Custom Apps Documentation

Make Custom Apps documentation is a guide for developers looking to create their own apps for themselves or others to use on the Make platform. This documentation will walk you through how to use Make Apps Editor in the Make web interface and in Visual Studio Code to create and manage custom apps, as well as best practices and common approaches for development.

Custom apps let you build apps and modules in Make that fit your specific needs. If the app you need isn't available in Make, you can build it yourself instead of sending an HTTP request each time you want to use it. The only requirement is that the service has to have an API.

Custom Apps Development Training

If you are new to custom apps, enroll in the Make Academy course Getting started with custom apps.

By the end of the course, you will be able to understand what custom apps are and the benefits of using them, use the API documentation to help you design and create your first app, and identify the components that form a custom app.

Why use custom apps?

There are many advantages to using custom apps:

1. Non technical users don't need to set up complex HTTP calls. If you have non-technical team members, they won’t need to read API documentation or set up HTTP calls. You can do the setup for them, and they can simply use the app directly in the scenario editor, making their life (and yours) much easier.

2. You don't need to repeat the HTTP call setup in multiple scenarios. If you call the same API across multiple scenarios, you can build a custom app and use it whenever you need it. The custom app eliminates the need to redefine the HTTP call parameters and settings in every scenario. It saves time, ensures consistency, and makes a better use of your time.

3. You can filter or personalize the API response. With a custom app, you can define which information from the data your API returns to share with the scenarios by filtering, setting a specific output, and organizing the data. This makes it easier to get just the information you want, and use it in the next steps of your scenario.

4. You can handle pagination. Custom apps allow you to define how to retrieve all data in the case pagination is implemented by the API. This ensures that users can easily get complete datasets without manually setting up repeaters and multiple calls in your scenarios. This also saves you credits!

5. You can implement more complex authentication methods. With custom apps, you can handle more complex authentication methods (like all the OAuth2 flows, token refresh mechanisms, or multi-step authentication) without needing multiple calls in your scenario. Saving credits, again!

6. You can implement complex calls. For tasks that require multiple calls and modules, custom apps let you combine them into a single API call. For example, if you need to retrieve data, create a new document, and add information from the first document, you can build a custom app to do all of this in one module.

7. You can create and personalize instant triggers. Custom apps allow you to personalize instant triggers by providing more control over webhooks. With a custom app, you can define the data structure in advance, so you don’t need to make a call to set it up. You can also define specific actions when a webhook connected to a third party API is created or removed. Additionally, custom apps let you create a webhook that can be shared across multiple scenarios, making it easier to reuse and maintain.

8. You can share your custom app with other users. Once you've built your custom app, you can make it available to users outside your organization, so they can use it without having to build it from scratch.