The Alloy Apps are here 🥳🎉
Yes, the future of Alloy has arrived! Alloy has evolved a great deal since its initial debut in 2017. It's become immensely powerful, giving you all sorts of ways to monitor and maintain multiple asset classes in one place, while providing unparalleled levels of customisation so you can do things your way. Today, we begin the next big step of the journey 🚀.
With the introduction of the Alloy Apps, we're making Alloy fundamentally more intuitive and easier to use. Each app focuses on a key part of Alloy, providing a guided and streamlined experience that's tailored towards a particular goal or process. You only see what you need, when you need it, making it easier to concentrate on the business at hand.
Some apps provide entirely new experiences, increasing Alloy's capabilities and enabling you to interact with your data in exciting new ways. Other apps provide significant enhancements and optimisations to features you're already familiar with, making them more powerful and easier to use than ever before!
Currently, the Alloy Apps are being made available to organisations upon request. Please contact Support if you'd like to opt in! Once you have access to the apps, they can be used interchangeably alongside Alloy's classic web interface, with no data migration required 😎.
Boards
Use the Boards app to apply Kanban methodology to your Alloy operations! A board displays items of a specific design/interface and groups them by a target attribute, with each column representing a possible value. Items appear under the relevant column, according to the value they hold. Items can be dragged between columns to change their attribute value accordingly, without leaving the board.
This provides a simple yet effective visualisation of the state or progress of a set of items. It's great for all sorts of things, such as tracking the status/priority of ongoing tasks, distributing tasks to teams, monitoring asset conditions, and even keeping track of vehicle locations at depos!
Data Explorer
Use the Data Explorer app to query items of a specific design/interface, view their attribute data, and perform actions with them.
This tool has been significantly reworked to offer many quality-of-life enhancements and improved usability on devices with smaller screens. The new bottom toolbar makes it easier to perform actions on selected items and query tabs can now be managed in a vertical list when screen space is tight.
To configure the attribute columns of a query, you can now select the design/interface's root attributes from a simple list, without needing to delve into the full Pathfinder. You can also select standard paths, which act as handy shortcuts to join attributes on connected designs/interfaces. And when you save a query, the order of attributes is now remembered!
You also have better visibility of attribute values. If a Link attribute contains a single item, its icon and title now appear directly in the cell. If it contains multiple items, you can now select X results to list them in a popover. Geometry values can also be previewed in a map overlay. Combined with the resizable Item Viewer, you can now get a much better look at your item data!
Designer - Designs and Interfaces
Use the Designer app to define the data structure of your Alloy customer project.
Create and edit designs/interfaces with a new full-screen editor that provides everything in one place. Visit each section to configure its properties, attributes and implemented interfaces. If a property or attribute is inherited, Alloy can now inform you and provide a link to the interface it belongs to, so you can edit it there!
You can also define any number of standard paths for a design/interface. These act as handy shortcuts to connected attributes, which involve "hopping" to a parent design/interface (that links to the current one) or a child design/interface (the current one links to it), for any number of hops. This brings the attribute within easy reach and surfaces it to users that may be unaware of its availability.
Designer - Item forms
Use the Designer app to create item forms, which let you customise the order and visibility of attributes when creating, editing or viewing items of a specific design/interface. For some attribute types, you can also specify how data can be entered, e.g. enter text directly or choose a value from a picker.
The new Item Form Builder is easier to use and now features a multi-column layout, where up to six attribute controls can be displayed on a single row. It's also possible to preview the form with an existing item, so you can see how your custom layout looks at different screen sizes.
Designer - Item canvases
Use the Designer app to create item canvas views, which let you customise the order and visibility of the data sections displayed by items of a specific design/interface.
Each canvas section displays a distinct set of data or a list of related items. Most are interactive and let you edit the data they display or perform a related action. Several canvas sections are available that broadly correspond to the Item Details tabs in Alloy Web, e.g. Audit, Parents, Gallery. There's also a flexible AQS section that can display the results of any query you set, enabling you to craft your own sections.
Multiple canvas views can be created for a single design/interface, which users can switch between according to their preference or circumstance, e.g. a comprehensive view for desktops, a concise view for mobile devices.
Using permissions, you can control who has access to specific canvas views. This provides a way to limit the data and features available to certain user groups or roles, e.g. an external contractor view that only displays sections relevant to them.
Lists
Use the Lists app to create dynamic item lists and switch between them with ease.
Each list represents a query that fetches items of a specific design/interface, according to the conditions you set. Using our powerful AQS Builder, you can define lists that range from simple (e.g. street lights with defects) to complex (e.g. street lights in a specific area taller than 6m with unresolved defects reported over a year ago).
Create lists to represent sets of items that you need regular and convenient access to. The dynamic nature of lists also makes them ideal for monitoring operations and performing regular data entry. For example, a list could function as an inbox for reacting to newly reported defects, reviewing inspections in progress within an area, or reviewing completed jobs prior to invoicing.
Selecting an item displays its details on the right. Thanks to the new item canvas, you can see much more data than before, including a variety of collapsible sections containing attribute values, geometry and related items.
Maps
Use the Maps app to view item locations and geometry, superimposed over basemap imagery.
All the familiar map tools are here, which make it possible to pan and zoom the map, select multiple items and accurately measure distances. However, there are some new surprises to be found!
The new Item Viewer can be resized to various widths, according to your preference or the available screen space. The item's canvas layout automatically adjusts to suit the new width. When you want to see the big picture, you can now minimise the Item Viewer into an unobtrusive pill and maximise it when you want to see it again.
Additionally, new wizards are available to make adding layer styles and basemaps much easier than before!
Workspaces
Use the Workspaces app to view and create new dashboards, which collate data from multiple sources to display key information at a glance and provide quick access to those sources from one convenient place!
A workspace contains a number of widgets. Each widget contains a number of data points, which can display the item counts of any saved query, list, layer or board within your Alloy customer project. The items of those data points can optionally be displayed on a map area within the widget. Along the top, highlights can draw attention to important numbers or render a widget's data points as a graph.
Additionally, each data point acts as a portal to other areas of Alloy, so you can quickly open a specific set of items within any compatible Alloy app, e.g. Maps, Data Explorer.
Workspaces are ideal for monitoring the performance of your service, providing a visual overview of what's going on, with the ability to closely examine any of the underlying data points. We look forward to seeing how you use them!
Learn more
For more information about using the new Alloy Apps, visit our updated Alloy Help website.
You can also check out this 50-minute webinar, where our handsome product manager Hamish provides a walkthrough of each app and outlines our plans for the second half of 2025.
As mentioned, the Alloy Apps are initially being made available only to organisations that request access. If you'd like to opt in, please contact Support!