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External links

An external link lets someone without an Informer account open your App: a customer checking their order status, a vendor portal, a dashboard on a wall display. You create links from the Sharing tab of the App's admin panel, under the same master switch as everything else.

Three things to understand before you create one:

  1. The link is the key. Anyone who has the URL can open the App (subject to the restrictions you set below). There's no login step.
  2. The link acts as you. Whoever follows it inherits the identity and permissions of the person who created the link. They can see exactly what you can see through that App, nothing more, and nothing less. Create links for an App only when you're comfortable with that.
  3. Revoking stops new visits immediately. Delete a link and it can no longer be used to open the App, and turning the App's sharing switch off disables every link at once. Someone who already has the App open keeps that session until it expires, so if you are closing off access urgently, check the App session timeout for how long that can be.

In the Sharing tab's Add menu, choose Create external link. The App's actions menu (click its name in the title bar) has a Share… shortcut that opens the same dialog.

The Create external link dialog with a description field and network restriction optionsThe Create external link dialog with a description field and network restriction options

The dialog asks for three things:

Description​

A note to yourself about what the link is for ("What is this link for?"). With several links on one App, this is how you tell them apart later: "Acme vendor portal", "Lobby display, building 2".

Network restriction​

Where the link may be used from:

No restrictions

Anyone with the link can open it from any network.

By host name or IP

Only requests from a specific computer or device (for example server.acme.com or 192.168.1.10). Right for a wall display or a single integration server.

By IP range (CIDR)

Only requests from a network block (for example 192.168.1.0/24). Right for "anyone in our office" or a partner's corporate network.

A network restriction is your main guard rail on a link that escapes: even forwarded, it only works from the network you chose.

Roles​

If the App defines roles, pick which ones the link carries. Anyone using the link acts with the selected roles, so a link for outside reviewers might carry only Viewer while an approval link carries Approver. The roles are baked into the link itself; different links on the same App can carry different roles.

Click Create link, and the new link appears in the Sharing list ("New link ready to share") with a Copy link action.

Each link in the Sharing list shows its description, who it acts as ("Acts as username"), when it was created, how many requests it has served, and when it was last used. That last-used timestamp is worth a glance now and then: a link that's still being used long after its purpose ended is a link to delete.

  • Copy link: grab the URL again any time.
  • Edit link: change the description, network restriction, or roles of a live link. The URL stays the same, so you can tighten a link's restrictions without re-sending it.
  • Remove: the link stops working immediately, and there's no way for anyone outside your tenant to keep using the App through it.
  • A warning where Copy link should be means the server could not sign the link's URL ("This link's URL is unavailable — the server could not sign it. Recreate the link to get a working URL."): remove it and create a new one.
tip

With many links, use the Sharing tab's Links filter (or the search box) to see only external links.

info

External links are per-App. Deleting a link revokes access to this App only; other Apps' links are unaffected.

Troubleshooting​

  • The recipient says the link "doesn't work" but won't say more. Ask what they see. A link that has been deleted, or whose App has sharing switched off, simply stops working. A link with a network restriction opens for you and not for them, which looks identical from their side. The Sharing list's request count tells you whether their attempt reached the server at all.

  • "A session could not be established on this app's origin." Their browser is refusing cookies for the App's own web address. Most browsers that do this are blocking cookies site-wide, through a privacy extension, or through a company policy, rather than through anything to do with Informer. The page names the exact address to allow, in the form This app needs cookies allowed for <name>.informer-apps.com, and your browser refused the one it just set. Allow cookies for that address, then open the app again.

    This page only appears for someone who opened the App's own web address directly, from a bookmark or a copied URL. Opening the external link itself still works in that browser, so the quickest fix is to send them the link again rather than talk them through browser settings.

  • The App opens but the recipient sees the wrong thing. Check the link's Roles. A link carries the roles you picked when you created it, not the roles of the person opening it, and editing a link's roles changes what every future visit sees.

  • The link worked this morning and doesn't now. Sessions opened through an external link expire. Reopening the link starts a fresh one, so "open the link again" resolves most reports of an App that stopped responding partway through the day.

Also available through the REST API
Everything on this page is built on Informer's public REST API, the same one the product uses, so your scripts and integrations can do it too. Developer reference: App Tokens.