Sidebar apps that show data from your own system beside each conversation
A sidebar app shows information from your own system beside a conversation in Sektra. When a teammate opens the Apps panel on a conversation, Sektra sends your system the conversation and the contact, and displays the cards your system sends back. Teams use it to put a customer's plan or recent orders next to the email they are answering, when that data lives in an internal tool that Sektra has no integration for. The app is a small web service that your developer writes once, and Sektra takes care of the display.
What Sektra does with a sidebar app
What a sidebar app can show
An app answers with up to five cards. Each card has a title, an optional subtitle, up to twenty labeled fields such as a plan name or an account balance, and up to ten links back into your system. The cards hold plain text and links, and they appear in the same panel as the cards from connected tools such as a CRM or a store.
What Sektra sends to your system
Each request carries the conversation's subject, a short excerpt and a link to it, together with the contact's name, email address, phone number, company and domain. It identifies the teammate who opened the panel, and it leaves out message bodies and attachments. The request is signed with a secret that only Sektra and your system hold, which lets your system confirm where it came from.
Response time and failures
Sektra waits up to three seconds for an answer and keeps it for one minute, so reopening a conversation does not call your system again straight away. When an app is slow or returns an error, its card says so and the other cards still load. The settings page shows each app's last error, and Send test calls the app with a sample conversation and previews its cards.
The assistant reads the same cards
The assistant, Sektra's AI for questions and drafts, can read the cards an app returns for a conversation. A question about a customer's plan or latest order can therefore be answered from the data your system holds. The assistant reads the cards with the permissions of the teammate who asked.
How to add a sidebar app
Your developer builds a small web service at a secure web address that accepts Sektra's request and answers in the card format shown in the settings form. A teammate who can manage integrations then opens Settings, then Integrations, chooses Add sidebar app, and enters a name and the address. The app can run on every inbox or only on the ones selected, and an account can hold up to ten apps.
Common questions
Setup, permissions and what Sektra reads from a sidebar app, with a contact link for anything not covered here.
What is a sidebar app in Sektra?
A sidebar app is a connection to your own system that shows its data as cards beside a conversation in Sektra. It is the route for internal tools and databases that have no ready-made integration.
Do we need a developer to build a sidebar app?
Yes, for the first setup. The app is a small web service that receives one request from Sektra and answers with up to five cards, and the settings form includes an example answer to copy from. After that, adding the app and choosing its inboxes is done in settings without code.
Can a sidebar app create or change records?
No. A sidebar app displays cards of text and links, so a teammate reads the record and follows a link into your system to change it. Creating a record from a conversation is part of the integrations Sektra provides, for example a contact in a CRM or an issue in a tracker.
Connect a sidebar app and see it work
Connect a mailbox first, then add a sidebar app from Settings. Both steps take a few minutes, and the team can work from the inbox the same day.