Open OpenBuilt for the first time
A first look at OpenBuilt — what the app is for, what the navigation gives you, and how to tell the seed Hello World virtual app is ready to play with.
Goal
By the end you will have opened OpenBuilt, recognised the dashboard tiles and the left-hand navigation, and seen the seed Hello World virtual app in the Virtual apps list.
Prerequisites
- A Nextcloud account on an instance where the OpenBuilt app is installed and enabled.
- The OpenRegister app installed and enabled — OpenBuilt stores virtual apps, schemas, templates and version snapshots in OpenRegister.
- The OpenBuilt repair step has run, so the Hello World seed virtual app is present (the repair runs once on first enable; an admin can re-trigger it from Nextcloud admin → Overview).
Steps
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Open the Nextcloud app menu in the top bar and pick OpenBuilt. You land on the dashboard.

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Read the dashboard tiles — Virtual apps, Published, Templates, Published versions. They show counts pulled from OpenRegister; on a fresh install the Virtual apps and Published tiles read
1(the seed Hello World app), Templates reads however many the template gallery ships and Published versions sits on the snapshot count.
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Open the left-hand navigation. The entries map one-to-one onto what OpenBuilt manages: Virtual apps (your draft and published apps), Schemas (the OpenRegister schemas you can re-use across apps), Templates (the gallery you can clone from), Exports (zipped manifest exports). Below the divider sit Documentation and Features & roadmap.

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Click Virtual apps. The list view opens with a Cards / Table toggle, an Add Application button, and the OpenRegister side filters. The seed Hello World row is the one to start poking at.

Verification
You are set up correctly when: the OpenBuilt dashboard renders without an error banner, the left navigation lists the entries above, and Virtual apps shows at least the Hello World row.
Common issues
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| "OpenRegister is not installed or enabled" banner | Install and enable the OpenRegister app, then reload OpenBuilt. |
| Virtual apps list is empty | The repair step did not run — an admin re-enables OpenBuilt, or runs php occ openbuilt:repair on the host. |
| OpenBuilt is missing from the app menu | The app is not enabled for your account — ask an administrator to enable it (and check it is not restricted to a group you are not in). |
Reference
- Clone from a template — the natural next step.
- Admin settings — register, version, support contact.