What are add-ons and apps?

Add-on services provide a secure way of extending the Jive Platform with third-party integrations. A Jive add-on is an archive file, containing configuration settings and other data, that can be installed into your Jive community.

What's the difference between add-ons and apps?

Add-ons define the way that Jive Platform extensions are bundled and deployed into the Jive community.

An app is a particular type of Jive Platform extension that extends to the Jive UI. For example, the Jive Daily app can be used to access communities from a mobile device. Or Images app can let you search for images on an external site and embed them into content items directly from the text editor.

An add-on can contain any number of apps, tiles, streams, templates, external storage frameworks, analytics services, cartridges, and other extension points. It is up to the developer exactly what is bundled within an add-on: some add-ons only contain configuration information and require the Jive server to communicate with a third-party service; other add-ons are standalone and do not depend on a third-party service. For example, with the Box.com Integration add-on Box.com can be used as an external file storage. A community administrator can manually upload an add-on package into the community.

Additionally, add-ons can be installed for an entire community by a community administrator using the Jive Add-ons Registry. Add-ons can either pull data out of the community or bring data in. If you want to know more about apps, add-ons, and how to develop Jive integrations using the latest APIs, please visit the Jive Developer website at developer.jivesoftware.com.

Types of add-ons

External Storage Providers: These add-ons leverage options outside of Jive for storing and synchronizing binary files uploaded to a Jive place.
API Services: These add-ons bring external data into Jive or share Jive data with third-party integrations using the Jive API service.
Analytics Services: These add-ons generate credentials that allow access to the Jive Data Export API. Provide these credentials to consumers of your analytics data so they can access the export service. These credentials may be revoked at any time.
Other Add-ons: These add-ons are the ones that cannot be placed to one of the previous categories.
Custom add-ons: These add-ons are the custom add-ons you create to bring external systems into Jive by building extensions for them. For instance, you can connect Jive to your bug tracking system or your version control system so that when a user views a place, they get a view of that other system. Not only can a user view information from that other system, but you can provide actions to the user without them ever having to leave Jive.