Linking Multiple Spreadsheets in AppSheet: Deep Dive Webinar 4.28.16

all right hello everyone thank you so much for joining us for our deep dive webinar I'm sonal Ameen marketing manager at apt sheet before we get started please make sure to check if your sound is muted in order to reduce any background noise also please note there is a text box to the right where you can submit questions throughout the hour we'll be looking through them and answer as many as we can throughout the session if we don't get to your question we'll post a response to our community or set a follow-up email to you personally also please note that a recording of this webinar will be sent out in a follow-up email and we'll also post it to our YouTube channel we'll go ahead and get started so today we're going to be discussing connecting multiple spreadsheets and app sheet this is what today's agenda looks like first we'll go over what's new with Apps sheet and the platform will talk about why multiple tables why that would be a good use case for you references inline views and slideshow views we'll go over a live demo and then spend to the last few minutes going over a few questions that you all have submitted so without further delay I'll hand it over to our director of marketing Santiago to go over what's new with app sheet thank you so much sonal good morning afternoon and good evening also to the folks are in another part of the world thank you for joining this call so we decided to start doing the deep dive calls just to give you more details about how to build more advanced app sheet apps and give you more resources to build your own apps as you'll see in this webinar we'll go deeply into into some specific processes within the app building process but before we get started we wanted to quickly share some news about new updates in our platform so you know that there are more resources available to you in it so moving very quickly into what's new we wanted to highlight three things first of all the updates we've done two slide show and inline views and we're going to walk to them during the demo today so I want to move that right now in terms of news but we want to make sure that you that you realize that there's a there's a lot of richness available to you now when you want to show a single record in an AB G app and you'll see that when we start talking about the connecting multiple spreadsheets in an app she'd app the other thing that we've recently launched if you haven't noticed yet and we did that in the neck in the last few days was that we introduced a very cool update to Maps so if your apps are using maps we just have something that you may be interested in checking out so I'm going to quickly switch to an app sheet app a live-action app that has a map so I really hope you can see the the tablet right now it has a map piece of the city of Portland and just assume that you have a list of their addresses in the city of Portland and you want to start adding a new row or a new data point in the map it used to be that you have to go into the list of items to create a new one and then tap on new but now with updates we've done to the map view we added a plus button inside of the map so you can now add an item directly from the map so if you press the plus button you get in the interaction to add a new item but we also added something else to this to this interaction let me go back to the map if you are close enough to the street level in the map and I'm just going to zoom in you'll notice that a new icon pops up and it's a little pin and what we have enabled now is the ability for you to pin an address directly in the map so let's say that you're you want to add a new location you get a little print you can drag it around and then put it in the location you want to start tracking once you do that we will automatically fetch the address for that location and then you just tap into the check button in the top and that's it your address will be automatically entered in the location address so that's something for people who are really out in the field that they want to add addresses very quickly while on the go and they want to do it directly from a map this is going to be a very powerful resource for you so go ahead if you have map views make sure that they are in the Google platform and when they're in the Google platform you'll be able to add the plus and when you zoom in do the map thing right so that's that's it for for quick news in terms of new features you'll see a slideshow and inline views a little bit later and those are three the three new features we want to show but before we get started with that part of the conversation we want to start with a bigger concept so you realize the power that you have with actually and that is using multiple tables in a single app by using multiple tables in a single app we're talking about bringing different spreadsheets even from different cloud providers into the same application just a very quick check on on the community there in the call do any of you already have apps that use multiple tables yes excellent Craig says yes Austin says yes that's that's fantastic if you don't have an app with multiple tables yet we're going to show you that part of the process and we're going to show you how you connect data between those two different tables right now so if you have already created some references between tables you're going to get a little bit of a refresher but then you'll also get an introduction to the new features in the in the in line and and slideshow views so so let's go back to the concept of multiple multiple tables for example you have a list of students and you want to to track test results for those students but you don't want to enter the student name type it in every time what can you do in order to avoid typing the student name every time well you can create a little library of the of your students if you're a teacher of course and then create a separate table where you track the test results in the test results form you will get a drop down with all of the list of the students and then use that drop-down to provide the new information but you can also add a third table that is connected to the same list of students that is associated to the different projects at the running right now in school so when we talk about using multiple tables it's all about adding different sources of data in the same place and using some of those tables as libraries the funny thing is that those tables are used in many different places when you are creating relational databases so why do you want to have multiple tables well first as I mentioned before if you want to separate the dynamic from the static data so let's say you want to start adding new information associated to a single record that doesn't change change often that's a list of locations a list of students a list of customers that doesn't change often but you want to associate records to that to that particular item or you have relational data which is embed is basically the same principle you have one item that is related to other multiple items in a different table finally it's also useful to have multiple tables or is good to have multiple tables in your app because you can combine different data sources for example you have smartsheet and Google Drive associated to your app sheet account and smartsheet has the list of projects that you're running and Google Drive has the list of all of the of the construction-site or all of the customers that you have you can bring those two tables into a single option app and combine the data in that application so you are using multiple sources to achieve that and finally because you're using relational data because you have pre-populated some data in the reference table or in one of the tables that means that you have faster data entry you don't have to re-enter addresses if you already have a directory of addresses you don't have to reenter the full names of all of your students if you already have a table with all of your students so it's faster data entry for you we've noticed over the last year that that actually thousands of apps have been deployed in the multiple table scenario and the interesting part about it is that they follow a very similar pattern this is a quick example of how that pattern looks like you have a little library of projects and then you create reports for those projects so you have two different tables that do that job or you have a list of customers and then you add incidents incident logging for those customers or orders that those customers are requesting from me or you have a list of students as our initial example and then you're listing all of the test results for those students or finally you have a list of construction sites and you're running inspections on those construction sites so you have the list of construction sites and then you run your inspections so you have two separate tables that pattern is very common at the end when you use this in an app see that you're technically building a relational database and that's a very powerful statement starting by the fact that you're using spreadsheets to build that relational database if you've even if you've ever used things like vlookup in an Excel spreadsheet or in a Google sheet or in smartsheet it's a similar process only that this works more like a database rather than just a function inside of a table before I move into the next step which is going to be a live demo I just want to make sure that if there are any questions around the whole principles of multiple tables or why you would use multiple tables feel free to ask your questions and I also want to make sure that I believe some time for questions around maps because I know I'd introduce the map feature but just to make sure if there are any out there I'm happy to answer them in the meantime before we move into the demo we have one question this is from Julie if you are going to use multiple data sources is there an advantage to using one site depending on the type of data it will hold there are MCV so when we say one side I'm assuming we mean a different cloud provider so using office 365 instead of Google driving self smartsheet we have an article in our in our help site that describes the limitations that the different cloud provider have there are certain limitations for certain types of data they're actually they're technically too large for you to worry about them but you want to keep them in mind for example if you have a table that would most likely have more than 2 million cells it's going to recap some problems in Google Drive as a Google sheet if you have if you have a table that has more than a minivan I think 41,000 rows you won't it won't work in Excel likewise as much it has some limitations in the number of rows and the number of columns that you may have so there is there is no general performance concern other than the technical limitations of the files that you're going to use if you're using sequel server you'll see that you'll have obviously a bigger amount of space for you to insert the lines so that's that's not a limitation they're good there was also a very quick question about maps and I want to make sure I take that before the end of the call it says will the map also resolve locations outside of the US so we use the Google engine to resolve addresses so if the addresses have been geo coded in the Google engine then those addresses will be available as well outside of the US so it really depends on how many addresses on how and which addresses have been decoded by Google if they haven't been geo coded at the very least you can pin something with its geolocation coordinates ok perfect so let's move into the demo and I create a little slice to remind me that I need to move into the next page so I'm going to zoom out and I'm going to move into my app sheet account now for this demo we decided to create an example using a construction company let's assume that this construction company has a list of different sites that they that some of their field workers need to go around and evaluate if everything is in the right place is compliant and everything it matched the requirements of the project we cannot produce the full fledge app in terms of all of the questions that a construction site would ask so we just made a simplified version just to illustrate how most people at tables would work in a single app sheet app before I show you how this app was built I want to show you the three spreadsheets that are powering this app I'm using Google sheets for this example but you can use marchi you can use office 365 you can easily even use a CSV if you want to to produce the data in the app so this is just as the example is Google sheets but again it can work on smartsheet it can also work on office 365 the first spreadsheet that I want to show you shows the different list of properties for buildings all of these buildings are locating located in Arizona so you'll see a little bit later how it looks in the map now we obviously make sure that each property name is unique because this column is going to be the primary key for our for our sites list table okay so there's the list of all of the names and there's some additional data about that particular property the address there's a picture associated to it the state if it's owned or leased if there's a dad an owner or who is it leads to the different regions there's a lot of additional information to it and obviously there's also a property ID value to associate it to it now we have this little library of sites what if you wanted to produce a little report that that shows some information to each one of the sites well we created another spreadsheet called attachment and the attachment table the only thing it does is it picks the name of the site we know that is unique okay it takes the specific time of the day and the day when the information was captured okay and then it'll capture either a picture text or a drawing okay in this case you'll see that there's just a group of pictures as reports generated in this in this table so we have a table that is just going to grow larger vertically speaking so it's just gonna be will be adding more and more different names to the app the primary key in this table is the time when it was taking because it goes down to the second so you can you can imagine that maybe two people at the same time will not be entering the same type of data so we can sit and make sure that there is always a unique row in this column so that's what time taking does finally we created another table and that table is just a simple table that shows updates on different items in the construction in this case is how the construction is going so where they are in terms of foundations walls and please put here in the construction in business correct sets as we go along brick board plumbing and wiring different items in the construction and then also a status for materials let's assume that there is some inventory management here and you want to know if the materials requested for the construction site if they are in storage or transit or if they have been requested for the project and as you can see the property name is also showing in this table okay the primary key for this table is the status ID so this number is going to be unique every time so we have three tables sites reports and site stats for the projects now what we did in option is when we created the app we initially created the site's table we created the sites table and for the people that are not used to be editor remember that when you create an app sheet app it generally takes you by default to it to the basic editor and then you'll see a little link to the left that says advanced edit my assumption is most of you have actually gone through advanced edit just to make sure that that the people who haven't gone through advanced edit remember what it is so it's to the left so once you're in advanced edit you go to data tables and then the initial table was sets okay and what it shows as you can see on the right is just a list of properties these are the properties in that side the list of construction sets okay actually automatically leave the job to just show the little image to show the address and the name okay then we added two more tables there one for the side reports so that shows everything that is a little attachment to it and the other one is the status okay so that's the status of the project so we have three tables now how do you add any table is very simple you just click on new table it will show you all of the different data sources that you have available to you in this case we use mostly Google but you could add a smart chick table if you if you have it available just to remind you if you want to add more data more data sources to your to your account you simply click on account and go to data sources and that's how you would add new data sources to your to your app see apps you just need to sign in the same way you sign into apps using the credentials of that cloud provider now that we have the three tables they were added using the new table symbol what we want to do is to connect one to the other we want to find some way of connecting sites to site report and to status okay the way we do that is by changing the type of the columns in the app so I'm going to move from tables to column structure and if you've been in the column structure table this is one of them sorry in the column structure section this is one of the most important sections of of your app sheet app creation process this is where you can change the type of column or all of the columns in all of the tables in your app as you can see all of my tables are available here sites attachment and status and the other thing is that if I click on show all properties or show among going I'm going to do it for attachment it will show me all of the columns in that table so the columns you see in this list site time taken attachment type are the same columns as in the spreadsheet that I showed you before okay now how do you create the connection between the little library of construction sites that you have and the attachments or status reports well the way to do it is by by pointing one of your columns to the primary key in the site's column that means let me show you what the primary key is in the site's table in the sites table you have something called property name that's one of my columns right that's the one that lists all the properties and then you see that it has key Mart in it okay so this is the primary key that means that if I point another table to that take two to be a reference to that table is going to show me the list of items under property name let me show you that very quickly I'm going to hide the sides and I'm going to move to attachment so now this is the list and attachment and you can see site the words the name site we're going to I'm going to click on the edit button in column type you see that I've selected ref as in reference you just pick from the drop down and you pick reference all of the column types by the way if you haven't noticed our in organized in alphabetical order so you just scroll down to ref and then when you select ref you'll see a list of reference table names those are table names that you can point that reference to in this case because we have three tables we have sites site report and status and I am pointing that column to sites okay when I point to sites what option is going to do is going to is going to identify the primary key column in the site's table and provide me with a drop-down of all of the items in that column okay when it comes a lot of this one so when we create the reference object creates a connection between the attachment table and the site's table likewise in the status table let me hide attachment and show you status you see that there is a property name column that also has a reference and that reference is pointing to sites so now we've created the connection between the sites library the sites table and the other two tables that are are going to be the ones that are actually collecting the data now actually does something very interesting something sorry let's just check very quickly seems like we might be missing some movement in the screen right now okay can we check that with other people in the call if you're not seeing movement on the screen if you could please just let us know in the questions pane that'd be great if not I'm going to continue assuming that maybe there's a connectivity issue with one apart okay it's fine perfect thank you guys let me go back so we have the different tables we've created the different tables actually does two very interesting things here because it created a connection because you've created a reference from site to the site's table app automatically creates virtual columns in that reference table so if you scroll down insights you'll see a group of columns that were not there before when you created your table and I'm scrolling down and you see something called site reports and the other is called construction status those stables you'll see you'll notice them that they have something called ref rows in this little formula space and what they are doing is they were automatically created by app sheet so we can show the referenced information inside of the site's table let me show you how that looks like in the app because it might be a little abstract when you have it outside of the app so if you see the list of sites here okay what I'm showing here is the data from the site's table all right if I click on any of the properties I'm gonna click on Boulder downtown and you see the record for Boulder downtown it has all of the columns listed in the app - the hidden ones because we hit some okay and then it shows this thing called site reports which is this site reports it shows it as a column okay and the next one is construction status which is shown here and this introduces the first concept that we recently introduced as a new feature in action when you have reference data in app see we will bring that reference data into the table where that data is connected to so because you have we have data connected to the site's list right now we're showing everything related to this property to the property called older downtown the views called psych reports and construction status is what we call an inline view this view you can modify it okay you can modify the contents of that view and I'll show you how in a little bit but that's what we call an inline view before you only have these two buttons view the related data and add new data but now you can actually see the data it will launch you and even more you can show different ways of showing that data in this case a pie chart for example associate it to another table so that's a good way of showing rich there inside of one record everything is very powerful in this case when you can use a single record and show all of the relational data I will move into the tablet in a second I just want to make sure that that we covered a different item for an inline view here okay so this is this is how the reference has been created the inline view is shown because the view is created automatically so that side reports and construction strata status but that that doesn't mean that you're stuck with whatever apps you decided for you in terms of how those views look like and how you want to show them so now you want to start working on how the data is going to be displayed in your app okay to do that you go you go into UX UX if you're familiar to it lets you change the color scheme of your app add formatting rules add icons and change how some of the views in your app are displayed I don't want to go too deep into how those choices are made but I'm going to show you the second element that we've introduced to app seat and also how you can change those in line using an action app so the I am that we've recently refreshed in app sheet is called the slideshow view select review is a view type let me show you that this this app currently has one two three four different views there's only one shown called properties and there's another one hitting in the menu actually there's two more hidden in the venue in the main menu sites map insights navigator okay now the type for those views is defined in this little table here you can choose stack table gallery slideshow map chart or form slideshow what what it does is that it it helps you define how a single record in the app is shown how does a single record in the app looks like in a fit by default just click on any of your records and that's how it's shown if it has an image it'll show the image on top and then it will show all of the columns that are available to be shown if you have hidden columns there bhishan okay and by default if you have reference data it'll show the inline views as well this is the slideshow view that means that you can navigate using the buttons in the app next or 3ds okay Stuart's asking if this works offline the connections between the tables will work offline if there is data that requires requires to be downloaded you wouldn't be able to to use it of course if you're working offline but the interaction between the tables will work offline perfect so this is the slideshow view in this case it shows the image and as you probably notice from ab c-- it'll show the columns left to right that's a single record okay now you can change how those look like with about a month and a half ago you were enabled to but we released by the end of of March the ability to do those changes let me show you how you do that very quickly I'm going to create a new view and I'm just gonna call it the slideshow view okay and I'm gonna hide it in the menu I'm gonna tell it to look at the site's data okay so that's the list of all of the call the little library of sites that we have the view type is going to be a slideshow and you'll see that we'll have new options in the slideshow view you can obviously select an icon so I'm going to select anchor and also you can now start defining how you want to show images in this case I selected Phil but you can also make it fit so the full image is shown in your in your in your view you can also choose to Center the the data or no show no headings for your data or show the data side by side if it fits side by side for example if you're using a type a tablet if you see this maximum nested rows this is the number of items if you have inline views if you have reference data that you are able to show it by the falsies five but you can give it a higher number if you if you want to and this is very important the next item is called column order and in column order you can define the order of the items you want to choose for that view so you can say you know what I want to start with the city and I then want to show the state and I want to show the property name and finally you know what just show me the rest of the columns so you can scroll down and say all other columns I just reorganize how the columns are going to be displayed in my app seed app if I click on OK the view is going to be created and that slideshow view is actually going to change how all of the records in my app are going to show so this is a new feature that we have so now if I click on any of the records you see that it starts now with city then with state then with property name and then the rest of the columns so this is a very good way for you to reorganize how your columns are going to be displayed in the app as if it if there are any questions so far perfect we're going to move on so two new features we wanted to show in the whole multiple sheets experience first one in line views if you create a connections between tables which is what we just done with side reports they are shown as in line views second one you can configure a slideshow view so you can reorganize the columns and also show nested information all right let me show you another quick configuration of the app so we can do a quick walkthrough of what the app is doing right now and then move into questions you can also define how the views that are referenced in the app in the sky in this case the reports or the construction status ok you can choose how that data is going to be displayed as well we make a choice by default width option as you as you recall we like to infer you're in intention of the app adaption but you can go and customize it because the reports have pictures in this case you can see the picture is there we decided to show you a gallery of pictures okay that's what that site reports does but you can modify that that view is well through the UX menu when you're going to views to do so you can create a new view and let's just call it reports an imposition you are going to choose graph and by ref what it does is that if you ever use a reference to show that data you are deciding how that data is going to look so if I select breath and then in data I go to the side reports right the side reports that you can see here right then I can change the view type for that side report let me just make it a table so we can do that change again you can pick any icon I'm gonna pick it'll actually chart this one and then when it's created you can say okay and that's that is now going to shape how that reference data is going to look like it's wafer they have to refresh now if you click on any record you can see that psych reports which use to have the images is now showing my data as a table because I change it to table view if I go back into that reports view that you see here and change it from table to let's say we don't do maps just yet but we're going to very very soon so I'm gonna change it to back then we're going to change how that data is view nude so click on the record and there it is we just changed the style we like the gallery style I'm gonna change it to gallery just because it reminds me of Spotify so I'm gonna put in in gallery view that's because you can actually scroll left to right with the items so it doesn't give a lot of vertical it doesn't take a lot of vertical space let me show you how that looks like so are there any questions in to how you get to define how this views look like so now it's a gallery as you can see that Doug is asking if this feature is only used for records with pictures not at all if you just have reference data and it doesn't have pictures we will just show the table so the data is still going to show in the inline view right now I just use pictures to to make it look nicer but if you don't have any pictures associated to it you can show the data different ways for example this chart is automatically generated by actually the construction status table has no pictures in it let me change that type right now construction status and I'm going to change it instead of chart I'm gonna make it a table refresh the app click on any record and your you'll see now that the data is displayed as a table and because it's a table you can reorganize the columns of that table as well you can choose to put information in different orders of course when you click on the View button you will see all of the data associated to it ok any other questions after inserting multiple tables is there a way to change the order in which they appear when reference to the master table for example in the demo how would I get a construction status pie chart to appear above the site report pictures that's a great question right now you can reorganize it by going into the slideshow view that we created let me let me let me make it more visual so it's clear so I'm going to revert back to the chart view in status then we save some changes perfect swallows loads now we have a chart view as we started so a gallery and then right under it well it seems like it takes a little bit to refresh but that's that will be the chart they probably just didn't pick the right chart that's exactly what I did I didn't pick the right chart so now let's say that that that chart that you want to show you want it to be above side reports actually let's make that chart the top item in your in your view the way to achieve that is going back to your slideshow view the one we initially created and simply say when you add it because you can manage the order you can say okay I want to take that column called construction status and I want to show it on top right and then you say okay save the chart is gonna say no data available because I didn't pick data when I reach all charts we can easily tweak that you can just go back into the edit the chart and just select the chart and I'm gonna select aggregate pie chart yeah and just say okay I just changed very quickly the the pie chart so we actually see a chart because I didn't choose any data before it was check it was saying no data available now that I organized that slideshow view when I click on it the first thing I see Oh after you refresh is the first thing it'll show is construction status and then the other one side reports is gonna show afterwards okay that's how they the app would show the information now change this to table back again and say yeah perfect are there any other questions how can I allow individual users to add multiple pictures for a location that will be displayed in the gallery view oh that's a great question there are two ways you can do that one it could be the way we're doing it in this app which means you have one record and actually let me just take a quick step side step and load the app on a tablet so it looks it looks more like an actual device and not just the emulator okay so this is the same map that we're showing now what I want to show you is the if I click on any of the records you'll notice that the way we organize the data in the app in the app editors is also live now showing in the app the question is how would you be able to take multiple pictures if you have one table that collects all of the that is a library of images let's say construction sites in this case and you just want to collect multiple pictures at different times you can create a second table that the only job it does is to create to add new pictures so if you if you scroll down in this app and go to side reports this is a way of collecting multiple pictures because if I click on new you'll see that this little form that collects data from similar to that table has a picture table and then you just collecting pictures that's our office yay I'm gonna cancel out so you could you could collect as many pictures as you need so that's one way of collecting those images the second way you could use to collect those images is by adding more columns but then you just have to create a limited amount of columns that collect pictures let's say that you can create picture one two three four or five and then any user of the app that's adding pictures to that row could collect up to five pictures per row that's another way of doing it our goal is that you start thinking about this data collection process more like a relational database rather than putting all of the data on a single row so we would invite you to start trying a two table model where there's one item that is always a static customer construction side students and then there's another table called pictures where you can add multiple pictures to that are going to be associated to that to that side any other picture any questions so let me quickly show you the app very very briefly and then we move into open questions or questions that you may have in the width option right now for our deep dive as I showed you before this app simply shows a list of properties for construction sites the images that you see there the images associated and I'm actually clicking on an image that is just loading the images that you see in the app we are they live inside of my Google Drive and I just make a reference to that file I thought was a question about adding those images so so that's that's how I add them directly from my Google Drive there is a help article that shows you how to add images if you go to help that rap shit' com you can type in adding images and you'll get a help article that shows you the different ways to add those images so anyways I have the long list of properties and because I have the two other reference tables associated with it one is construction status and the other one is site reports as you can see in the app then I can go directly from this record to add new items to those so I can I can view all of the records if I click on view okay or I can simply go directly from this experience to create a new one and when I create a new one you'll notice that the property has been pre-selected so that's very powerful if you don't need to enter the address you don't need to enter any more information about the property you know that a Arapahoe which is the property which you selected is the one that this data collection process is related to that means that you can bring in the address if you want to because there's another table let me show you there is another table like this one that has the rest of the details so you don't need to eat enter the details that you see here again because they're already entered so you just create a new one associated to it and then just do what you you need to do in this case take picture or add some text or maybe audit and a drawing so this is a very simple app where you can see the power of having multiple tables to achieve those goals the last thing that the app has just to remind you of the other new features is it has a map and because it has a map it means that you can use the plus sign to add a new record directly from the map which is also a very nice thing to have and with that I wanted to close the demo time and then work with you too with any questions you may have both into this deep dive or general questions you have about app sheet all right and so we have a question from Anthony is there a way to make reports which email them from the mobile device yes there is Anthony the the way you achieve that is by defining workflow rules I'm going to I won't create a workflow rule right now but the way you get to there is by going in the advanced editor you go to behavior and then in behavior you'll go to workflow and workflow will allow you to create a rule that submits data via email and we'll be introducing new methods of adding new data new types of off of alerts and notifications later but right now it sends an email when there's a certain change in the data entered via the mobile app so let's say somebody adds a new row you can configure it so you get an email with the data that was entered in that new row we have a few questions coming in about whether this webinar will be recorded it will be it is being recorded right now and we will send a follow-up email with a link to the recording we'll also be posting a recording of the webinar to our YouTube page youtube.com slash app she apps be sure to check in there for all of our latest videos all right we have one more question how do I create a path on the map as in a side table of points by dropping pins on the map I'd like to keep them ordered with groups still related to a single row of a main table oh that's that's a great question there are different parts to it the first one is about drawing a path that lets you group the data so right now option doesn't provide that functionality you cannot just yet go into the map and draw a path so you can group the data based on that selection that's something that we would be happy to include in our list of product updates it depends on how we prioritize that but you can definitely do to create some sort of grouping in your app is by working in the UX tab and then working in the format rules section the format rules section is going to be something similar to validation rules that you would use in Excel or Google sheets or smartsheet were based on certain data that the display of that data is going to change you can change its color you can add an icon to it you can add different rules I'm going to click on new rule just so you can see some of the things that you can choose so you can just write any condition for example if status equals inst or whatever that that that comment says right so when you created that that kind of rule then you can format the columns based on obviously the some column that you selected and can say format the property name column give it an icon you can choose an icon and then you can change the color you can give it a highlight you can make it larger okay or you can underline it so that's a way of you to create that kind of grouping by just using the data that lives in the spreadsheet rather than you pointing it in the map a few people are asking if this deep dive app will be available in the sample section it's my very own sample I don't know of course I will make it I will make it available for everybody we won't make it a sample app because it we don't know if this is actually a proper sample for construction apps but we will send you a link to my personal portfolio page if you don't know you can easily make any of your apps available to the public by going into share collaborate and then making the app a portfolio app so I'm going to do it right now I really hope I don't have to do many many changes on the app when you make an app a portfolio app that means that the app cannot be updated because it's a sample app now but it's available inside of your portfolio my account number so excuse me it's 29 5 5 4 so if you go to option com portfolio 29 5 5 4 you'll see different apps that I've shared this portfolio apps and that deep type is available there so you can click on the drop down menu and copy the app ok going back into the app because I made it a portfolio app now I cannot enter new data but I think we can still navigate the app if you have more questions are there any questions does the app have the ability to do a push notification we want to use a Q&A forum on the app notification would help with quicker responses great question Travis not yet but we're working on it like that's one of the features we want to release in the next few weeks we don't have a timeline but we're working hard on push notifications just to give you a little bit of context because our app works both in Android and iOS and you can also serve an app on a web browser there's a little higher level of complexity into how you can manage those notifications there's also a layer of poly see we don't want you to also be sending too many notifications to your app users so there are certain things that need to fall in place for us to be able to enable for our app creators to add push notifications but rest assured we're working on it and we'll have announcements very soon so we have a question from Pavel if you have one table reference to two or three others can each of them have a different review you yes you can by going into UX and I hope I understood the question correctly you can go back into UX and you can see in the bottom of the sample app that I have to ref views one point at site reports that's one table and the other one points as status that's another table so if you have two separate tables you can change the ref you for those tables if you don't say create a review for those tables actually we'll just use the default for example if it has images then actually it will show a gallery Julie's asking should you have a separate table for any information that will repeat like category color or size very good question that's one of our future deep dives as well if you go to help option com I would invite you to search for the term dependent dropdowns and I think that's what Julie is pointing at right now let's say that you have a set you have sets of data that when you enter it you you use it often there is a way an option to create a table that will be used as a reference for those dropdowns and that's what we call dependent dropdowns that means that as you go along in your form the options are going to get narrower because you created a map to add you gave a map to option to decide what items match or don't that's a complex thing to explain and we don't have enough time to fully explain it but I would invite you to go and check the dependent dropdowns section in help that AFRICOM kevin's asking can you choose only those rows from the reference table that you want so technically yes you have to work in the expressions world that means that you would have to create some sort of filtering mechanism you could create a security filter if you just want to show items related to a specific user and you have to and you have assigned those items to a specific user yeah just putting their email address in a column and just referring to that column or you can create other other rules for for filtering that data out you can use slices and I can show you data and then slices that's a good way of all sort of filtering data out in your out of your tables and just point instead of the of the total table you just point at the slides and the slides will show what what needs to be shown so there are different ways of filtering that data you can use slices you can use security filters and of course when you're in data and you're in column structure you can explore if conditions in your in your filtering sorry in your formula tabs in your app formulas all right Daniel is asking can you change the column row sizes in the app you can you have some options let me go quickly into us let me find anything that has table so you can see if you have a table view type when you edit that table view and click on a not on it you can choose to show a specific column width you can select default narrow or wide we it's very difficult for us to allow you to choose a specific width for the column that's because when you deploy your app it's probably going to go to many other users let's say your team in your company and because they have different pixel densities and their devices they're gonna use different devices it's gonna be complicated for you to actually define a specific way but now you can choose if it's going to be narrower that means that is going to be as compact as possible or you can have a lot more space in between the columns by choosing Y we know that a lot of people that want to show a lot of data prefer narrow and and that's perfectly fine if you choose narrow and then show more compressed data data in the app alright andis asking I current have workflow sending the report by email I use a template but the photos don't resize very well how can we make this meter look that's a that's a very good question and we that is something that we introduce into the workflow rule meaning we allow people to insert the images we haven't gift enough given enough options for our app creators to work on the size of the images but it's something that is also in our engineering list what we've seen some people doing as a best best practice is that you can reconfigure that email to show the images at the end because it's just a placeholder right you can use to you can use the placeholder item and put it in a different location so we've seen people saying okay when I have images I'm just going to add the images added as attachments as at the end of the PDF therefore there will be no space limitation for how those images are displayed but you have you're making a very good point we should introduce a way for you to manage to better manage the sizing of those images all right Anthony's asking is it possible to read from other sensors on the run mobile like NFC by natively with apps adapts not just now Anthony if you have a device that can read into into NFC and then send a string of text back to the mobile device then we will read that information as a string of tests so that is possible but we don't have native support for NFC NFC in our in with with option apps right now this is a similar question for people that want to have a machine that reads barcodes that connects back to their mobile device some of those barcode readers are Bluetooth readers that technically are just keyboards they're just transferring the data collected from the barcode scanner into a string of text if that if that's the case as a sim if the same model that data is going to be sent back to actually as a string of text and will be able to capture it as well Shawn is asking can you configure the app to alert people that their approval as required after an update oh my god you can totally do that with workflows you just need to create a separate workflow that reads when this data Row is updated please send an email to and you can make it a dynamic field you know it could be always the supervisor always or somebody that isn't in the in the actual role of the of the data and when that happens they will receive an email saying please update this field one of the nice things with accident workflow rules and by the way you can search for help in a help that option calm you can search for workflow rules and you'll find some of the options that you can insert you can actually insert a link to the web version of the app so - from that email you can send the link so the person can quickly take on it and get to that record and do the editing if it's needed right Jason is asking can you still group items in the table view while utilizing the refs feature Jason I don't know if I'll have a good answer for you from that question right now but let's do this if you can if you can send us an email to either support at AFRICOM or ask that question in community dot AFRICOM we'll be happy to go deep into what you want to achieve in that review and the grouping in the map and we see if we can fit it in our engineering plan this is from pebble what if reports is rough to two other tables can I create two refuse for reports that's a to refuse for reports right now you cannot there is so there is a workaround that we don't fully advise that you do but you could potentially do it let me give you a very quick example I know we're running out of time but I want to show you that there is nothing here you see we have three tables sites sites report and status there's nothing here that prevents me from adding one of those tables back again so you're simply adding one of the existing tables I won't find it right now but it doesn't you can add one of the existing tables again into the same application so you could point at sites version one for one purpose and then sites version two for another purpose that is not an ideal way to do the app there might be some confusion into how the data is getting is being updated so we obviously want to have a big warning in to how you can do that but you could potentially achieve that by adding the same table back again again this is something that you have to test the app a lot just to make sure that all of the behaviors of the app are working the way you want them but you can technically add that table all right we are at the top of the hour we got a ton of questions so thank you so much for submitting those we will definitely get back to you will likely put up a blog post with an answer to all these questions and include a link in the follow-up email that you all will get in the next few days so keep an eye out for that we will also post a recording of the webinar to our YouTube page and link that in the follow-up email as well so that pretty much does it for today thank you so much for attending the webinar we'd love to hear your feedback we will be hosting several of these moving forward so we would like to hear what you want to learn in the future we'll be following up with a survey right after this so please be sure to fill that out and give us your feedback and we hope to see you next time thank you so much thank you you you

Channel: AppSheet

Views: 36,935

Keywords: Mobile, Apps, AppSheet, References, Google Sheets, Google Apps for Work, Excel, Spreadsheets, DIY Apps, Custom mobile apps, Google Sheet, Google Drive, Webinar, Data, Tutorial, how to, appsheet views, Maps

Id: up1S6ERD0mY

Length: 61min 54sec (3714 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2016