Demo Studio
Demo Studio is where you turn the way your best people show your product into reusable demos. You record a walkthrough once, with your own narration, then edit, reorder and reuse its pieces across as many demos as you need.
What are the building blocks?
- Demo target: the product being shown: its starting address, the domains a demo may visit, and how to log in. Login details are encrypted and never shown back.
- Segment: a reusable piece of a walkthrough: the steps (clicks, typing, choices, scrolling, navigation) plus what to say over them. One segment can appear in many demos.
- Section: a named group of segments that belong together, such as "Reporting".
- Demo: a target plus an ordered set of sections.
- Flow: the compiled, ready-to-run form of a demo. It's rebuilt automatically when you change the demo, or on demand with Recompile.
How do I record a demo?
Open Demos → Record, choose a demo target and a name, and start recording. You drive your product in a browser that Appricity runs and shows on your screen; it logs in for you if the target has login details. Your microphone records your narration as you go.
You can position the browser first and start recording when you're on the right screen, Pause and Resume, or Discard. Stop & save splits the recording into segments at each change of page and opens it in the Studio.
Afterwards your narration is transcribed and lined up with your steps, filling in each segment's script. The narration also becomes knowledge, so agents can answer questions in your own words.
Can I start from a script instead?
Yes. Demos → Import takes a written narration or transcript and turns it into a demo outline, one segment per sentence. It has the script but no steps yet; add the steps by recording.
How do I edit a demo?
In Studio → Build, open a demo and use the Edit tab:
- add, rename, reorder and delete sections;
- add a segment from the library, or Record new segment;
- override the narration for one demo, or edit the library narration everywhere;
- edit steps: change how an element is found, what's typed, waits and pauses, insert steps, or Re-record this step. Re-recording replays the demo up to that point first.
- choose the pacing: as recorded, paced by the words to speak, or a steady beat, at half speed up to three times.
How do I review it?
The Preview tab plays a storyboard: the captured screens in order, with the narration as captions. It needs no live browser and is a quick way to check the story flows.
How do I check a demo still works?
The Check tab (also on each flow's page under Demos → Flows) replays every recorded step against the demo target and reports, segment by segment, whether it passed. A failed segment opens to the step that broke, why, and a screenshot of the screen at that moment. No AI is involved.
Can I turn a demo into screenshots for my own material?
Yes. Before you start a check, turn on Capture frames. The check then also saves a sharp, high-resolution screenshot after each segment, with that segment's narration as its caption. Leave Voice-over on to have each caption read aloud in your default voice as well.
When the check finishes you get a filmstrip of the frames. Click one to see it full size and use the arrow keys to step through; press play beside a frame to hear its voice-over. If the voice-over couldn't be made, the check says why, and you still get the frames.
Download storyboard saves everything as one zip: the frames in order, the voice-over clips, and a file listing each frame's caption. Use it for slides, documentation, training or a launch post. A check that stops part-way shows the frames it got before it stopped.
Captures leave out the on-screen extras that don't belong in a screenshot, such as notifications and setup prompts, and some screens that show sensitive settings are never captured: a check that reaches one stops and tells you which.
Can I import demos I've captured elsewhere?
Yes. If you capture demos automatically, for example as part of every release, your own systems can send them into your workspace with an API key that has the Import and update demos permission. An import brings the whole demo: its steps, the captured screens, the voice-over and the narration. A key can only import into its own workspace.
Every imported demo is checked before it goes live. A new or changed import first arrives as an update waiting beside the version you already have. Appricity replays it against the demo target, and only when that check passes does it replace the live version. If the check fails, the version that was already live keeps playing, so a broken update never reaches a buyer. Sending exactly the same demo again changes nothing.
The narration of an imported demo becomes knowledge once the demo goes live, in the same way as a recorded one, so agents can answer questions in its words. An update that hasn't passed its check never adds anything to your knowledge.
You can see where each imported demo stands in Demos and in Demo Studio:
- Imported · v1.4 shows which version is live.
- Update waiting: check passed or Update waiting: check failed, with the reason, shows a newer version that hasn't gone live yet. Select it to open that version's check, see which step broke and run the check again.
Which products can I demo?
Web applications. Each target lists the domains a demo may visit, and the demo browser won't go anywhere else.