Custom App Launcher question

[Frank_McGee]

Hey folks, I have a question about a custom app launcher. We have a handful of apps that we’re using, and I built a custom app launcher to help folks navigate back and forth between them, and it mostly works fine. The issue I’ve run into is that a couple of the apps have actions that let you start a record in one of the other apps with data from the first one. When they do this, the link to the custom app launcher in the menu is now replaced with a link that takes them back to the first app, and then they can move back and forth between those two apps, but can’t get to the app launcher. I’ve created an action that will take them “home”, but I’m wondering if there’s a way to have that custom app launcher always appear in the side menu, rather than whichever app they just came from as it seems to now.

Thanks

[peterdykstra · Accepted solution]

Hey @Frank_McGee, good to see you here!

Have you considered including the ‘launcher’ as a view in each app you’ve created? If users are frequently moving back and forth between apps, it may be worth the upfront work (but uncertain how many apps this would affect).

For example, if you have a ‘Launcher Table’ that includes names, links and icons to each of your apps and is the basis for a single Launcher ‘Home’ app right now, could you connect that table as a data source and build a ‘menu’ view for each of your apps? That way, no matter what app the user is in, or how they navigated there, they’d have quick links directly to other apps.

As you add new applications to that launcher table in the future, those will populate as new ‘menu’ options in all existing apps.

[Frank_McGee]

Thanks Peter, I had not considered that. I have a user management app that some users have access to that manages user permissions (not all users have access to the same apps), so I’ll need to incorporate that slice/filter in each app as well. I’d still like to have the stand alone app launcher so that all users can use that as their one and only shortcut to access all of our apps. Thanks for helping me come up with a different solution.

[peterdykstra]

Keep us posted if this method works for you!