What is a Microapp?
We live in a world where there is an app for everything from watching the latest shows to calling a car, ordering dinner, and checking your daily horoscope. There is no doubt you know what an “app” is. But let’s explore a more specific variety of applications, the microapp.
Microapps are hyper specific applications, typically designed to perform only one specific task or use case. Due to the nature of a microapp’s lean functionality, the apps carry beneficial features such as low costs and customizability. Most microapps are developed to work independently and are often tailored to target user experiences.
Microapps & the Digital Workplace
So, what role can a microapp play in the digital workplace? A fair question considering the digital workplace is saturated with technology. It may come as no surprise that digital friction, the unnecessary effort it takes for employees to use technology to get their jobs done, is challenging managers and employees alike. In fact, according to this study, 73% of managers' report that technology gets in the way of their productivity.
Microapps offer a unique solution for overcoming digital friction, bypassing cumbersome login processes or dated UI experiences of legacy enterprise systems, giving employees simplified access to information and tasks in the channels they work most. With microapps, a digital workplace can transform into a digital destination. Reducing context switching, a key player in employee frustration and decreased productivity, is just one of the many benefits microapps bring to the digital workplace. Additional benefits include:
Easy-to-find information | Microapps help employees quickly access the information that’s important to them without having to navigate through complex systems
Simplified Processes | By abstracting common tasks and information from back-end systems and centralizing into one single experience, employees can complete tasks more efficiently
Maximize Technology Investments | Create intuitive and sticky experiences that maximize usage of existing tech investments
Delivering Microapps with Workgrid
The Workgrid platform includes a variety of out-of-the-box microapps designed to enhance enterprise systems and improve the employee experiences. Our microapps abstracts tasks and information employees need from core applications, so they can spend less time logging in and out of systems and more time on the work that really matters.
Recently we released a number of new microapps alongside two of our most popular, Pay and Time Off. These microapps provide on-demand access to some of the most important information employees need to know – pay information and vacation balance! The new apps include:
Due to the nature of microapps specificity, many organizations may seek to build custom applications. This process can be cumbersome and expensive. With the help of Workgrid’s no-code app builder, customers can quickly build and deliver custom microapps leveraging our catalog of templates and data sources or build something completely customized in just a matter of hours not days.