App configuration options
The App Builder offers several configuration options you can use to customize your application's look and behavior.
Configuration options
The App Builder has a number of configuration options available:
App display options
Use the Display options menu to optionally display a table of content in addition to any project metadata at the top of your published app.
The table of contents is automatically created based on markdown and text cell headers in your logic view.
Available metadata:
- Name
- Description
- Author
- Last edited
- Categories
- Status
If toggled on, the table of contents and metadata will be visible to all end users of a published app.
Auto-run
Setting which determines whether the app will automatically re-run every time a user changes an Input parameter. This may not be desirable for apps with a lot of time-intensive logic.
See more about scenarios where you may want to turn off auto-run mode here.
Cache default state
When this setting is on, the published app will load a cached state that uses pre-computed outputs. When this setting is off, opening the published app will cause the project to run from top to bottom.
The cached state that's displayed when this setting is on is updated based on three different events:
- Scheduled runs
- Publish events
- Manually refreshes of the cached state (users with "Full Access" or "Can Edit" project permissions will see this option from the published app)
When any of these events take place, the existing published app cached state is replaced; in other words, when a user opens the published app, they'll be seeing the results of the latest scheduled run, app publish, or manual refresh (whichever is most recent).
When “cache default state” is on, a cached state will be displayed when users open the app. The run behavior of the app will depend on the "pre-run on page load" setting:
If "pre-run on page load" is on, opening the app will trigger a full run of the app to be kicked off silently in the background. If this run completes by the time a user first interacts with an app (e.g., changing an input parameter, paging through a display table, etc), then initial + following interactions will follow Auto mode run rules and only run downstream & dependent cells.
If "pre-run on page load" is off, opening the app will not trigger a run. The first time a user interacts with the app in any way (e.g., changing an input parameter, paging through a display table, etc), the app will be triggered to run from top to bottom. Subsequent interactions will follow Auto mode run rules and only run downstream & dependent cells.
When “cache default state” is off, the app will run from top to bottom each time a user opens the published app. Any interactions with the app will follow Auto mode run rules and only run downstream & dependent cells.
If you’d like to further optimize your app's performance, consider turning on query caching for SQL cells. Using cache default state in conjunction with caching SQL queries with scheduled runs can make for a very snappy app experience!
Pre-run on page load
This feature is only available for workspaces on Teams or Enterprise plans.
This setting is only available when the "cache default state" and "auto-run" settings are enabled. As explained in the above section, when "pre-run on page load" is enabled, opening a published app will load the pre-computed outputs and simultaneously kick off a run of the project to execute silently in the background. This feature aims to reduce runtimes upon first interaction with a project, since if the silent background run completes by the time a user first interacts with a project, the app will follow Auto mode run rules instead of running the project from top to bottom.
If you would like to prevent the app from running silently in the background when a published app is opened, and would instead prefer for the project run to be kicked off by the first user interaction of the project, this setting should be turned off.