Quick Poll

Do you need to share data between Knack apps? :grey_question:
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

9 Likes

Hi @Kara - Thatā€™s a challenging question to answer. As itā€™s never been possible to share between applications you have to ensure that you build apps that are self contained.
Being able to share between applications would likely open up many possibilities.

Would I like to be able to share between apps ā€œYesā€ :+1:

Do I need to share data between Knack apps - as of today ā€œNoā€ because itā€™s not possible.

6 Likes

I agree with Carl. Definitely not required as of now because itā€™s not possible, but Iā€™ve often thought about how this could greatly enhance my functionality in the future. Iā€™d love to be able to copy pages from one app and add them to another or have one app mirror another.

6 Likes

Thanks @Kara for asking.

We have a scenario with 2 apps needing shared tables - a customer facing app, and an internal projects delivery app where this feature would be an enormous benefit. The apps have different purposes, would be unworkable if combined, but do need to share some key data.

Iā€™m sure others have similar scenarios.

5 Likes

Just thinking about the possibilities of sharing data between apps. I presume this could make multi tenant apps easier to build.
You could have one ā€œcentralā€ app with all the customers or locations and then an individual app for each client. Only pulling in data to that app which is relevant.
This means each client app could be formatted to their own colour scheme and design. :man_shrugging:

4 Likes

I have 3 Apps, the same but in 3 different languages. If I could share data I could create a 4th App that would centralize the pertinent data from the 3 to be able to have just 1 dashboard for all 3.

My vision of Knack is the WordPress for software where you can add plugins to your App. It would be very useful to be able to add some templates of the library to our App. Since it is not yet possible, creating a new App from a library template and than sharing its data with the main App would do the trick. It might even be much easier, cleaner and safer than a template plugin functionality.

The fact that you ask a so pertinent question reveals for me that you are very hot on the road of builders needs. Congrats!! great news.

Go Knack Team!!

3 Likes

What if it were possible?

1 Like

Than I am 99% sure Iā€™d want to use that feature in the future! Iā€™m in the beginning stages of development, but my long term vision definitely would include sharing of data and being able to copy pages between apps.

1 Like

Hi Kara, I would LOVE to have the ability to copy Objects/Pages between apps (not sure if that what you mean by the questionā€¦). Would save me hours and hours (days even) of copying pages for customers.
Cheers
Craig

5 Likes

I took the liberty of voting here, too! I think this could be incredibly time saving and would love to use a feature like this in my own personal apps.

The ā€œwhat ifā€™sā€ are unbelievably exciting!

3 Likes

I have an organisation using 4 separate apps. It would be amazing to collate all their data output into a single reporting view in a separate management app.

The other super important option this could open up if extended to views and not only data is a staging environment. Knack is absolutely crying out for this to give us some form of proper deployment. At the moment I have to make changes twice. Once in a copy to test, and then duplicate it all over again in the live environment. Imagine the value of being able to copy a view and setting to another app.

4 Likes

Iā€™m not 100% certain I need to be able to share DATA between apps, but I would really appreciate being able to share ACCOUNTS between apps. For us, each app we create is related to a specific client project, but our users can work on multiple projects at a time and it can get messy (and less secure!) to manage their user accounts and roles on a per-app basis instead of all in one spot on a dashboard. Iā€™d love to have a single list of user accounts where I could check off who has which user roles for which apps (or none).

I also use some of the same mechanics across multiple apps (e.g. review status dashboards of which user account has how many records queued vs completed). I have created a ā€œtemplateā€ app with some of these basics and I copy it as the base for each new client project app we need, but it would be nice if I could, say, see how many records a user account has queued vs completed ACROSS different apps.

To be honest I would love the ability to be able isolate the data files completely from the programs/routines etc.

In a development environment I would have test programs running from a separate databaseand the production programs as well.

The ability to exchange information between them means once a tested program is successful ONLY THE REQUIRED CHANGES can be bought across from test to live.
With the current limitations and inability to share information between them means testing has to be prototyped in the live environment by creating a duplicate of a particular routine and then the old version archived/deleted/whatever and the new one renamed to be implemented seamlessly.

1 Like

The ability to have ONE table of customers and ONE table of users shared across multiple apps would be a godsend.

2 Likes

Would be a great feature to have, especially sharing a user table between apps.

1 Like

This feature would be incredibly helpful. Are there any plans to implement this feature? Any sort of timeline?

Yes, absolutely would like to have that capability. Current apps are self-contained, but this is very inefficient and requires that the same data be entered into multiple databases. Each entry is an opportunity for error.

1 Like

Sharing would be nice, yes. That would allow multiple apps to scale in different ways with a central database ā€˜feedingā€™ multiple uses.

But before that, I think a good first step would be to copy individual objects and pages between apps. (or copy them together as a moduleā€¦or building block) Iā€™m sure other knacksters can relateā€¦that copying an entire app means starting freshā€¦and rarely are apps exactly the same.

On the contrary, it is very common, that a ā€˜partā€™ of what Iā€™ve built in one app could be used in another.

For example, since we are a digital display company and use Knack for a CMS portal - some customers may want a conference room reservation system as ā€˜partā€™ of their current set of interactive displays. If I could duplicate just that part into new apps, that would save a lot of time, re-work, and maintain consistency.

So my vote is that if you could take some building blocks from one app and use them in another, that already opens a lot of doors.

2 Likes

100% what I think too. @RealEyesDisplays
Better have 1 source of truth, only 1 DB. Better eficiency and less records.


On Apps connections

I will add one information that I told Knack product team 2 weeks ago:
Months ago I wanted to build an App made of 2 Knack Template Apps (CRM and Billing). After downloading them, I found it was a great opportunity to try something: creating in both a user with the same email and password, and add links pages in both templates to cross.
Well my friends, it works perfectly. Each App recognizes that it is the same user and so jump the Login page to go direct to the page linked.

So a same user can move fluidly among various Apps.

Now the question is to control in which only one App and page a user is able to edit his email and password, and how to actualize them automatically in the other linked Apps.

If Knack is able to solve this very specific user login setting and actualization among various linked Apps, than thatā€™s already a good way to use various Apps.

The Builder could offer the option to make an App the base one (control of users), and to which other Apps it will connect? (to disable users edit)

some thoughtsā€¦

1 Like

Yes. A month ago or so Knack announced that it is formaly included in the list of new functionalities to develop.

2 Likes