In Tines, stories do the work: they’re built to move data, make decisions, and take action across your tools. An App is the window people look through to interact with that work.
More precisely, an App is a customizable, interactive front end for your Tines workflows. It's a real application, with its own interface, that connects directly to your existing stories and data.
Here's what makes Apps special: you build them using natural language. You describe what you want in plain English, and Tines generates a working application for you in minutes. You don't need a separate development team, and you don't need to start from a blank page of code.
Imagine a few everyday situations:
An IT team wants a simple portal where employees can request a new laptop or software license, with the request routed and fulfilled automatically.
An HR team wants a clean interface to kick off onboarding for a new hire, triggering account setup behind the scenes.
A product team wants a single dashboard that pulls together feature requests and user feedback so they can spot trends at a glance.
In each case, there's a powerful workflow doing the heavy lifting, and an App giving people an easy, friendly way to use it.
ℹ️Info
The problem Apps solve
A workflow saves hours of manual effort, but the people who would benefit from it may not be able to use it easily. They don't work in the storyboard, and they shouldn't have to. So the value of that story stays locked away with the few people who know how to trigger it.
Historically, closing that gap meant one of two things: asking a development team to build a custom interface, or stitching together a workaround. Both are slow, and both pull you away from the work you actually want to do.
Apps remove that bottleneck. Instead of choosing between "powerful but hard to access" and "easy to use but time-consuming to build," you get both. The interface connects straight to your workflow, so your story becomes something your whole team can use, not just something that runs quietly in the background.
Most Apps fall into one of four broad categories:
Information aggregation and action. Bring data from different tools and sources into one view, with the ability to act on what you see. For example, a support lead viewing ticket volume, customer sentiment, and account details on one screen.
Self-service and execution. Give people a simple interface to submit requests or data, with fulfillment handled automatically. For example, the IT laptop request portal we mentioned earlier.
Decision support and execution. Use your workflows to surface the right information and recommend a path, then trigger the action. For example, a workforce planning App that highlights hiring needs and kicks off a request.
System health and admin. Monitor and manage your tools and infrastructure at scale. For example, an App that surfaces accounts needing review and lets an admin act on them in bulk.