With the Apty Client, users get easy-to-follow, step-by-step guidance that helps them quickly navigate through a Web Application resulting in a simplified learning process and full utilization of the software application saving the business time and money.
Using Apty Client expertise, users never waste time or energy watching time-consuming video tutorials or pouring over manuals and FAQ pages. All the information users need is right in front of them, helping to get them where they need to go with efficiency and accuracy.
Apty is specific to each user role, needs, goals, and device; quickly and accurately adapting to any screen size and resolution. This feature effortlessly maintains data quality by proactively guiding users to resolve any issues without the need for any software changes or integration.
Additionally, there are other useful features like Workflows, Validations, Announcement, Launchers, Tooltips, Permalinks, and many more that can be used to facilitate the resources' experience and accomplish their day-to-day tasks.
This document covers all the features of Apty that help to enhance User Experience on any web-based application through applying Workflows, guidance, and data governance concepts to it, which consists of three main components, each exercising specific functions for seamless integration with the hosting application: Admin Console, Apty Studio, Apty Client/Widget.
1. Apty Admin Console
Admin Console is a web-based tool that hosts the Apty content including Workflows, Validations, Tooltips, Launchers, and Announcements, and is used for Apty Content Delivery (controlling the publishing the status of the instructional content).
The Admin Console is a cloud-based tool hosted on the AWS platform and is compliant with the latest security policies. Admin Console also hosts the Analytics to view the ROI and effectiveness of the Apty content.
Log in to Admin Console where the user can perform key functionalities such as managing hosting applications, Apty Content, access to Analytics of tools, and element usage.
a. Insights
Apty Insights transforms your usage data into tactics for improving your productivity. Apty’s AI engine continuously analyzes your usage data in real-time to help identify where users are struggling with the software and processes and how to solve the problem.
Apty’s deep learning algorithm builds upon your usage patterns as well as other companies using the same software to provide the most advanced look at how to improve your application.
The Apty Insights Admin Panel is a web-based tool that maps the Activities predefined by the Admin user in the Apty Activity Tracking and the actual actions of end-users to analyze the significance of the difference between them. It is cloud-based and hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
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Engagement
Refers to a wide variety of methods for you to deliver training, support, and promotion to your users via Apty.
Engagement matrix provide insights and showcase widgets containing quantitative changes which include Unique Users, Unique Sessions, Average Session Duration, and a set of graphs showing the trends for Users by Country, and Device Distribution.
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Activities
Activity Engagement provides visual representations of how often activities are performed by end-users, as well as how often they are completed. Each data point represents a given activity and is labeled as a respective Activity title. Activity Engagement helps in:
- having a bird-view of user engagement in all the created activities,
- easy estimation of least and most used activities (the more activity is used, the further to the right on the graph it is going to appear)
- which activates take the longest for a user to complete (the higher on the graph the activity is located, the longer it takes users to complete it)
Discover this section on Apty Insights for a deeper dive into more detailed information.
b. Apty Usage
Analytics is the study of past historical data and current data to examine the potential trends, analyze the effects of certain decisions or events or even evaluate the performance of any tool or situation. The goal of analytics is to improve the business by gaining knowledge that can be used to make improvements or changes. Data collected from the flows and validations will be used to show the ROI the organization can get based on the current implementation and thereby enhancing the business.
Apty Usage helps our customers to understand overall feature usage or how a specific persona is adopting your product.
Apty Usage provides a detailed analysis of how well the tool is adapted to the insights to where help was accessed to complete a certain task based on individual segments.
With the help of Apty Analytics, you get valuable insight into how the users are interacting with the underlying application and where they are requiring maximum help, or where they are making the most mistakes. This insight will help you make the most informed decisions when educating your users.
Once instructional materials in the form of Workflows, Validations, Tooltips, etc. are created and published on the hosting application, it is high time to see whether they are helpful for end-users and adapt or polish them for better performance. Various quantitative measurements provide insights on the level of user engagement, as well as the overall usage of the hosting application.
Overall Apty Usage is helpful for:
- Providing quantitative measurement of User Engagement
- Identifying user roadblocks
- Reducing support and training costs
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Dashboard
Focus on creating reports to track your most important metrics, then save them to a dashboard for convenient reporting and analysis.
The Usage Dashboard gives users quick access to the latest updates on the number of used Workflows, Validations, Launchers, Tooltips, Announcements, Knowledge Center Content, and Content Search and the ratio of completed/accepted/actioned items vs dropped or not accepted ones. Apty provides a general snapshot in the form of interactive dashboards, based on the information collected from the real-time user engagement data.
The best way to determine if an application has been profitable to your organization is to understand the usage of it. Analytical statistics are an invaluable functionality of Apty.
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Workflow Statistics
The Workflow Statistics provide insights into the effectiveness of Workflows as instructional materials by showing the number of times workflows have been used, including stats for fully completed flows and flows with an early exit.
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- Completed Workflows: defines the number of Workflows that have been initiated and completed successfully over the course of time.
- Workflows with Early Exit: defines the number of Workflows that have been initiated but were dropped on a certain step over the course of time.
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Validations Statistics
Apty plays a major role in warning and correcting the user to enter appropriate data. The Validation Statistics indicate the number of times Validations are executed, including stats with Data Corrections and Data Warnings.
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- Data Corrections: defines the number of Validation rules that have been triggered by incorrect user entries over a course of time.
- Data Warnings: defines the number of Validation rules that have been displayed as warning messages over a course of time.
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Tooltips Statistics
As Tooltips provide in-place help for the end-users, the Dashboard provides the statistics for Tooltips to track the usage of Tooltips based on the action performed by the end-users and Tooltips available to the end-users.
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- Displayed: defines the number of times the Tooltips were displayed when the user visited the respective page.
- Actioned: defines the number of times the Tooltips were used to seek help over a course of time.
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Launchers Statistics
Launchers enable administrators to create in-place actionable icons through which the users can start a Workflow, or show a video or a document. Launchers are rendered when the Frame is identified by the Player from the application page. These Launchers provide in-place help whenever and wherever needed. Launcher statistics dashboard provides the stats of the number of times the Launchers are used, as well as stats for the commonly used Launchers.
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Announcements Statistics
Announcements enable the Admin to announce any information when the end-user visits the designated page. The Announcements dial shows the statistics for Announcements actioned or displayed to the end-users.
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- Displayed: defines the number of times the Announcement shown on the screen was displayed by the end-user over a course of time.
- Accepted: defines the number of times the Announcement shown on the screen was accepted by the end-user over a course of time.
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Permalinks Statistics
Permalinks are direct links to your website that automatically start a Workflow, Video, or Announcement when clicked. These links can be embedded within training resources, emails, or social media posts in order to immediately give users guidance.
If you are building Workflows targeted to users who are not already on your site, Permalinks can provide a highly effective method to engage your users or drive adoption of new features in your software. When your users click the Permalink, they will be redirected to your site, with a Workflows automatically running on the relevant page.
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Checklists/User Onboarding Statistics
It is designed to help users direct to some critical business processes. Each Checklist has a set of tasks inside that need to be executed successfully to complete the business process. A task can imply completing a workflow, going through some Knowledge Content such as text, files, videos, or images, or opening a link to another website.
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Player and Search Statistics
Showcases overall analytics of user engagement of Player, which provides an idea on how much the player is useful for every action performed through the player. and thereby helps the user to measure and improve the ways the player is being used.
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- Actioned Items: displays the number of items executed in the player
- Searches: displays the number of terms searched in the player
- Widget Activations: displays the number of times the player opened. Read more
Discover this section on Apty Usage for a deeper dive into more detailed information.
c. Goals
Goals are essential for a company's success. It is also critical to keep tabs on the whereabouts of goals. Not to undermine the fact that many things can go wrong when it comes to a goal involving digital adoption or any digital process completion, resulting in the goal failure. That is where Apty's Goals feature comes into play.
The goals feature aims to assist you in completing a digital process correctly. It is very crucial to complete a business process on time, but it is equally important to complete it with correctness, and at Apty we understand that. Your employees complete the task, or they complete the task correctly - completion and correctness - these two are the principal determinants of Apty's Goals feature.
Discover this section on Goals for a deeper dive into more detailed information.
d. Manage Content
Through the Admin Console, you can effectively manage all the content that has been created. The operations that can be performed includes:
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- Create/ modify/delete the content as needed.
- Add additional information for the content as documents, images, and videos.
- Categorize the content using some Tags for effective flow content management.
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Manage Workflows
Apty helps you to first analyze user behavior, understand where they are struggling while using an application, and then suggest workflows. Workflows provide step-by-step guidance within an application. They act like a GPS that takes you on a journey to complete your day-to-day activities. Workflows are a recommended solution in the following cases:
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- a user is not familiar with the process
- a process that involves multiple steps that should be performed in a specific order
- rarely used process.
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Manage Validations
Apty pursues multiple goals: it navigates end-users through the complex processes in the hosting application via Workflows, reminds them about important events through Announcements, provides valuable tips and tricks via Tooltips, and verifies that the data that users provide is clear and useful via Validations. The latter is achieved by adding sufficient instructions and rules on what can and cannot be accepted as input to the page of a hosting application.
Validations provide a way to test user input and ensure that the data provided by the user is clean, correct, and useful. The validation scope may be as simple as checking whether the field is empty or providing complex checks including powerful regular expressions and custom validations.
Validations are advanced Tooltips that provide prompts on whether the data entered is correct or not.
Through the Admin console, the user has the provision to view the validations List, add language to validations, and delete validation.
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Manage Tooltips
Tooltips provide contextual information on the application to assist and inform the end-users. These information icons can give you tips/suggestions or more information about anything on the page. Tooltips can provide additional information for confusing elements on the site. Users will need to hover over the Tooltip icon to see the "tip"
Tooltips are optimal for users who may need additional information on demand for some of the more complex elements.
Through Admin console, users can add language to already created tooltips.
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Manage Launchers
Launchers enable admins to create in-place actionable icons through which the users can start a Workflow, show a video, image, or document. Use launchers when you identify a common action (on a specific page) that may not be easily accessible as it may be hidden among other available options.
Launchers are actionable icons/buttons that provide access to a specific action within one click. The stated action can be represented as one of the following:
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- launching a workflow
- playing a document, image, video
- navigating to a defined link
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Manage Announcements
Announcements are custom pop-ups designed to announce any new feature, version release, or to provide information to the end-users. An Announcement can be built with Custom buttons that can launch a Workflow, Video, or a Document and can be displayed with respect to the following conditions: specific time frame presents certain elements on the page of the hosting application, label or field comparison, and other criteria that can be specified in the custom script.
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- Inform users of upcoming features
- Inform users about the expected maintenance and downtime of the application
- Promote new Software practices, events, or services
- Remind expiration of licenses of the application, etc.
Through the Admin Console, users can add language to already created announcements.
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Manage Knowledge Center
Knowledge Center is the repository where links to the documents, videos, images, and Q&As are stored. These items can be accessed by the users:
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- as an item in the Apty Widget
- as a part of Onboarding collection of tasks,
- or as an element started by a Launcher.
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Manage Search Terms
List out all the search terms entered by the user over the results received. Admin users can edit/manage language/delete search terms inside Manage Search Terms
The intelligent search feature allows a user to filter all available instructional information by keywords and focus on relevant information only. Each Workflow and instructional element is uniquely identified within the system by its name.
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Manage Labels
To provide easy access to related content, a feature is enabled to group similar content based on labels, where a user can create a label and list out the related content. Labels help you to group and categorize Workflows, Links, Images, Videos, and Texts. This will allow the user to track, filter, and sort based on a Label.
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Manage Checklists/User Onboarding
User Onboarding is an essential tool designed to help new users familiarize themselves with the features and processes of the hosting application. It includes a series of tasks that guide users through workflows and relevant knowledge content, such as videos or external links. User Onboarding serves as a supportive guide, assisting employees in completing initial training, establishing consistent usage habits, and enabling them to focus on their primary responsibilities without feeling overwhelmed by technical details.
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Manage User Segments
Segmentation is a practice of assigning users to specific groups based on characteristics they share, such as role, department, division, etc.
Apty provides integration with third-party applications like Salesforce, Workday, CA PPM, etc. This allows using application data (for example, user attributes like 'division', 'role', or custom ones) for segmenting content in Apty; meaning, a user with specific attributes may be shown content assigned specifically for them.
Segmentation use cases include the following:
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- Shoot an enhancement or change only to the relevant audience.
- Encourage end-users who haven’t yet updated your web app to do so.
e. Customizations
Apty Player offers seamless integration into the hosted application, and is highly customizable to match the look and feel of the application they are laid over.
Admin Console allows Admin Users to customize the Player according to the application's UI and/or personal preference.
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Themes/User Interface
Administrators have the capability to create new themes and incorporate custom CSS within the Admin portal. These newly created themes and customized CSS will be reflected in the application's workflows and will be applied to the exported workflows as well.
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Languages
If the hosting application supports multiple languages, Apty Player can be customized to offer translated Workflows, Tooltips, and other navigation content to align with the languages available in the hosting application, enhancing the user experience.
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Keyboard Shortcuts
Apty is compliant with Voluntary Product Accessibility (VPA) including Revised 508 Standards related to the user interface requirements. Section 1194.21 (a) of the VPA Template states: "When software is designed to run on a system that has a keyboard, product functions shall be executable from a keyboard where the function itself or the result of performing a function can be discerned textually." (source) All Apty functions can fully be used in a mouseless, keyboard-only mode.
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Time Zones
Customizing the Time Zones page allows for the tailored display of Announcements within selected applications across a global organization. Given the diverse locations where employees operate, it is essential to ensure that information is broadcasted in alignment with their respective time zones. This customization of Time zones directly impacts the scheduling options for Announcements, especially in scenarios where multiple global time zones are prevalent within your organization's operational framework.
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Publish
Publishing enables the items created using Apty studio to be accessible in the player of both the development and production environments.
The Publishing state defines the content accessibility settings and results in the following use cases:
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- Test your instructional content in the development/test environment.
- Publish content for end-users to use in the production environment.
- Organize your content the way it is displayed in the hosting application.
Discover this section on Advanced Customizations for a deeper dive into more detailed information.
f. Application Settings
Apty may be connected to multiple applications that require navigational assistance, instructional materials, as well as analysis of overall usage. For example, your organization may be using a customer relationship management system like Salesforce, along with a project management system and other third-party software for helping your team to cope with their daily tasks. To add instructional tools to all of these applications, your organization requires only one instance of Apty, which will serve as a hub for all of the third-party applications you are using, including custom ones.
Discover this section on Applications Settings for a deeper dive into more detailed information.
g. System Settings
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Managing Apty Users
User Management allows system administrators to maintain users by adding/removing them. Users can also be added as a System Administrator and every user added here can also log into the Apty Studio. Following are the details that are required to add a new user
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- User Active: Check the box to define whether this user account and its credentials should be active for login and other procedures.
- NAME: Define the name of a user in the system.
- USERID: Define the email for this user. Once the procedure of adding this user to the system is completed, an email with instructions on how to reset the password is going to be sent to the email of this user.
- SSO authentication only: Check SSO authentication only if you wish to login with SSO.
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Roles
To provide authorization for specific feature(s) of Apty, we have implemented roles. Every user will have a role and each role will have specific set of permission(s) allowing access to the respective feature(s). Role assignment must be done based on the access desired. Web services and user interfaces have been Implemented with the access restrictions. A user can also have individual application access, instead of all the applications.
Roles are a set of permissions that will help a user to perform a task successfully.
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SSO Config
Apty supports single sign-on authentication, which is a process that allows a user to access multiple applications with one set of login credentials. Apty supports 2 types of SSO Authentication: OAuth 2.0 and SAML 2.0.
OAuth 2 is an authorization framework that enables applications to obtain limited access to user accounts on an HTTP service, such as Facebook, GitHub, and DigitalOcean. It works by delegating user authentication to the service that hosts the user account and authorizing third-party applications to access the user account. OAuth 2 provides authorization flows for web and desktop applications, and mobile devices.
SAML SSO works by transferring the user’s identity from one place (the identity provider) to another (the service provider). This is done through an exchange of digitally signed XML documents. Consider the following scenario: A user is logged into a system that acts as an identity provider. The user wants to log in to a remote application, such as a support or accounting application (the service provider).
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Downloads
To start working with Apty Studio, Administrators and instructional content creators need to install the desktop editor application available for download from the Admin Console.
To install Apty Studio, In the Desktop Editor section install both of the following:
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- Application: represents the tool for creating instructional content.
- Editor Extension for Google Chrome(a component that connects a browser with the above-mentioned Application)
To install Apty Client:
The Client is a piece of code that runs instructional materials in the hosting application. Apty offers extensions for all modern browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge.
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Branding
Branding is critical for any business to establish a loyal consumer base. Having the company’s branding consistent across all applications boosts trust and credibility in the eyes of customers and viewers. At Apty, we care about our partners’ brand. White labeling ensures that our partners get the best of Apty without compromising their brand identity.
Branding aims to provide improvement in branding and to enhance the user experience for Apty partners.
In order to provide improvement in branding of partners or clients, Custom White Labeling is also introduced.
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Translation API
In the wake of globalization, a brand must have the ability to translate its content automatically. Apty brings you this feature via Google API to give Auto Translation the prominence it deserves which allows Admins to translate the content within Workflows, Tooltips, Launchers, Announcements with only a few clicks.
Discover this section on System Settings for a deeper dive into more detailed information.
h. Account Settings
User / Account Settings can be managed through the Admin Console. Password resets can be done through the Account Settings feature.
2. Apty Studio
Apty Studio is a desktop native application that offers a user interface for creating / editing / deleting navigation instructions implemented as Workflows and other instructional elements, such as Announcements, Launchers, Tooltips, and Validations that are laid over the surface of a hosting app to help end-users learn new procedures, or perform their daily tasks in a more effective and precise way.
Apty Studio offers a robust mechanism for identifying the web pages and starting the Workflows from the page where the end-user is located. It connects to the opened window of a web browser and implements the interaction with the hosting application for which the Workflows or other instructional elements are being created, allowing picking the elements directly in the live application, displaying live bubble preview, taking screenshots for PDF documentation, etc. The logic of the extension is split into two parts:
- Content script that provides the interaction with the HTML of the hosting application (picking elements, highlighting hovered elements, reacting on scroll and navigation).
- Background script that provides advanced features like taking screenshot of the target application, filtering its web requests or listening for Chrome tabs updates (for example, for knowing about open instances of the hosting application).
Users can Login to Apty Studio and create most of the instructional content which does not require any coding skills and is performed within a couple of clicks due to the intuitive user interface. The look and position of the elements added to the hosting application are previewed in the live mode.
a. Workflows
Have you ever assisted a friend or family member in setting up a new application, completing a transaction, or successfully carrying out any other online task? If so, you were likely guiding them through each step and possibly explaining any tricky parts along the way. Apty Workflows perform a similar function by guiding users through system settings, assisting in creating new entities specific to the hosting system, and navigating them through complex daily tasks while ensuring no important steps are overlooked.
Apty is designed to support end users regardless of the scale: instructional content can seamlessly integrate into enterprise applications like Salesforce through the browser extension or seamlessly become a part of your web application by adding a few new lines to the source code of the hosting application.
Explore this section on Workflows for more in-depth information.
b. Validations
Validations are essential rules used to verify the accuracy of data provided by end users when completing input fields. Ensuring that user-provided data is correct is crucial for seamless system processes. For instance, if a user enters an email address in an invalid format, it may not serve as a reliable means of communication. Consequently, important news, warnings, or instructions may not reach the user if their email address is incorrect.
Explore this section on Validations for more in-depth information.
c. Launchers
Launchers are interactive icons/buttons that prompt predefined Workflows or guide end users to access helpful resources that can enhance their daily tasks. Positioned strategically within a hosting application page, clicking on Launchers initiates specific Workflows or segments, plays instructional videos, or redirects users to URLs linking to educational materials, like additional application pages, knowledge base articles, or support services.
Explore this section on Launchers for more in-depth information.
d. Tooltips
Tooltips offer helpful insights within the application to guide and educate users. These informative icons provide tips, suggestions, or further details about elements on the page. They are particularly useful for clarifying complex features on the site. Users simply hover over the Tooltip icon to view the relevant information.
Explore this section on Tooltips for more in-depth information.
e. Announcements
Announcements serve as personalized pop-ups intended to notify users of new features, version releases, or important information. These pop-ups can include customized buttons to initiate Workflows, Videos, or Documents. Admins can utilize Announcements to communicate updates to users when they visit specific pages. Additionally, Announcements can be scheduled for a specific timeframe or triggered based on specific UI conditions.
Explore this section on Announcements for more in-depth information.
f. Frames
Enterprise-level applications typically consist of multiple pages, such as login, registration, and the home page. To aid Apty in distinguishing each page and displaying live-guidance content elements accurately, it is essential to create a page Frame. By linking elements like username and password fields to the Login Frame, Apty can easily recognize the page within the hosting application code and showcase all instructional elements specific to it.
Frames are utilized by Apty to uniquely identify each screen by analyzing the elements present on the screen. Within a Frame, various features like Validations, Launchers, Tooltips, and Announcements can be included to ensure that the assistance provided is tailored to that particular page.
The flexibility of creating any number of frames on a page allows for customization based on specific requirements.
Explore this section on Frames for more in-depth information.
g. Activity Tracking
Apty Insights functionality can be summarized in three main steps:
- Define how a certain use case is expected to be performed,
- let users complete the use case without assistance, then
- Compare the expected actions vs. actual user behavior.
Explore this section on Activity Tracking for more in-depth information.
3. Apty Client
Apty Client is the key element of the Apty Suite, which makes the navigational and instructional materials created with the Apty Studio tool visible to the end-users of your hosting application. There are two ways to implement Apty Client with your application: you can install it as a browser extension in a couple of clicks or add it to the source code of the hosting application as a JavaScript code snippet.
Key functions: providing access to the content built with Apty Studio, listening to the events, and collecting data for Insights and Analytics.
Admin users can manage the contents inside the widget by ordering the content within a Widget, Hiding a Widget on the pages with no applicable content, Frequently Used, Favorite Contents & Group Contents based on Labels. Through Apty Widget, end-user can access all the knowledge content created using Apty Studio.
Discover this section on Apty Client for a deeper dive into more detailed information.