Finding and Opening Your Apps

GrndCtrl is a platform: the chat assistant, the admin pages, and every app your organization has turned on all live behind one launcher called the App Drawer. If you are looking for a page and cannot find it, the App Drawer is where to look first — it is the one place that lists everything you have access to.

Why this matters

Your Home screen is arranged by your administrator and shows only what they chose to put there. The App Drawer shows everything you can reach, whether or not it has a card on Home.

Opening the App Drawer

Click the grid icon in the header — nine small squares, labelled Apps when you hover over it. It sits next to the notification bell and the ? help button, and it is on every page, not just Home. The panel that opens is titled Application Drawer.

The drawer opens over whatever you were doing. The page underneath stays loaded, so closing the drawer puts you straight back where you were with nothing reloaded.

Finding an App

The drawer opens on a grid of app cards grouped by category — Communication, Business Management, Administration, and Integrations. Each card shows the app’s name and a one-line description of what it does.

Above the grid is a Search apps… box. Start typing and the grid filters as you go; if nothing matches you will see No apps match “…”. Search is the fastest route when you know the name of what you want.

The list is personal to you

The drawer shows apps that are enabled for your organization and that your group can reach. Two colleagues can open the same drawer and see different apps. If something you expect is missing, see Getting Access to Apps and Extensions.

Working Inside the Drawer

Click a card and the app opens inside the drawer, in a window over your current page. The window has three controls in its top corner:

Control	What it does
Maximize	Expands the window to fill the screen.
Restore	Returns a maximized window to its normal size.
Close	Closes the drawer entirely and returns you to the page underneath.

There is also a Help button in the same row, and an App Switcher button — covered next.

Escape steps back one level at a time

Pressing Esc closes the App Switcher if it is open; otherwise it un-maximizes a maximized window; otherwise it returns you to the app grid; and only then does it close the drawer. You will not lose your place by pressing it once.

Switching Between Apps

You do not have to go back to the grid to change apps. Click App Switcher and a panel slides in from the left titled Switch App, listing every app you can reach, grouped by the same categories. The app you are currently in is marked with a dot.

At the bottom of that panel are two more entries:

• All Apps — returns you to the full app grid.
• A home entry — closes the drawer and takes you back to the main GrndCtrl app.

Why Some Apps Open as a Full Page

Most apps open inside the drawer. A few open as a full page instead, replacing your current view. That is a deliberate choice your administrator makes per app, not a fault.

In Administration → Extensions, each extension’s Configure dialog has two separate App Drawer toggles that are easy to confuse:

Toggle	What it controls
Show in App Drawer	Whether the app’s card appears in the drawer at all. Turn it off and the app stays enabled but is only reachable by a direct link or another entry point.
Open in App Drawer	What happens when you click the card. On, it opens inside the drawer. Off, it navigates to its own full page.

They are independent

An app can be shown in the drawer but set to open as a full page, or hidden from the drawer while still opening inline everywhere else. Both default to on, so unless someone changed them, an app appears in the drawer and opens inside it.

Administrators can also set both toggles for every extension at once from the Extensions tab, rather than opening each Configure dialog in turn.

Getting to Help from Inside the App

Next to the Apps button is a ? button that opens a short menu:

• Knowledge Base — opens this Help Center. Your organization can rename this entry and point it somewhere else, so it may carry a different label.
• Feedback — opens the feedback portal.
• Submit a Ticket — raises a support request.

An entry that cannot work is not shown

If your organization has not configured a destination for one of these — no knowledge base URL, or no support address — that entry is left out of the menu entirely rather than appearing and doing nothing.

Troubleshooting

An app I expect is not in the drawer

Solutions: three things have to be true before an app appears. Check them in order.

1. The app is enabled for your organization.
2. Your group has been granted access to it.
3. You have signed in since that change. Work through Getting Access to Apps and Extensions for each step.
4. A fourth, less common cause: an administrator turned Show in App Drawer off for that app, which hides it from the drawer without disabling it.

I clicked an app and got “Access Denied”

Solutions:

• Sign out and back in first — the most common cause is a session that predates the change to your access.
• If it persists, the app is enabled but your group has not been granted access to it. Ask your administrator to assign your group.

I cannot find the grid icon

Solutions:

• On a narrow screen the header splits into two rows and the controls move to the right-hand cluster. The grid icon is still there, beside the notification bell.
• Widen the window or rotate a tablet to landscape if you would rather see the full-width header.

Related Articles

• Getting Access to Apps and Extensions — What to do when an app is missing or you see “Access Denied”
• App Store — How an administrator turns apps on and off for the organization
• Getting Started with GrndCtrl — Signing in, the Home screen, and your chat preferences
• Tenant Administration — Managing users, groups, and extension access