ERP, a click on a case shows the fix from the maintenance manual and the stock of the spare part, plus a weekly plan for the service team.

What an app can and cannot do

An app is there to show data and to maintain it on a small scale:

Show: tables, key figures and charts (bars, lines, pies, time series). A click on a bar can lead into the details.
Its own entries: the app has a small data store of its own. What someone enters is seen and can be changed by everyone the app is shared with, and it is kept when the app is developed further.
Live data: the app reads current figures straight from your integrations, for example from a database (PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle), from Microsoft 365, Notion, Asana, HubSpot, Jira or Lexware. The data is not copied, the app always shows the current state.

What an app deliberately is not:

Not a public website. Only people in your workspace the app is shared with can see it. Customers and the public have no access.
No access to arbitrary web addresses. An app only talks to its own entries and to the integrations it has been given access to. It does not load images or fonts from other sites.
No keys of its own inside the app. An app never asks for API keys or passwords. Access always comes from the accounts the person using the app at that moment has allowed it to use.
Not a large application. An app is one screen for one task. If it needs several views, it gets tabs.

Examples

Apps pay off for tasks where someone keeps pulling the same figures together or a list keeps getting passed around. Each example says where the data comes from and gives you a sentence to start with in the chat.

Development overview

Reads from Jira which tickets were finished recently, which are in testing, which are in development and what is planned next. That way even colleagues who have no Jira or do not know their way around it see at a glance where the team stands and what has changed lately.

Data: live from Jira. So that the others need no Jira account of their own, you share your Jira account with them. They then only allow it the first time they open the app and see the same tickets as you.
In the chat: “Build me an app that shows from our Jira project what was finished in the last two weeks, what is in testing, what is in development and what is coming next. It is meant for colleagues who do not know Jira, so please no ticket jargon.”

Sales cockpit

Revenue, licenses and margin per customer, plus the tasks sales has to do right now, each with the phone number to call.

Data: figures live from your database (PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle), open tasks with contact details live from your CRM, for example Brevo. Notes on individual customers are stored as the app’s own entries.
In the chat: “Build me a sales cockpit: revenue and margin per customer for the current year from our database, sortable, and below it all open sales tasks from Brevo with due date, contact and a phone number to click.”

Shared task list or Kanban board

A shared list or a board with columns such as “Open”, “In progress” and “Done”, where the team adds tasks, moves them along and ticks them off. The app can also bring several existing lists together in one place, for example the tasks from two tools that different teams use.

Data: whatever suits you: as the app’s own entries, or live from a system where the tasks already are, for example a SharePoint list or Microsoft To Do via Microsoft 365, Jira, Asana or Notion.
In the chat: “Build me a Kanban board for our team with the columns Open, In progress and Done. Everyone should be able to add tasks, assign them to a person and move them on with a click.”

Property board for estate agents

All properties with their status (available, reserved, sold), contact person and next appointment, maintained together by the whole office.

Data: the app’s own entries. If you work with onOffice, the app can read the properties from there.
In the chat: “Build me a board for our properties with address, status and the next viewing appointment. Everyone in the office should be able to change the status.”

Occupancy overview

Which rooms or meeting rooms are booked this week, as a plan at a glance.

Data: for a hotel live from ibelsa, for meeting rooms as the app’s own entries that everyone adds themselves.
In the chat: “Build me a weekly overview of our three meeting rooms where anyone can add a booking with their name and the time.”

Holiday and absence overview

Who is away when, as a calendar for the team, so that holidays do not clash.

Data: the app’s own entries.
In the chat: “Build me an absence overview for our team: everyone enters holiday, training or sick leave with the dates, and a monthly calendar shows how many people are away when.”

Training and quiz app

Multiple-choice questions on a topic, for instance for onboarding new staff, with an evaluation of who passed and which questions are often answered wrongly.

Data: the app’s own entries, for the questions and for the results.
In the chat: “Build me a quiz app with 20 multiple-choice questions on workplace safety. I will paste the questions below. At the end everyone should see their result, and I need an evaluation per question.”

Open items

Due and overdue invoices, sorted by customer and age, so that accounting keeps an eye on reminders.

Data: live from your accounting, for example Lexware Office or sevdesk, plus the app’s own entries for who is following up on which item.
In the chat: “Build me an overview of the open invoices from Lexware Office, grouped by days overdue, with a field where we note who is following up.”

Building an app

Open the Apps area and click “New app”. Alternatively, simply write what you need in a normal chat, for example: “Build me an app where we keep track of which meeting rooms are booked.”
Describe who opens the app and what should be on it. The assistant asks two or three follow-up questions and then tells you in a few sentences what it is going to build.
It builds the app, opens it in a browser itself, looks at the result and fixes things until it runs without errors. Every version it checks appears to the right of the chat as a Preview, where you can already try it out. On a phone, open it with “Open preview” in the chat.
It publishes the app and tells you its name. From then on it is in the Apps area.

At first only you can see the new app. You share it with others on its page.

To build apps you need the group permission “Create apps”. By default all members have it; administrators can restrict it to particular groups in the group permissions. Without it you still see and use the apps shared with you, but you get no buttons for building or developing them further.

What to clarify beforehand

An app is only as good as the description you give. Three questions are worth it:

Who opens it, and what for? “I look at it every morning” makes a different app than “we enter figures there every day”.
What exactly is on the screen? Name the real columns, statuses and key figures. Best of all, paste a few example rows.
Where does the data come from, and do the others have access to it? Everyone who is meant to use the app needs access to the same integration (see below). Clear this up before you hand the app to a whole department.

If the app is also meant for smartphones, say so. The assistant then additionally checks it at phone width.

When the assistant builds a view on its own

Some answers are better used than read: a repayment plan you want to try with different interest rates, or revenue you want to switch between regions. Then the assistant builds a small view next to its answer on its own and shows it to the right of the chat.

Such a view is an app that has not been saved yet. It is not in the Apps area and cannot be shared. To keep it, click “Save as app” above the view. The assistant checks it once more and saves it; from then on it is an app like any other. 9brains deletes views that were not saved after 30 days.

This applies only to people with the group permission “Create apps”.

Allowing accounts

When an app reads data from an integration, everyone who uses it decides once which of their accounts the app may use for it. The dialog says what the app needs the data for, for example “Reads this month’s revenue from your database”, and lists the matching accounts below it to tick, each with its address and owner: your own, accounts colleagues share with you (“Account of …”) and company accounts. You can tick several, your own mailbox and a team mailbox for instance. If you have only one matching account, it is already ticked. You can allow it as soon as at least one account is ticked for every integration. Parts of 9brains that need no account, such as knowledge management, are simply included.

An app only gets at the accounts you allow for it. Within an allowed account it reaches as far as your own access, so it can also change data there if it is built to. The assistant only builds in changes to your systems when you explicitly ask for them. If an account is deleted or no longer shared with you, its allowance ends too: the app does not quietly switch to another account, it asks again the next time you open it.

While building, the dialog appears right in the chat. You click “Allow” there, and the assistant carries on by itself. That also works if you opened the preview in a window of its own and allow access there.
When developing the app further, 9brains only asks about integrations that are new. The same goes for everyone who already uses the app: they are asked about the new integration the next time they open it, but only once the new version is published. Until then they keep using the previous version with the previous accounts.
If a new version no longer needs an account, your access for it stays in place. Under Settings → Integrations the account then says that the current version does not use it. If the app goes back to a version that needs it again, you do not have to allow it again.
Colleagues are asked the first time they open the app, in a dialog headed, for example, Give “Sales cockpit” access. “Allow and open” takes them straight into it.

What the others have to do depends on the account:

Shared account or company account (a shared CRM login, for example): colleagues tick it and see the same data as you.
Own account: everyone needs an account of their own at this integration. If it is missing, the dialog says which one, and it can be added under Settings → Integrations.
Services with a sign-in such as Microsoft 365: everyone signs in with their own account. Two people therefore each see their own data in the same app, their own mailbox for instance.
An API you connected yourself in a chat: the app uses exactly your account for it. Others can only open the app once you share that account with them.

Which data sources an app needs and which accounts you have allowed it to use for them is shown on the app’s page in the “Tools” tab, as “Access given:” with the account’s name, with several accounts as “Access given: 2 accounts”, for example. If you have not allowed it yet, it reads “No access given” with “Give access now”. “Change access” opens the same dialog as the first time you opened the app, where you tick other accounts. “Withdraw access” takes back all your allowances for this app at once.

Each allowance is also shown on the account itself: expand the integration under Settings → Integrations and, on the account, “Apps using this account”. Each app has one row there with the number of people who allowed it; clicking it shows them with the day they allowed it, and “Withdraw” takes back a single allowance. This also works on an account somebody shares with you. Whoever looks after an account sees everybody’s allowances there, can withdraw each of them and, with “Withdraw for everyone”, all allowances for one app at once. If it was the last account allowed for that integration, the app asks again the next time it is opened.

Opening apps

In the Apps area, click “Open” in an app’s row, or click the app in the sidebar. It opens inside the 9brains window, the sidebar stays in place and lists your apps under “My apps” and “Shared with me”, so you switch between them with one click.

If you want an app next to 9brains in a window of its own, open the three-dot menu next to the app in the sidebar and choose “Open in new window”. This also helps if your browser does not load the app inside 9brains.

The app follows the light or dark mode of 9brains. Apps also work in the browser on a smartphone.

Maintaining entries from the chat

You can also read and change an app’s entries right in the chat, without opening the app. This works for every app you may use, including apps others built and shared with you. Just write what you need and name the app:

“Log 2.5 hours for Müller GmbH in the time tracking, concept workshop, yesterday.”
“Who is out next week according to the absence overview?”
“Set Hauptstraße 3 to reserved on the property board.”

The assistant first looks at a few existing entries so that new ones match the rest. What it enters appears in the app under your name, as if you had entered it there yourself. If you have the app open, you see the entry after reloading.

An agent can also read and change the entries of apps its owner may use, also when it runs autonomously on a schedule. A new app, however, is never built by an agent autonomously, only in chat.

Before the assistant deletes more than a handful of entries, it tells you how many and waits for your confirmation. The entries belong to everybody who uses the app.

From the chat you reach only an app’s own entries. Live data an app shows from your integrations you query in the chat directly through that integration.

On an app’s page (click its name), you decide in the “General” tab, in the “Sharing” section, who may use it. It works like it does for skills and agents: one row per person or group; for everyone in the workspace, pick “Alle Mitglieder”. Each row gets one role:

Role	What it allows
Use app	Can open and use the app and maintain its entries, also from the chat.
Edit app	Can additionally keep building the app in chat and publish it again.
Administer app	Can additionally change sharing, transfer ownership and delete the app.

Sharing an app passes on no accounts. Everyone decides which accounts the app may use the first time they open it, as described above.

A copied link to an app gives nobody access. Whoever opens the link signs in to 9brains and only sees the app if it has been shared with them.

Changing apps

If an app should do something new or look different, click “Keep building”: in its row in the Apps area, at the top of its page, or in the menu next to the app in the sidebar. A chat opens in which you describe the change. The assistant changes only what you ask for, checks the app again and publishes it anew. You see the change beforehand in the preview next to the chat, everybody else only once it is published. The entries you have kept in the app stay as they are.

Every change is kept as a version of the app of its own, with your name on it. Every chat works on its own copy of the app and shows its own preview beside it; what one chat changes reaches nobody else until it is published. If two chats work on the same app at the same time, nothing gets lost: before publishing its own change, the assistant takes in what was already published from the other chat. If both changes touch the same spot, it shows you what contradicts and asks how the two should fit together.

All versions are listed on the app’s page in the “Versions” tab: what changed, who changed it and when, newest first. The version everybody currently sees is marked “Published”. To go back to an earlier version, choose “Restore this version” in its menu. A chat opens in which you confirm it. The assistant then restores the app as it was at that point and publishes it. The versions in between stay in the list, so you can go forward again too. The entries you have kept in the app are not reset. The tab is visible to everyone who may edit the app.

You change the name and description yourself on the app’s page in the “General” tab under “Profile”. The assistant keeps them when it develops the app further and does not overwrite them.

An app is deleted at the bottom of the “General” tab. The owner and everyone with the “Administer app” role may do that. The app then disappears for everyone, together with all its entries and all its saved versions.

Good to know

Changes made by others show up once you reload the app. Many apps have a button of their own for that. If two people change the same entry, the version saved last wins.
Charts adapt to light and dark mode and to the app’s language, so numbers and month names look the way you are used to.
On a smartphone columns stack on top of each other and wide tables can be swiped sideways. Charts with a great many values get cramped on a narrow screen.
Size: an app holds up to 50,000 entries of its own and can use up to eight integrations. One is usually enough.
Confidential content: everyone the app is shared with sees its own entries. So think about what goes in there before you share it.

Security

Apps are sealed off from 9brains and from each other. Data only leaves 9brains from an app through the integrations you have allowed for that very app.

How an app is sealed off

Separate from 9brains and from other apps. Every app runs under an address of its own. It cannot reach your 9brains sign-in or other apps. Even when it is shown inside the 9brains window, it cannot control that window.
No way out. An app only talks to its own entries and to the integrations it has been allowed. The browser blocks requests to other web addresses, and images, fonts or scripts from other sites. So an app cannot send data to third parties in the background.
Integrations run through 9brains. Every integration call goes through 9brains, only for the integrations the app has registered, only to the addresses the allowed account belongs to, and only encrypted. 9brains adds the credentials on the way to the service; the app itself never gets to see a key or a password.
Every request is checked again. On every access 9brains checks again whether you are still a member of the workspace, have the required license, the app is shared with you and you have allowed it to use the account. If the app is taken away from you, you are removed from the workspace, you withdraw an allowance or the account is no longer shared with you, this applies from the next access on, even in a window that has been open for hours. When you sign out of 9brains, you are signed out of the apps as well.
Only for signed-in members. An app cannot be reached publicly. It only opens for signed-in members of your workspace it is shared with. A copied link does not change that.

Where the data is stored

An app’s own entries are kept in the 9brains database, the app itself in the 9brains file storage and its versions in the 9brains version control, all three in Germany like all other data of your workspace, and separate from other workspaces. The details are under Privacy & data sovereignty. Live data from integrations is fetched when the app is opened and is not copied into the app.

What to watch out for

Without your allowance an app gets at no account. Once you allow one, it reaches as far as your own access there: through that account it can also change data or, with services such as Microsoft 365, send something, if it is built to. It cannot reach your other accounts. That is why the dialog says what the app needs the data for. Only tick what fits that purpose, and withdraw allowances you no longer need.
Changes to your systems only on request. The assistant only builds in changes to your systems when you explicitly ask for them. Before you share an app, it is still worth taking a look at what it does.
“Edit app” is a matter of trust. Whoever may develop an app further also decides what it does with the accounts others have allowed it to use. Only give this role to people you trust with that.
You will notice other sites. Like any web page, an app can open another site, through a link for instance. That does not happen unnoticed: you then see a different page or a new window. If an app unexpectedly opens such a page, do not enter anything there and let the app’s owner know.

Frequently asked questions

Why don’t I see a “New app” button? You do not have the “Create apps” group permission. You can still open and use apps shared with you. Ask an administrator of your workspace if you want to build apps yourself.

A colleague cannot open my app. Why? Usually they are missing an account at an integration the app needs. The dialog asking for their allowance tells them which one. If it is an API you connected yourself, you first have to share your account for it with them.

Does everyone see the same figures in an app? For the app’s own entries, yes. For live data from integrations, only if everyone ticks the same shared account or company account. With their own accounts, everyone sees what they themselves have access to.

What does “No content yet” mean? The app has been created but not fully built yet. “Build app” picks the chat up again.