App configuration options
The App Builder offers several configuration options you can use to customize your app's look and behavior.
Your app must be republished for these changes to take effect.
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.
App run settings
These settings determine when the app will run, based on different user actions.
When an app user opens the published app
Show results from a previous run (default):
The app will load faster by showing results from when the project was last published, or from a scheduled run. This is useful when:
- You do not expect the underlying data to change after being published
- A scheduled run is set up to refresh the app.
- You are embedding the app and want the app to load quickly.
The results shown on load can also be manually refreshed by anyone with Can edit permissions, via the Run and update published results button on a published app.
Note that when this setting is enabled, any interactions with the app will require the app to be rerun. Consider enabling pre-run cells in background to speed up this first run.
Run the app from scratch:
The app will run from top to bottom when a user opens the app. This will lead to slower load times, but ensures that results are fresh.
Note that if your app relies on a SQL cell, this run may use cached SQL results to help improve run times.
When an app user interacts with the published app
Automatically rerun downstream cell (default):
When an app user interacts with a published app (for example, changes an input parameter, or updates a filter cell), cells that are downstream will automatically start running.
This is useful when you want your app to respond quickly to changes in inputs.
Wait for app users to click a run button:
When an app user interacts with a published app, cells will not be run until the Run button (in the top right hand corner) is pressed. Then, the entire project will be run.
This is useful when multiple inputs should be configured before running downstream cells.
Pre-run cells in background
This feature is available to workspaces on the Teams or Enterprise plan.
If an app is set to show results from a previous run, when an App User first interacts with an app (for example, changes an input parameter, pages through a table display cell, or updates a filter cell), Hex needs to run both upstream and downstream cells to ensure that the required variables and dataframes are in-memory.
If these interactions are mid-way through a project, this can lead to long wait times for the App User as they wait for both upstream and downstream cells to execute.
One way to ameliorate this issue is to enable the Pre-run cells in background feature. When this feature is enabled, 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 interacts with an app, only downstream cells will need to run, resulting in faster load times after interacting with the app.