Admin, Apps lists every app BookNovi connects to, the way Claude's and ChatGPT's connectors do: each with its mark, its name, what connecting it does in a sentence, what kind of app it is, who connects it, and where it stands. The same list is at the top of Settings, Connections, and each part of the app shows its own apps where you use them: Your mail shows Gmail and Outlook, Meetings shows Zoom, Teams and Google Meet, Shipping shows the carriers. Whichever you start from, it is the same Connect.
Find an app
Type part of its name in Search apps, or pick a kind: Email and meetings, Files, Social media, Email marketing and reviews, Sales, Selling, Payments and the books, Payroll, Shipping and AI assistants. Connected shows only the ones connected. Open an app to see it.
Each app says where it stands:
- Connected: with each connection under it, what it is connected as (an account, an address, a store, a bank), since when, and what it may do.
- Needs attention: its sign-in ran out or was taken back, or the service wants something more. It says what, and the button to put it right is beside it.
- Not connected: Connect is one click away.
- Not set up yet: BookNovi has not set up its own connection to that service on this server. Nothing is needed from you; it says so plainly, and its Connect waits until it is.
Connect an app
How you connect depends on the app, and the app says which:
- You sign in at the service and say yes. Gmail, Outlook, Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Dropbox, OneDrive, the social platforms, QuickBooks Online and Xero. Continue takes you to the service's own sign-in, which asks you to allow exactly what BookNovi needs, and brings you back connected, with the account it connected as. Your password stays with the service; BookNovi never sees it.
- You paste keys you make at the service. Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Google reviews, Apollo, Proxycurl, Clay, Shopify, ADP, UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL Express, LTL freight carriers, ocean carriers and MarineTraffic. A short form says where to get each value, with a link to the service's page. Check and connect tries what you typed with the service before anything is kept; a key it refuses is said in a sentence and nothing is saved. A key that works is sealed and never shown again, here or anywhere: only its last characters, so you can tell which it is.
- The service's own window opens here. Your bank, through Plaid: choose the bank and the accounts to share in Plaid's window.
- You set the account up at the service. Card payments, on Stripe's own pages; bill pay, under Books, Bill Pay Setup.
- You paste a private link into the assistant. Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants: Make a link, choose what it may read, and paste the link into the assistant. It is shown once.
Connecting your mailbox asks first what the app may read of it: mail with people in the records, all your mail, or nothing (see Mail on the records).
Connect again, change, disconnect
- Connect again puts a connection that needs attention right, in place: the same mailbox, the same account, with what it was allowed.
- Change on a connection made with keys opens its form again with what you typed in the open; a key left blank keeps the one on file.
- Disconnect takes the app's sign-in back at the service where the service lets an app do that (Google, Dropbox, Zoom, the social platforms that allow it, QuickBooks, Xero, Plaid), and always forgets it here. Where the service keeps its own record of the app (Microsoft, Meta, Pinterest), it says so, and you can remove BookNovi in your account's settings there. What was made with the app stays: the mail filed on the records, the files, the meetings, the posts.
BookNovi renews each sign-in before it can run out unused. One the service no longer accepts shows Needs attention, with Connect again.
Who connects what
Your own mailbox and your own meetings are yours: only you connect them, and nobody else at the business sees them. The business's apps are connected by an owner, or by someone the owner lets with the Connect the business's apps switch under Settings, Logins, together with the switch of the part the app belongs to (Business settings for most, Marketing for the social platforms, the books for the bank). Card payments, payroll, the accounting system and the assistants' links are an owner's to connect.
A demo business can open every app and see how it works, but connects nothing: in a business of your own, Connect takes you to the service to sign in.
Written down
Every connection, disconnection and failure is in the activity log, with who did it and which app (see Admin), and is sent as an event to your webhooks and workflows. A program with an API key can read what is connected (see Connections, AI assistants and the API); no key, password or sign-in is ever given to a program, an assistant or a screen.
Best practices
- Connect each app from the account the business means to keep, not a person's own account, when the app is the business's: when that person leaves, the connection stays.
- Use the service's own least access when it asks: BookNovi asks only for what each feature needs.
- When an app says Needs attention, Connect again from the app's sheet; nothing is lost while it waits.