Applications and Features

An application is a product area that users open, for example HCM or CRM. A feature (called a module in the designer and in the API) is a reusable group of pages, forms, workflows and other artifacts that one or more applications include. The Explorer shows both as branches: Workspace > Applications lists each application with everything that belongs to it, and Workspace > Features lists each feature with its contents. Both are grouping artifacts: they hold no data of their own. They give artifacts a home, a URL, a launcher tile and a package boundary.

For how the pieces of an application work together see How the pieces fit together. For packaging an application for another environment see Move definitions between environments.

Applications

Where to find it

Workspace > Applications in the Explorer opens the Applications page. Each application node expands into Features, Navigation (menus, mobile navigation, workspaces), Dashboards, Portals, Data Providers, and the Pages, Forms, Widgets, Business Logic, Data Services and Reports that belong to the application directly or through one of its features. Folders load when expanded.

Create an application

Field	Required	Description
New application name	Yes	The grouping record, for example crm.
Starter entity name	No	Creates a real table and CRUD API for one entity, for example customer. Leave empty to create only the grouping record.
Describe the application	No	A sentence such as "A customer support app for tracking support tickets". Generate with AI drafts the application from it.

Import (.erpapp) loads an application package exported from another environment. A success message summarises what was created and what was skipped.

Application list

Each row shows the name, description, version and status (v<n> · <status>), an export control and a delete control.

Control	Effect
Export package	Downloads the application as an encrypted .erpapp file.
Delete	After confirming (This permanently removes the application — there is no undo.) removes the application.

Application detail

The detail panel has three tabs.

Details

Field	Description
Description	Free text. Editing writes to the draft.
URL segment	The /app/<segment>/... path segment. Defaults to the application's name when empty.
Tier	Solution or Platform.
Sequence	Tile sort order in the launcher, lower first.
Category	The launcher's Category view grouping.
Badge text	Short text on the tile, for example New.
Home route after login	The route a session lands on after signing in, for example /hcm-home/home-page.
Use as login landing page	Makes the home route the landing page after sign-in.
Launch URL	Read-only. The full runtime URL of the application, to copy.
Session check	Inherit tenant default, Force ON (always require login) or Force OFF (skip login — dev only). Overrides the workspace's session-check setting for this application only.
Restrict SSO providers for this application	Limits which of the workspace's enabled single sign-on providers the sign-in screen offers for this application. Empty means no restriction.
SEO title	Browser tab and search result title. Defaults to the application name.
SEO description	Meta description.

History lists the published versions. A published version is immutable.

Contents lists every artifact that belongs to the application.

Lifecycle

Applications use the standard artifact lifecycle: a draft can be edited and published, which freezes a version; a published version cannot be edited. Artifacts shipped by a plugin show an Owned by <plugin> — read-only chip. See Version management.

Permissions

Authoring an application is an authoring action on the application artifact type. Access to a tenant's installed applications for individual users is granted under Application access.

API and CLI

Action	Endpoint
List, create, update, publish	/api/v1/authoring/applications and its /{id}/draft, /{id}/publish sub-paths
Export, import a package	the application package endpoints used by the Export and Import controls

From the command line use erp artifact list --type applications, erp artifact get, erp artifact create, erp artifact update and erp artifact publish.

Features

Where to find it

Workspace > Features in the Explorer lists each feature with its artifacts. Features are managed on the Modules page, reached from the same branch.

Create a feature

New module asks for a Module name, "A reusable bundle, for example finance-common". Clone as new module copies an existing feature under a new name (default <name>-copy).

Feature detail

Field	Description
Description	Free text.
URL segment	The /app/<app>/<this>/... path segment. Defaults to the module's name when empty.
Home route after login	The route a session lands on after sign-in.
Use as login landing page	Uses the home route as the landing page.
SEO title, SEO description	As for applications; the title defaults to the module name.

Module manifest. The contents editor declares the exact artifacts this feature is composed of. Candidate names come from the real lists of existing artifacts, so a manifest can only refer to artifacts that exist. Generate with AI drafts the manifest for a draft. Save contents writes it. A published or deprecated version is immutable: the screen shows This version is <status> — contents are immutable here. Clone as a new draft version above to change them.

Legacy tag-based membership (informational) lists artifacts that set their own module field to the feature's name. This older mechanism is kept for backward compatibility; use the manifest.

Lifecycle actions

Action	Effect
Publish	Freezes the draft as a version.
Clone as new draft version	Copies this version's contents into a new editable draft. The published version stays live until the draft is published.
Clone as new module	Copies the contents under a new module name.
Deprecate	Marks a published version as deprecated.
Export package	Downloads the feature as an encrypted .erpapp file.

Package contents

An application or feature package carries pages, forms, blocks, themes, dashboards, rules, actions, entities, websites, website pages, menus, CMS collections and portals. Workflows, providers, APIs, reports, permissions, lookups, localisation, assets and SQL are not carried by this package; ship them in a plugin. Importing an entity whose table already exists skips creating it and links the existing entity, because a table may hold live data.

Libraries

Workspace > Libraries holds shared building blocks that are not owned by one application. Today it contains Templates: reusable page skeletons with slots that pages can be created from. The definition is documented in Reference: page template.

Related

Plugin Designer, Navigation, Application access, Move definitions between environments.