Getting Started¶
This page will guide you to create your workspace and your first Smartmate application in just a few minutes.
Pre-requisites¶
To develop Smartmate apps you will need the following software installed:
Note
A Smartmate workspace is required to publish your apps. Request access at https://smartmate.io.
Installation¶
Install the smartmate cli:
npm install -g smartmate-cli
Install the smartmate-bpmn-editor extension in VSCode

Create your workspace¶
mkdir myWorkspace
cd myWorkspace
sm init
Add an application¶
You don’t need to start from scratch, we have some pre-built Smartmate apps that you can customize.
For this example, let’s add the vacationsApprovalSimple
application.
sm add app
Select Add a prebuilt app from https://github.com/smartmate/apps
and then select examples/vacationsApprovalSimple
.
Open the folder using Visual Studio Code, and you will see a few .yml
, .bpmn20.xml
and .pug
files. They define the application.
This application has just one process, which is defined by 2 files: processes/requestVacations.yml
and processes/requestVacations.bpmn20.xml
.
When opening a .bpmn20.xml
file in VSCode, a graphical BPMN editor will show up.

As you can see in the diagram, it’s a really simple process that starts when an employee requests vacations. The request is then assigned to a manager to be approved. If approved, an email is sent. If rejected, an email is sent. If changes are requested, a “Make Changes” task is assigned to the initiator of the process.
The information of this process will be stored in the requests
table, which is defined in the tables/requests.yml
file.
The emails are defined in the templates/approved.pug
and templates/rejected.pug
files.
Publish your app¶
For now we will publish the application as is, without modifying it. (Customizing an app will be covered later).
First, login using the cli:
sm login myworkspace
Replace myworkspace
with the name of your workspace. Then, enter your username and password.
You are now ready to publish you app.
sm publish
Done! Use your app¶
Login to your workspace at smartmate.io. e.g. https://myworkspace.smartmate.io
You will see a Vacations Approval Simple Example application. You can configure in the app settings which users are managers and which users are employees. For now you can add yourself to both groups to test the process.

At the app home, you are able to start the processes of the app, in this case we have just one process: Request Vacations.

Start adding users and groups, and invite them to use the app you just published!