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Planning your app

Define a project plan for building your monday app, from product research to marketplace review

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Thinking of integrating monday.com with your platform, but not sure what the process entails? Below, we outline exactly what to expect when building a monday integration app.

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monday App Development Phases

From our experience bringing apps from design to market, we have identified four distinct phases when building a monday integration app:

  • App definition: identify the gaps your integration app will address and how it will bring value to both your own software's users as well as monday.com users
  • Technical scoping: research and familiarize yourself with the apps framework components you will need to leverage in your app
  • Building: build and deploy your app
  • Review: submit your app for review before its listed in our marketplace

Phase 1: App Definition

In this phase, you will determine what kind of monday integration app to build. Remember that the most successful apps form part of a more comprehensive solution than standalone apps. If you're unsure what app to create or what solution to provide, check out our idea board for some inspiration!

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NOTE

Most integrations with the monday.com platform will take the form of an integration recipe. However, for some softwares it makes more sense to utilize a view app. The difference depends on the type, quantity, and frequency of data sent between the two platforms.

Integrations are best suited for data exchanges that happen in quick succession, while view apps are best suited for softwares that can manipulate data housed primarily in monday.com.

What industries and use cases overlap between monday.com and your product? How would users expand their existing workflows with a connection to your product?

Sign Up for a monday.com Account

We recommend signing up for a monday.com account to get first-hand experience with our product. You can join one of our weekly demos for live demonstrations of our product.

Use our native integrations to familiarize yourself with the structure of our integration recipes, and play around with our different templates to build out specific workflows.

Phase Outcome

By the end of this phase, you should have a solid idea of the value your app will bring to users and the functionality it will need to have.

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Phase 2: Technical Scoping

The technical scoping phase is where you will define the technical components needed for your app. This will include determining the exact API queries and monday app framework tools you will be utilizing. When doing your technical scoping, we recommend familiarizing yourself with our relevant technical documentation.

Scoping Checklist

The following is a checklist for building custom integration recipes:

  1. Authorization and authentication
    What authorization method will your app be utilizing?

  2. Trigger and action recipe blocks
    Are your custom blocks designed for reusability for multiple recipes?

  3. Input and output fields for each recipe block
    Have you selected the appropriate settings for your input fields? Are you returning the correct output fields in your recipe blocks?

  4. Applicable custom field types
    Do you need to set up custom field types, such as remote options or dynamic mapping?

  5. Database evaluation
    Does your app need to implement a database? Do you need to store some user data? Is your database implemented securely and compliant with our security protocols?

Phase Outcome

This is the most critical step in the app development process, as a well-scoped app will save development time later. If you do not scope and plan your app correctly during this phase, you may need to adjust your app functionality.

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Phase 3: Building

In the building phase, your team will build your app by applying all of the knowledge gained from the previous phase. This phase should go smoothly and efficiently if you have thoroughly scoped out your app.

Taking the integration recipe example from above, the building phase is where you will be creating your custom trigger, action, and field type blocks.

Iterative Development

It’s important to note that the technical scoping and the building phases may be iterative. For instance, it might be the case that you realize you need to utilize a database for your app in the middle of your build phase. This will require you to revisit technical scoping.

Phase Outcome

After completing this phase, you will have your new monday app that’s ready for submission to our apps review team. As such, we recommend preparing the graphical assets and marketing copy that will accompany your application in this phase as well.

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Phase 4: App Review

The last phase in the monday app development cycle is the review phase.

At this point, your app should be built and should be ready for submission to our apps marketplace. In the review phase, you can expect some feedback from our team on your app.

Phase Outcome

Once finished, your app will be available in our marketplace for our users!

Related Resources

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Updated 6 months ago