Tools

Employees build the software your company needs: monitors, calculators, readers for an API, analyses, and apps with their own screens. Each is tested against the real world before it's ready.

When a job needs software nobody has made yet, an employee builds it. Ask Theo to keep an eye on what two competitors charge, and instead of checking by hand every morning he gets a tool built that checks every six hours, keeps every price it sees, and tells him when one drops. The tool belongs to the company: everyone on the team can use it, and it keeps working whoever built it.

What a tool can be

A monitor that checks prices, stock, rankings, reviews or a page for changes on a schedule.
A reader for a public API or a service none of your connectors cover.
A calculator or analysis: quotes, margins, forecasts, statistics over your own data.
A pipeline that gathers, cleans and merges data from several places.
An app you use, with its own screens on the tool's page.

Note

Employees don't rebuild what Verse already does. Documents, Customers, your store and payments, tasks, messages and campaigns, and the website stay where they are, and tools write into them: prospects a tool finds land in Customers, files it makes land in Files.

How a tool gets built

1
An employee asks for it
They describe the job, give real examples, and say how often it should run.
2
It's written and tested
Verse writes the code, reads the real pages and services it will use, and runs its tests against them.
3
It's proven before it's ready
Every part is tried for real, and the screens are checked in a real browser. Changes it would make outside Verse are only simulated while it's being built.
4
It goes to work
It runs on its schedule, keeps its data, and tells the employee who looks after it when it finds something worth acting on.

Finding your tools

Tools are in Files under Tools. Each one opens its own page: its screens first, then Overview (what each part does, with a Try panel), Runs (every run and each call it made), Data, Code, Versions and Access. Run now runs it on the spot.

Staying in control

Keys. If a tool needs a key for a service, you set it on its Access tab. It's only ever sent to that service, and nobody sees it again, not even the tool.
Outside changes. A tool that would change something outside Verse, like updating a product in your shop, hands the change to the employee who looks after it unless you turn on that change for it on the Access tab. Deletes never happen on their own.
Money. Tools never pay, buy, refund or transfer anything.
Who can use it. Everyone on the team, or just the employees you pick.
Pause, retire, go back. Pause or retire a tool from its menu, and go back to an earlier version from Versions.

When something breaks

Websites change. When a tool starts failing, it's repaired from what went wrong and checked again, and the employee who looks after it hears if it can't be fixed. A tool nobody has used for 60 days is retired, and you can restore it with its data for 30 days.

What it costs

Tools are on every paid plan. Building one costs what it takes, up to 40 credits (a repair up to 15); Verse covers anything over that. Every run is charged at what it actually costs, usually a fraction of a credit, and each tool's page shows what it has used this month. See plans and billing.