First time user overview
Introduction
Appspace is a cloud-based software platform for the modern workplace. Our software platform gives you the tools you need to author and publish content for various experiences, such as the following:
- Engage your workforce with curated company messaging by displaying the latest announcements, sales wins, awards, new employee profile, and much more.
- Use the Employee App to browse through the latest published content in your company.
- Book conference rooms or huddle spaces at designated locations with integration to either Google G-Suite or Microsoft Office 365.
- Live stream industry news or corporate messaging from headquarters.
- Use collaboration displays to drive your communication initiatives when they are not being used for meetings.
- Setup location based touch-screen kiosks with directories, wayfinding and maps.
- Enforce your company’s branding across all content.
Appspace Platform Basics
Now that you have an understanding of how Appspace can be used in your organization, let’s look at the key components of the platform.
Appspace Console
Access the Appspace console on your desktop web browser to create and manage your content, invite and manage users, and add and manage devices and locations.
- The Dashboard displays high-level widgets of all recent activities in your account including overall subscription usage, recent content and channel updates, and device and network health status and updates.
- Access common functions such as creating cards and uploading content through the Quick Actions menu in the Action Bar.
- All of the primary workflows can be accessed through the Appspace Sidebar Menu.
- The Help button at the top right provides contextual help for the current page that you are in, with insights on what tasks can be accomplished.
See Navigating the Appspace Console for more details.
Content and Feeds
For content creators, Appspace has a collection of ready-to-use card templates and feeds that you can use for company messaging and communications. Card templates are designed using HTML/CSS, and can be edited and customized with your own messaging and branding using built-in tools in the console. You also have the option to upload your own image and video content.
- Organize content (images, videos, cards) in managed folders in the Library.
- To start creating content, choose from any of the available templates or content feeds, and start populating the card with your company messaging.
- Appspace also provides a premium content option where you can choose to display industry-specific video content based on select topics.
- If you want to leverage your company’s social media feeds, you also have the option to configure social media card templates.
- Learn more about displaying Facebook posts and hashtags.
- Learn more about displaying Instagram posts and hashtags.
- Learn more about displaying Twitter tweets and hashtags.
- If you already have images or videos that you simply want to share, you can simply upload those for publishing.
- Administrators can put branding in place for all cards.
For more information about card templates, check out our introductory guide.
Publishing Content with Channels
Once you have created your cards and uploaded content, you will need to aggregate them into a channel for publishing.
- From simple playlists to more advanced interactive experiences, the Channels workflow provides all the authoring and management tools that you need to publish your channels to targeted endpoints.
- Channels can be published to personal devices and apps for people, or workplace devices like TVs, collaboration displays, and other physical endpoints.
- Before you publish a channel to a greater audience, you can start by publishing it to a web browser first. This gives you the opportunity to preview your channel before you decide to publish it to others.
Check out our Introduction to Channels guide.
The Employee App
The Employee App is where employees in a company go to access and view all important company information such as townhall meeting recordings, the latest company news and marketing updates, and much more. Employees can also access the app to book reservations for workplace resources such as desks and rooms.
- For most of us who simply want to browse content on our personal mobile devices, downloading the app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store gives the best user experience. Search for “Appspace” at the respective app store to download and install it on your personal mobile device.
- The Employee App is also accessible through a web browser. For Appspace Cloud users, simply go to cloud.appspace.com to log in.
To learn more about using the Employee App, take a look at this how-to article.
Appspace for Devices
Appspace for Devices is an app that is available for a wide variety of devices and operating systems.
- Appspace supports a wide range of devices, and you can download and install the app from the appropriate OS-bound app store. For example, you can quickly search for “Appspace for Devices” on both iOS and Google Play stores to download and install it on a compatible iOS or Android device.
- The Devices workflow is where you manage all of your devices and the organization of your devices and device groups within one or more locations. You can register devices and categorize them using device groups and tags. You can also set which devices get to see which channels, and preview what has already been assigned to any of the registered devices in your location.
See our Introduction to Devices guide for more info.
Appspace Console Analytics
Once you have created and published content to people and apps, you will be able to view more insights into your account’s console usage analytics.
- Analytics shows console usage statistics across content, channels, apps, devices and users.
- Individual analytics can be viewed for content items and channels.
Read our how-to guide about viewing analytics in the console.
Locations, Maps and More
The Locations module provides location management tools, mapping tools and integration with Appspace cards and dashboards.
- Define geographical, campus and building locations.
- Upload and manage floor plans for buildings and entire campuses.
- Define Points of interests (rooms, lifts, exits).
Enhance the room booking experience by configuring the Schedule Board card with maps.
Advanced Administration Tools
Appspace has advanced administration tools to:
- Manage users and permissions
- Manage channel publishing approval workflows
- Add and manage devices
- Create and deploy device tasks
- Deploy alerts and much more
More information about the different user personas and administration tasks are discussed in further detail in this guide: Personas, user roles and permissions.
Congratulations!
You now know the basics of the Appspace platform.
If you would like to discover more details about each of these workflows, you can go deeper by reading through the collection of how-to documentation.
Explore All Articles
Browse a list of all our how-to articles, guides, paths, and troubleshooting articles, available for Appspace cloud.