Apps

Apps let you go beyond dashboards. Where a dashboard arranges charts on a grid, an app is a fully custom HTML and JavaScript interface — with its own layout, components, and interactivity — powered by live queries from your workbook. The data behind an app is the same governed data that powers everything else in Omni. Each query the app reads lives in the workbook, where anyone with access can open it, inspect the SQL and semantic model behind it, and tune it. The app is a new way to present and interact with those results: all the flexibility of an AI-generated artifact, hosted, shareable, and governed in Omni.

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Enabling Apps

Apps are enabled by default. An Organization Admin can toggle the Enable apps setting in Settings > Apps to disable them if needed. Additionally, Organization Admins can restrict individual users or groups from creating apps through a granular permission on a custom role. The same tab carries the external source policy, which sets the organization-wide ceiling on the external hosts any app may load resources from.

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When to use an app

Reach for an app when a dashboard’s grid of tiles isn’t expressive enough — when you want a custom layout, a guided interface, a calculator or tool, or a presentation that doesn’t fit a standard chart.

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Create an app

Every app is paired with a workbook. The workbook holds the queries and the app is the custom interface on top of them. There are two ways to create apps, which are described in the following sections.

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With the Omni Agent

The fastest way to build an app is to describe what you want in the Omni Agent. There are two flows: From chat — Describe the interface and the data it should show in the Omni Agent (for example, “Build a sales leaderboard with a podium for the top three reps by quota attainment and a searchable ranking for everyone else”). The agent generates each query the app needs against your model, writes the HTML, and wires it to the data. When it’s done, the app opens in the editor, where you can keep iterating in chat or by hand. From a workbook — Ask the Omni Agent to turn your current workbook into an app. The app attaches to that workbook and reads its existing tabs. The agent uses every query tab unless you ask it to use a specific subset, and reports which tabs it skipped. If you reference a tab name that doesn’t exist, the tool will fail and list the real tab names. If the workbook hasn’t been saved yet, it’s saved to My documents first.

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Manually

To start from scratch, open the dropdown next to the + Dashboard button in a draft workbook and choose App. Omni creates the app with a starter template you can build on in the editor.

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Edit an app

Open an app and click Edit in the top right corner of the workbook to enter a draft. The editor has two panels: a live preview of your app running against real data, and a code editor for the HTML (click Code in the toolbar to show or hide it). If you have access to the agent, the chat split-view opens alongside the editor so you can iterate with AI as you go. When you ask the agent to change an app, it will make targeted edits by locating the exact snippet in the code and only modifying the relevant portions. Each edit appears in chat as a diff preview showing precisely what changed. If a partial edit can’t be applied — for example, if the target code has changed — the agent will retry with more context or, as a last resort, rewrite the affected section of HTML.

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Styling apps

Apps automatically have access to Omni’s design system CSS variables and your organization’s custom theme styles. This allows you to build interfaces that match Omni’s look and feel and your organization’s branding, with automatic support for light and dark mode. See Styling apps for details.

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Access Warnings

When editing a draft app, an Access Warnings button may appear in the edit toolbar. This button shows which tiles will be restricted for Viewer and Restricted Querier users, helping you identify accessibility issues before publishing. When clicked, a popover lists the specific tiles that will be restricted and explains why users with limited permissions won’t be able to see them. The Access Warnings button only appears when all of the following conditions are met:

• You are editing a draft app
• Restricted Queriers or Viewers have access to the underlying model
• One or more tiles in the app are restricted

See Access Warnings for more information about Access Warnings and how to resolve them.

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Filters

When an app applies dynamic filters to its data (for example, when you interact with custom controls in the app interface), those filter values are automatically saved to the URL as af-- query parameters. This gives apps the same filter persistence that dashboards have. Reloading the app, sharing the link, or opening it in a new tab will restore the filtered state. Using your browser’s back and forward buttons steps through filter changes, so you can navigate through the app’s filter history.

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Writing to input columns

Apps can write values back to input columns — the editable columns a workbook author adds to a query. This lets an app collect input from the people using it, such as a triage state, a review score, or a forecast override, and persist it the same way input columns persist everywhere else in Omni. An app can write to an input column, but it can’t create one yet. The workbook must already have the input column configured. Describe the behavior to the Omni Agent when you build or edit the app. For example:

Show open opportunities as cards. Add a Mark as in call button to each card that writes Yes to the in_call input column for that opportunity.

The agent finds the input column on the query, sends the correct key values with each write, and surfaces failures in the app. Written values appear in the query results the next time the query runs. Writes respect the input column’s edit mode and the viewer’s row-level data access, so an app can’t be used to write around either.

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Calling the Omni API

Apps can call a small allowlist of Omni API endpoints with omni.api(). This lets an app read Omni’s own metadata — the viewer’s identity, the content they can open, the models they can query — so you can build homepages, navigation portals, content catalogs, and data dictionaries that stay current on their own. Calls run with the permissions of the person viewing the app. Two people opening the same app can get different results, and an app can never show someone more than they could see in Omni itself. Access is read-only. An app can read metadata through these endpoints, but it can’t change anything with them.

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What you can build

• Homepages and navigation — a branded landing page of the viewer’s favorites and recents, each tile linking into the real dashboard
• Curated content portals — a Verified reports hub filtered by label, or a per-team portal driven by folders
• Search experiences — a custom search box over everything the viewer can open, styled to your brand, for embeds where Omni’s own navigation isn’t available
• Data dictionaries — a self-serve catalog of every view, dimension, and measure in a model
• Live ERDs — an always-current diagram of topics and their join relationships, drawn from the model itself

Describe what you want to the Omni Agent and it will use these endpoints for you.

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Available endpoints

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Inspecting app elements

When editing a draft app, an Inspect button appears in the edit toolbar, allowing you to select elements in the running app and send them as annotated images to the Omni Agent for context. See Using the App inspector for more information.

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Settings

Apps run in a sandboxed iframe with strict security controls by default. App-level settings let you enable specific features on a per-app basis, giving you fine-grained control over what each app can do. For example, enabling app settings can allow you to:

• Load resources like images and fonts from a list of allowed domains
• Render map tiles using keyless providers such as Carto
• Open links to external sites or navigate to other pages inside Omni

See App settings for more information.

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Embedding apps

Apps can be embedded in your own product with the same SSO embed flow used for dashboards and workbooks. Point contentPath at the app and everything else about the session — modes, user attributes, connection roles, filters — behaves as it does for a dashboard. Embedded apps also work with Omni’s embed events.

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Limitations

Apps support up to 100 wired queries per app. This limit applies to the total number of queries referenced in an app’s workbook. The following capabilities are not yet supported for apps:

• Scheduling and deliveries
• Downloads

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Security