Plugins & the Marketplace
APEX has two kinds of features. The foundational modules — Command, Work Orders, Inventory, Quotes, Accounting, Team, and the rest of the always-on sidebar — are part of every workspace and cannot be turned off. Everything else ships as a plugin: an opt-in feature that stays hidden until your workspace installs it from the Plugins module. Install what your operation needs; skip what it doesn’t. The sidebar stays calm either way.
Who works here: owners and admins install and uninstall plugins for the whole workspace; everyone else can browse the catalog to see what’s available and ask for it.
Modules vs. plugins
| Foundational modules | Plugins | |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Work Orders, Inventory, Quotes, Accounting, Customers, Team | Analytics, AOG Desk, Surcharge Invoicing, Company Chat, Shipping Desk |
| Always on? | Yes — every workspace has them | No — hidden until installed |
| Who decides | Nobody; they are the product | Your workspace’s owners and admins |
| Where they live | The sidebar, always | The sidebar (or a host screen) once installed |
When another guide says a feature “requires the X plugin”, this section is where that plugin is installed. The five plugins available today are described one by one in The plugin catalog.
Finding the Plugins module
Plugins sits in the sidebar under the Apex Platform group (next to Build). Opening it shows the Marketplace — the catalog of every plugin, with your workspace’s install state beside each one.
Screen: The Plugins module. A header cell reads Marketplace with the line “Install the features your workspace needs. Uninstalling hides a plugin — your data is kept.” and, on the right, a category dropdown set to All categories. Below it, one row per plugin: the plugin name in bold (e.g. AOG Desk), a Module badge, a category badge (e.g. Operations), a small version number (v1.0.0), and a one-line tagline. On the right of each row, a state pill (Installed or Available) and an Install or Uninstall button.
Browsing and filtering
- Each row shows the plugin’s name, its surface badge (Module — today every plugin adds a sidebar module), its category badge, its version, and a one-line tagline.
- The category filter (top right) narrows the list. Categories in use today: Operations (AOG Desk, Shipping Desk), Finance (Surcharge Invoicing), Workspace (Company Chat), and Intelligence (Analytics). Pick All categories to clear the filter.
- Click anywhere on a row’s name or tagline to open the detail drawer.
The detail drawer
Screen: A drawer slides in from the right, titled with the plugin’s name and its category as the subtitle. At the top, the state pill and the version. Below, a full paragraph describing what the plugin does. At the bottom, the same Install / Uninstall button as the row. For 3442 platform staff only, an extra ”// platform controls” section appears with a Platform override dropdown.
The drawer is where you read the full description before deciding. If a plugin required special permissions to see, they would be listed here under Requires permissions — none of today’s plugins do.
Installing a plugin
Roles: Owners and admins only. Everyone can browse the catalog, but the Install and Uninstall buttons only work for owners and admins — a member who clicks one gets an error message.
- Open Plugins in the sidebar.
- Find the plugin — scroll, or narrow with the category filter.
- Click Install on the row (or open the drawer and click Install there).
- A toast confirms — e.g. “AOG Desk installed” — and the plugin’s module appears in the sidebar immediately, for everyone in the workspace.
Installing is instant and workspace-wide. There is nothing to configure at install time — plugins that have settings (like Surcharge Invoicing) are configured after installing, from their own screens.
Uninstalling — hide, never delete
Uninstalling a plugin hides it: the sidebar entry disappears for everyone and the plugin’s screens stop being reachable. No data is deleted. Chat history, issued pass-through invoices, analytics history — everything stays in your workspace’s records, and reinstalling restores access instantly, exactly where you left off.
- Open Plugins in the sidebar.
- Click Uninstall on the installed plugin’s row.
- A toast confirms (e.g. “Company Chat uninstalled”) and the module leaves the sidebar.
Uninstalling hides the feature for the whole workspace, not just for you. Anything the plugin posted to other modules stays put — for example, invoices that Surcharge Invoicing posted to the ledger remain in Accounting.
Where an installed plugin appears
Every plugin available today is a module plugin: once installed, it appears at the bottom of the Modules group in the sidebar, with its own icon, and every member of the workspace can see it. The sidebar names are:
| Plugin | Sidebar entry |
|---|---|
| Analytics | Analytics |
| AOG Desk | AOG Desk |
| Surcharge Invoicing | Surcharge Invoicing |
| Company Chat | Chat |
| Shipping Desk | Shipping Desk |
What each one adds is covered in The plugin catalog.
The state pill
The pill on each Marketplace row tells you the plugin’s effective state at a glance:
| Pill | Color | Meaning | Who set it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Available | cyan | Not installed — the default for every plugin | — |
| Installed | green | Installed and visible to the workspace | Your owners/admins |
| Forced on | magenta | Visible regardless of your own install choice | 3442 platform team |
| Forced off | red | Hidden regardless of your own install choice | 3442 platform team |
Platform overrides
In rare cases the 3442 platform team can force a plugin on or off for a specific workspace — for example to switch on a feature that was arranged commercially, or to switch one off while a problem is investigated. When that happens:
- The row’s pill reads Forced on or Forced off instead of Installed/Available.
- The override wins over your own choice: while a plugin is forced off, installing it changes nothing visible; while it is forced on, it stays in the sidebar even if you uninstall it.
- Your data is unaffected either way — an override only controls visibility.
If a plugin in your Marketplace reads Forced off and you need it back, contact the APEX platform team (the Build module is the in-product channel for requests).
The life of a plugin
Lifting an override restores your workspace’s own install state: a plugin that was installed before being forced off comes back as Installed, and one that was never installed returns to Available. (An override can also be applied from either state — the diagram shows the common cases.)
In this section
- The plugin catalog — what each of the five plugins adds, screen by screen.
- Managing plugins (for admins) — permissions, what an uninstalled route looks like, and how overrides appear.