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What you’ll build

A custom internal tool — an admin panel, CRM, operations dashboard, or workflow tracker — connected to your real data and deployed with authentication so only your team can access it.

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Before you start

1

Create a Workshop account

Sign up at app.workshop.ai. Workshop Cloud is recommended for internal tools — it handles hosting, auth, and deployment.
2

Connect your data sources

Internal tools are most useful when connected to your existing systems. Set up the connectors you need:
  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Supabase, Neon, Microsoft SQL Server, TiDB
  • Data warehouses: BigQuery, Snowflake
  • Cloud storage: AWS S3, Google Drive
  • APIs: Use the custom connector to store API keys and secrets for any third-party service
  • Spreadsheets: Google Sheets (public or private)
Go to Hub → Connectors to set them up.

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Step-by-step flow

1

Connect your databases and APIs

Open the Hub → Connectors and add connections to the systems your tool needs to read from or write to. For custom APIs, use the Custom Connector to securely store API keys and endpoints.
2

Describe the tool you need

Tell Workshop what the tool should do, who will use it, and what data it needs.Example prompts:
  • “Build a customer support admin panel with ticket management, customer lookup, response templates, and performance metrics. Connect to my Postgres database for ticket and customer data.”
  • “Create an inventory management tool with product catalog, stock level tracking, low-stock alerts, and purchase order generation. Include search, filtering, and CSV export.”
  • “Build a sales CRM with a Kanban pipeline view, contact management, activity logging, and deal forecasting.”
  • “Create an employee onboarding tracker with task checklists, progress visualization, and an admin view.”
3

Add CRUD operations and workflows

Internal tools typically need to read and write data. Ask Workshop to add the operations your team needs:
  • “Add a form to create new customers with validation on the email field.”
  • “Let users change the ticket status by clicking a dropdown in the table row.”
  • “Add a bulk action to mark selected orders as shipped.”
  • “Add CSV export for the filtered table view.”
4

Deploy with authentication

Publish your tool on Workshop Cloud. Every published app includes built-in authentication — your team members sign in to access it, and no one else can see the data.
Published apps on Workshop Cloud include authentication out of the box. You don’t need to build a login system — it’s handled for you.

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Tips and best practices

Tell Workshop who will use this: “This is for our customer success team — they need to quickly look up a customer by email, see their subscription status, recent tickets, and usage metrics.” Context about the user produces better UX decisions.
Don’t try to build the entire tool at once. Start with the single most important workflow — e.g., “I need to be able to search for a customer and see all their orders” — and expand from there.
Connect to your actual database (or a staging copy) so you can validate that queries return correct results. Dummy data hides schema mismatches and edge cases.
Internal tools handle real business data. Ask Workshop for safeguards: “Add a confirmation dialog before deleting a record. Validate that the email format is correct before saving. Show an error message if the database update fails.”
If different team members need different access levels, describe it: “Managers can edit and delete records. Regular users can only view and create.” Workshop can build role-based access into the tool.

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Next steps

Start Building Free

No more waiting on engineering backlogs. Describe the tool and deploy it today.