Introducing Copilot's App Store and Platform
At Copilot, we set out almost 4 years ago to build the best software suite for creative and professional service businesses. In the beginning, we focused on the foundation and must-have features like a flexible CRM, payments, messaging, and contract management.
But every service business is unique and we learned quickly that there was no way to build everything that our customers wanted fast enough. The only way forward was to build a true platform and developer ecosystem.
Today we’re excited to announce our first big steps in that direction — the first Marketplace Apps built by 3rd party developers, a new developer platform, and an Experts Marketplace to get your own Custom Apps built.
Introducing the first Marketplace Apps
Marketplace Apps are apps built by 3rd party app developers that our team reviewed and approved to be listed on our App Store. If you have a Copilot Workspace, you can navigate to the Add an app page and install them right now for free.
Client Home — A customizable home page for your clients
With Client Home you can design a dynamic home page that clients see in your portal. You can use it to share announcements, introduce your firm, set expectations about what it’s like to work with you, and more. You can use properties and custom fields from the Copilot CRM to greet clients by name, surface client-specific information, and more. If you enable the tasks widget, the client home will also surface unread client notifications with links to the relevant pages.
Profile manager — Let clients self-serve update information
With Profile Manager, you can selectively show custom fields to clients and make them client-viewable or client-editable. That means clients can self-serve update their address, phone number, and any other custom fields you set as client-editable. Internal users also see a feed of client-initiated updates, so you know exactly when custom field updates happen and by whom. We hope that this app lets you reimagine how you think about client data collection. For example, instead of sending the same long form to clients every year, you can instead prompt clients to self-serve update only the information that has actually changed.
Autoresponder — Fast responses outside of working hours
You want to be highly responsive to your clients, but you can’t be available at all hours. Autoresponder lets you set up auto-responses to clients outside of business hours or when you’re on vacation.
Exporter — Seamlessly backup data
It should be easy to get data into Copilot, but we also want it to be as easy as possible to get data out for backup, legal reasons, and even if you decide to migrate away from us. Exporter lets you export full message histories in CSV or PDF format. In follow-up improvements, we’ll incrementally add other data to export.
Our commitment to developers
We want to build a product and company that is dedicated to empowering developers with an open platform, great educational content, and first-class support. To start, we’re announcing a revamped developer home, a revamped API that is now out of beta, and a deep commitment to open-source.
Resources for developers
We have a new developer home. In it you can find guides to build Custom Apps (for private use), submit Marketplace Apps (which are listed in our App Store), updated API reference docs, a developer changelog, and a developer-centric forum.
A short update about our API
We rolled out our first API endpoint over 2 years ago, and today our API is officially coming out of beta. Over the last 24 months we’ve exposed endpoints to interact with almost all of our resources, including workspaces, internal users, clients, companies, custom fields, messages, files, contracts, notifications, and more. Our platform now has exceptionally high breadth of coverage, making it possible to build complex multi-step automations and powerful Custom Apps.
Embracing open-source
We’re open-sourcing a “Custom App base” which is a Next.JS app that you can think of as the ideal starting point for any Custom App. You can access the repository here and get started building by following this guide. We’re also open-sourcing two apps announced above — the Exporter and Autoresponder apps. In the coming weeks we will open-source the Client Home and Profile Manager apps as well.
Copilot Experts to help you build Custom Apps
Almost every business on Copilot that grows beyond a certain point eventually wants to build custom experiences — this could be an internal analytics tool, a bespoke Salesforce integration, a multi-step automation, or a fully-fledged app.
Now you can work with qualified Copilot Experts to turn your custom software ideas into reality. To get started, just head on over to the Experts Directory and either contact an agency that fits your requirements directly or select the “Get matched” option.
What’s next
We want Copilot to be the best platform to build a service business on. Over the course of this year, expect further enhancements to our API (including coverage for invoices and subscriptions) and more Marketplace Apps that will be rolled out on our App Store. Marketplace Apps will cover a range of use cases — internal tools, analytics, integrations, and much more.
Have an app in mind that you’d love us or one of our partners to build? Let us know here, and we’ll share it with our community of partners. Completely new to Copilot? You can start a free trial here.