Many OnBase administrators and developers are hearing more about App Builder, but still have questions about what it is, what licensing is required, and when it is the right fit compared to other configuration options.
To bring clarity to the topic, Principal Consultant Cailen Myers will break down what App Builder is, when it was released, and how the core building blocks work together to create a clean, role-based user experience.
In this session, Cailen will walk through the essential terminology and the most common build patterns, including Master Detail with Sources, Quick Access, and Single Source. You will also see how Actions, Tiles, Cards, and Screens connect in real builds, and how privileges factor into secure deployment. Session attendees will see how to:
- Understand what App Builder is and when to use it
- Identify the licensing needed to get started and plan adoption
- Translate App Builder terminology into practical building steps, including Tiles, Cards, Screens, and Actions
- Build using core patterns such as Master Detail with Sources, Quick Access, and Single Source
- Apply privileges correctly to support governance, consistency, and the right level of access
Whether you are exploring App Builder for the first time or looking to standardize how you build and secure apps, this session will help you move from curiosity to confident execution.
Transcript
Cailen Myers
Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar on designing role-based OnBase experiences with App Builder. My name is Cailen Myers, and I am a Principal Consultant at RPI Consultants.
We are thrilled to have you here with us today. Over the next 30 minutes, we’ll walk you through what App Builder is and how it may help your organization.
Just a couple of housekeeping items before we jump in. All lines are muted, but of course, we want to hear from you. So please make sure you throw those questions in the Q&A box to the right of your screen at any time during the presentation, and then we will definitely get to them at the end.
Let’s go ahead and get started.
To go over the agenda of what we’ll be talking about in this session is, of course, what is App Builder? Everyone wants to know the terminology, so things like quick access, single sources, actions, tiles, things like that just understand what we’re talking about here.
When would we use it? What are our use cases for App Builder? And then, of course, how are we going to build this. We’ll get through a couple configuration settings, and then answer those Q&A questions.
What is App Builder? The OnBase App Builder allows administrators to reimagine OnBase user experiences. Each end user now can access OnBase through a tailored web interface or interfaces that are designed to optimize the work that they do rather than organized by the software and the modules that are used within it.
There are quick access layouts that provide direct access to frequently used OnBase features, like document uploads, searches, and things like that, and they’re all labeled in a language that your end users will understand, not in just the OnBase Hyland language.
Why should we use it?
What are the benefits? Some of the benefits include the reimagined OnBase user interface and the solution experiences. So that includes naming, navigation, and organization. It’s tailored to the users, so allowing the OnBase administrators to optimize OnBase for those internal needs, for those departments, for those users. Personal apps are used and named for those users, which offer a self-service experience for those employees.
Quick access tile provide direct links to frequently used features like uploads, searches, processing, And then, of course, like everything in OnBase, it is completely customizable and configurable. This means your OnBase admins can go in there, quickly create an application, update any interfaces, and then of course, there’s no coding required.
Let’s talk about some of the terminology. The application comprises of one or multiple sources, cards, tiles, and actions, all, all combined within one or more screens. What is the source? What’s a card? What does all of this terminology mean? Let’s take a look at each one.
The source is a basic element of your application. It is a link to the system resource such as collection of documents, a workflow queue, and reporting dashboards. You can configure sources for a master detail with source screen, and then you can add them to the quick access screen to provide easier access, and we’ll talk about the master detail with sources and the quick access screen.
You can use a source to look for documents, check how many items are in a workflow queue, and execute things like a custom query.
An action is for the users to interact with the system components or to access a direct link to resource outside of the system, such as an external URL or even creating a form.
You can configure actions for any type of screen.
A title is the direct link to a source configured within the application. You can configure tiles to be displayed at the card within the quick access screen.
What’s a card? A card is a collection of sources and actions grouped by the administrator for easier access. Each particular element is represented by a tile that is added to the card, so you can configure multiple cards, add a quick access screen to group functions according to the user’s role or the criteria needed.
A screen represents a collection of sources and actions that can be used by the end user.
Master detail with sources. A master detail with sources screen is a collection of source groups and sources that can be linked throughout an application. This type of screen can be used to retrieve documents, access a full list of sources, or combine a variety of functions in a single interface. This type of screen is based off of your application.
Resources configured here are then available in those quick access screens for better user experience.
A quick access screen is a collection of cards that are grouped by the administrators for easier access to system resources and external actions. This type of screen can be used as a home page, landing page, a dashboard, or a quick access page.
A single-source screen presents a single source only, which allows the end user to focus on that one source and use it fully with no interruptions.
That was a lot of terminology. Let’s talk about who can really benefit from using application builder.
App Builder can be used to create an HR portal with separate pages focused on user roles such as an HR manager or an HR recruiter. The HR manager page could be configured to access a task reporting dashboard, so managers can quickly view the department results, a recruitment queue, so managers can see what needs to be approved or rejected as far as applications.
The HR recruiter page could then provide quick access to things like a resume queue where the recruiters could go and evaluate an application or document retrieval to retrieve those documents that are related to that applicant.
But it doesn’t just stop there at HR. You can also use it for accounts payable, so the manager again can have dashboards for user productivity, custom queries to possibly look for invoices, packing slips, workflows as well to approve an invoice or you can look at the users and their productivity for the day.
Then the AP reps could have their workflow cues if they’re still doing any type of indexing or approving within workflow for those invoices, and then also they could have the custom queries to look for those packing slips and the invoices.
The legal department can do their contract management, so they could have access to just workflow and document retrieval or custom queries. Higher education has a lot of different use cases because of their applications or financial aid, grants and things like that. Scholarships, so they could have access to workflows, dashboards, even WorkView.
Then, of course, we have our government, so they have different services they need to provide that they may need to do some searches for their custom queries. They may need some reports to access their dashboards, or maybe just some unity forms to go ahead and create a service that’s required for somebody within the government.
And then, lastly, we have our insurance for claim processing. So they may need to access their workview, their unity forms, queries, workflows.
These are just some of the use cases. They may or may not pertain to you. If you’re interested in hearing if you have a good use case for App Builder, feel free to reach out. We’d be happy to work through that with you.
And then now let’s get into what you all are waiting for, I’m sure, which is how to build it.
So, App Builder is configured in On-Base Studio, so you would want to log in to your On-Base Studio as you normally would. You should see an App Builder tab underneath your left-hand side of your repositories.
In that white space of the repository, go ahead and right click and select new and then application.
Or, because there’s always more than one way to do something in OnBase, you can also go to your ribbon at the top of your On-Base Studio, sign in to your App Builder tab, and go ahead and select the application button, which will allow you to go ahead and start building your new application.
Either way, once you start building your new application, the first thing you’ll be prompted to do is input the new application information. So, this is where you’re going to provide a title and a system name.
You’ll notice near the middle of the screen, this is going to be your URL that you will provide those end users. So, you want to make sure these names are something user-friendly that they will understand, right? We want to use the user’s language, the department’s language, and not the OnBase Hyland language.
I also want to draw your attention to the middle to bottom of the screen for the theming, so you can change your application’s theme colors, font colors, so again, customizable so it looks like this application is built for your users and built for your organization.
Just hit those three dots and you can choose your colors. Once you have completed that page and hit next, of course, you’ll be prompted for that access. Who can have access to this application you’re building? This is very similar to all the rest of the OnBase security that we go through.
And then next, what are we going to build? What screen? We talked about what a master of detail with sources is and the quick access. If I select that master detail with sources and hit next, I’m now prompted to go ahead and provide a title for my screen, information, right, the system name.
So again, we want to make these user-friendly names. We don’t want to make them OnBase names, we want to make them something that is relatable to that department and to that user or users.
Once you’ve configured that, you’re then prompted to say what source are we adding to the screen? Are we doing a custom query? Are we doing document retrievals? So you would go ahead and select whatever source you want to add to your screen, your master detail source.
I’m going to select custom query, and then now I’m prompted to select one of my custom queries that I already have built in my OnBase solution.
I’m going to select the custom query. I then would provide it with a label, a name, and then the nice thing is we can add some user instructions here near the bottom. So, you can tell the user, you know, if it’s in HR, type in your employee ID number for the documents you’re looking for, or, you know, enter in the invoice number with an asterisk at the end if you don’t know what the entire invoice number is, etc.
You can add as much user instructions as you want to help your users navigate through the system.
Once you’re complete on that screen, you can hit next, and then you’re provided your summary. Again, very similar to any other OnBase solution you built. It’s telling you everything that you’ve done so far, and then you can hit finish.
And then now let’s act like we hit the quick access screen instead of our master detail. So, a little bit of a different screen. Now we’re prompted to give our banner a title, a subtitle, and again, a nice feature is we can add a logo. So again, if you want to add a logo for your organization, or if your actual department or users have their own logo, whatever it is you want to add, you can do that here.
You can select an existing logo that’s already uploaded to your OnBase system, or you can go ahead and upload a new logo.
And then you can go ahead and finish this screen, which will allow you then to select those custom queries that we did on the master detail screen. Once we finish, I want to show you what it looks like when it’s all completed in your OnBase studio. You have your sources, your actions, your source groups, everything that you have configured will show up here. And then I do have my last screen selected in my search screen.
This was my label I provided. These were my user instructions. This is a full URL that’s going to take my users directly to this custom query. Nothing else. They can’t upload a document. They can’t, uh, change a document. They can’t go in workflow. It takes them just to that custom query for that document and only that one.
So that is what it looks like once it’s all configured and built, and then of course in studio, you still need to save it and refresh your repositories. And that is how you would build one. So again, it was just high level because every application is going to be different that you’re going to build depending on what you need for your organization.
Let’s go ahead and jump into our questions. Before we get started though, I want to thank everyone for their attention today. I know everyone’s very busy. Um, so hopefully, you guys are, are excited to start building your own apps in OnBase. If you haven’t already, go ahead and throw those questions in that Q&A box, and we can address them.
I see quite a few questions coming in already. So, the first question is when was App Builder released? That is a great question. OnBase App Builder was released in version 23.1.
Our next question is what licenses are needed. This is great. You don’t need any licenses for App Builder. If you are using OnBase 23.1, you are licensed for it. There is a little catch, because you do need to be licensed for those modules you want to build within your app. So, when I say those modules, I’m talking about workflow, Unity forms, reporting dashboards, workview. You do need those licenses to be able to display those on your application.
Uh, it looks like somebody was following along. They’re in studio, but they don’t see their app builder tab, and they’re on a recent version of OnBase. If you are not seeing your App Builder tab, you may not have permission to use App Builder. Just go ahead and log into your OnBase configuration client, go to that user group, and select the group you’re in. Then in the configuration rights, underneath products, you should see something for App Builder. Once you select that and save it, you can refresh your OnBase Studio repository, and then you should see that tab.
All right. Another question is, is there a limit to the number of apps you can build? Um, currently there is no limit, very similar to workflows. You can build as many as you want. Just remember you’re the one supporting them, so do what you want with that information.
This is the last one we’re going to have time for, I should say. And then if there are other ones, we will get back to you.
The last one is, does this work with Safari? So yes, App Builder is compatible with Safari, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.
We’re running out of time here for any more questions. So please, if we did not answer yours, we’ll send you an email and respond to them that way. If you have additional questions, still throw those in that Q&A window.
You can send any additional questions to questions@rpic.com. Again, I want to thank everyone for joining us today. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions, if you’d like a personalized demo or if you want to discuss what we’ve talked about here today. Again, questions@rpic.com, and I hope everyone has a great day. Thank you so much.
