Connected Apps & Integrations

Connected Apps (Work menu) and Integrations (Configuration menu) both link WorkBOS to outside tools, but in opposite directions. Connected Apps is a one-click, authorize-once connection that lets your Chief of Staff READ and cite what is in your other apps. Integrations SENDS your data out or automates it. If you just want to authorize an app and go, that is Connected Apps.

The App directory now has two kinds of app. Apps marked "Reads into WorkBOS" (Gmail, Google Drive, Slack and the rest) let Chief read and cite what is in them. Apps marked "Chief can act" (Stripe, PayPal, Notion, Jira and Confluence, Linear, ClickUp, monday.com, Airtable, Todoist, Close, Attio, Klaviyo, Miro, Fireflies, Granola, Calendly, Cal.com, Zapier, Make, Webflow, Wix, Jotform, GitLab, Sentry, Netlify, Cloudflare, Supabase, Bitly, Mercury, Ramp, Brex, Paddle, Apollo, Clay, Hunter, Help Scout, Gorgias, Customer.io, Ahrefs, PandaDoc, Descript, Fathom, Read.ai, PostHog, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Tally, Coda, Neon, Railway, Honeycomb and Postman) connect in one click and let Chief do things there too: look things up, create a task, draft an invoice. These need the Pro plan or above, and only owners and admins can connect them. Apps marked Coming soon (among them Square, Intercom, Canva, Figma, Gamma, Vercel, Shopify, Zendesk, Pipedrive, Typeform and Asana) only accept sign-ins from apps they have approved; they open up once the platform administrator has set up a client with the vendor. Open one and press Ask for this app to tell us your workspace wants it: the apps most workspaces ask for are set up first.

Chief can also act in some of the apps that read into WorkBOS, always through the Outbox on the Connected Apps page: nothing happens in the other app until an owner or admin approves it there. Today that is GitHub (open an issue, comment on one, close one). HubSpot (add a contact, move a deal), Google Calendar (book a meeting and invite people), Gmail (send an email) and Slack (post a message) are built and show as Coming soon until a one-time setting is changed at each of those companies. Ask Chief in plain words, for example "open a GitHub issue in acme/website about the broken footer", then approve it in the Outbox.

Every app Chief can act in has a list of its tools, each with a switch, the same idea as connectors in Claude. Always allow: Chief uses it without asking (only offered for tools that just read). Ask me first: every use waits for a person in Agent Approvals. Off: Chief cannot use it. Anything that changes something in the other app always asks first; that cannot be switched off, because nothing changes until you approve it.

Using an app that is not in the directory but has an MCP server address (the open standard AI assistants use to talk to apps)? Click Add a custom app in the App directory, paste the address and sign in. For sending WorkBOS events out to other tools, use Integrations: webhooks, Zapier, Make and the developer API.

If a connected app stops working (for example its password changed or access was removed), WorkBOS tells you: the person who connected it gets a notification, and for a workspace-wide connection so do the owners and admins. It opens straight to that connection with a Reconnect button. You can switch this alert off under Notification settings.

• Connected Apps is now one page with six tabs. Overview shows how things stand at a glance: how many apps are connected, anything that needs your attention with a one-click Reconnect, how much has been synced, when it last synced, apps you have not connected yet, and recent activity. My connections lists every app you have linked with its status, who can see it, who connected it, how much it has synced, and buttons to sync it now, reconnect it, pause or resume it, or disconnect it; opening one shows exactly what Chief can read from it, what you allowed, and a recent activity log for that connection alone.
• App directory is where you connect something new: search, browse by category (Email & calendar, Files, Chat, CRM & marketing, Accounting, Developer), and open any app to see in plain English what Chief would read, what it would ask permission for, and the steps to set it up, before you click Connect. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Xero, QuickBooks and GitHub are live today. Outlook mail, Outlook Calendar and OneDrive are built and shown as Coming soon until each vendor finishes approving the WorkBOS app. Do not see what you need? Request an app files your ask on the feedback board.
• Activity is a full log of everything that happens to your connections (connected, reconnected, disconnected, stopped working, working again, a sync problem, a sync you asked for, a rule changed, paused, resumed), with filters and a CSV export. Outbox, where it is switched on, is the approve-first lane: Chief can draft a Gmail or Slack message, but nothing leaves until an owner or admin approves it.
• Rules and access, for owners and admins, is where the workspace sets its own policy: choose whether everyone may connect an app or only owners and admins, turn any individual app off for the whole workspace (this stops new connections; connections already made keep working until someone disconnects them), and see every connection anyone in the workspace has made. Only an owner or admin can change these rules, the database enforces that, and every change is logged. App setup, for platform admins only, is where each provider’s OAuth credentials are configured; ordinary workspace owners never see it.
• Every connection is read-only. Chief can search and cite what is in your other apps and link straight back to the original; nothing is ever changed in the other app itself. The one exception is the Outbox, which only ever sends after a person approves it.
• Scope per connection: choose “Only me” and only you can recall it through Chief, not even an admin. Choose “Whole team” and everyone in the workspace can.
• Every connected app now syncs automatically every 15 minutes, the same as Slack, Gmail and Drive always did; the other apps used to only update when you asked. You can still press Sync now for an immediate refresh, capped at 6 times per person and 20 times per workspace in any 10 minutes, so one busy moment cannot slow things down for everyone else.
• Security: your sign-in to each app is kept in a locked store only WorkBOS’s own servers can reach; it is never sent to your browser or shown back to anyone, including admins. Every account is fenced to your workspace by row-level security, and connecting requires the Connected Apps create permission (Users ▸ Roles) as well as whatever Rules and access allows. One OAuth app per provider is held by the platform; every workspace connects its own account through it, isolated from every other workspace. Disconnecting an app deletes everything WorkBOS had synced from it.