An intense 48-hour tour of AppSheet, Google’s flagship nocode tool, from the perspective of a newcomer to the platform (part 2/4).
The second part in Pablo Felip’s in ‘Discovering Google AppSheet in 48 hours’ series. This post focuses on the AppSheet formula language which are similar to formula/functions you would use in spreadsheets. As highlighted in Pablo’s post ‘expressions’ can be used in numerous places in AppSheet not only to calculate new values but also control your AppSheet app behaviour and functionality.
An area I often struggle with is handling data lists. Pablo’s post walk you through from basic list operations to more complex list filtering and list operations such as combining and subtracting data. This and more is covered in the posted linked to below:
An intense 48-hour tour of AppSheet, Google’s flagship nocode tool, from the perspective of a newcomer to the platform (part 1/4).
When introducing people to AppSheet I like to remind them that whilst it is a no/low code solution, like many other products it still requires you factor in time to learn and understand the product. Spreadsheets are a great example of this there being aspects that are relatively intuitive but other areas like formulas where it requires time to understand how to best use them.
I find learning vicariously, through the eyes of others, helps me understand what other people value in a product. This first post in a series by Pablo Felip in ‘Discovering Google AppSheet in 48 hours’ is a great example of just that. There are three more parts to come, but in part 1 Pablo sets the scene sharing initial impressions and first learning from a weekend in AppSheet.
Perhaps not unsurprisingly data features heavily in this first post. What you want your app to do will often be based on the data you already have or the data you will need. The post also contains this useful reminder:
Google AppSheet is a “core” service of Google Workspace. It is therefore covered by the same legal umbrella as the other core services of this platform with respect to terms of use, security and privacy of the data processed.
Pablo’s next part should be published next week and hopfeully like me you’ll be following along.
AppSheet is one one more tool 🛠 for citizen developers and IT departments that helps automate concrete processes through a mobile-friendly and desktop UI’s.
In this post I’ll show you some AppSheet use-cases in the education industry, specifically how you can improve your school security using a simple app to keep the visits’s record and another app to automate and speed up the kids pick up.
In this post from Mozart García you can find out about some use cases for improving school security using AppSheet. The post includes an overview of apps for recording visits and pickups. You can find similar apps in the AppSheet template gallery (Visitor Check-ins and Curbside Pickup), but with Duet AI for AppSheet there will soon be the opportunity to build you apps with an GenAI assistant. Below is a quick example based on one of Mozart’s app descriptions:
Duet AI in AppSheet is currently only available to Google Workspace customers. Google are rolling it out to a small group of customers at first, and then we will make it available to everyone who is eligible. You can read more about Create apps in AppSheet using Duet AI assistance
Join us for an exciting showcase event with Google presenting an AppSheet demo developed to connect frontline workers with head office.
On October 19, 2023 at 14:00 UTC you can join me for a free online live webinar with Tony Martin, Google Workspace specialist and Dominic Parkes, Google Workspace Customer Engineer at Google to discuss a demo app created in Google AppSheet to help bring frontline/deskless workers and head office together more efficiently.
This session is an opportunity to discover how AppSheet can be used to make it easy to administer everyday business tasks such as: reporting sickness, managing shifts, payslips and HR records, onboarding and training. We’ll be discussing the benefits of using AppSheet to solve this problem and getting Tony and Dom’s top tips when it comes to Google AppSheet app creation.
If you have strong AppSheet technical skills along with solid Google Workspace skills and would like to share your expertise globally as a recognized “Google Developer Expert” (GDE), we would like to invite you to apply to become an official GDE member specializing in AppSheet and Workspace!
The Google Developer Experts program is a great way to get recognised for your abilities, but more importantly an opportunity to get close to the Google product teams to learn and share your day-to-day experiences. Whilst AppSheet is positioned as a no/low code solution it doesn’t mean there aren’t individuals out their developing sophisticated apps and supporting the community along the way.
If this sounds like you the AppSheet team are looking for community experts to become the next AppSheet GDEs. This source post includes some more information as well as a form where you can note your interested. As a GDE of 9+ years I’m also happy to share my experience of the program and what I think it takes to stand out from the crowd.
We are excited to roll out to GA (General Availability) our first visual editing features to all AppSheet creators, starting today.
This a new way for AppSheet creators to make changes to their apps and navigate the editor. It’s intuitive for anyone to point at what they want to change if they can see it. We are now letting you do that in the editor: you can now hover on visual components of the editor’s app view and see possible editor actions for the outlined component.
Google recently announced the rollout of new new visual editing features in AppSheet. The new feature should help simplify and speed up app development (see the source post for an animated gif / video of what it looks like). In the announcement Google mention that the new feature isn’t available for all components:
Outlines are only available for some components visible in the app. For instance, Detail and Form Views have a lot more controls than the Deck View right now. Additionally, only some Editor actions are available, such as navigating users to Data components, View components, Action components and some of the general Settings.
More updates are planned and if you don’t see this feature in AppSheet yet the rollout has been paused for Google Cloud Next and should be available for everyone soon.
To bring the power of AppSheet to more users, AppSheet Core licenses will now be included for the following Google Workspace editions…
By including AppSheet Core licenses in more Google Workspace editions, the power of AppSheet is accessible to more users. Further, Admins will have the security features they need to ensure their users are using AppSheet appropriately in their organization.
Previously AppSheet Core licenses were included with Workspace Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus, and Education Plus users. Google have recently announced that AppSheet Core licenses will also be included in the following Google Workspace editions:
Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
Enterprise Starter and Standard
Frontline Starter and Standard
Non-profits
Education Standard
This is great news for Google Workspace users as AppSheet includes a number of out-of-the box features which already integrate into other Workspace products, like dynamic emails, Google Chat and Google Apps Script integration.
Along with the expansion of Workspace editions getting AppSheet Core, is the news that Admins will have basic security controls which can disable external usage of AppSheet apps.
Looking at the associated new security settings support page, it was interesting to see that turning on AppSheet Core security will disable ‘external integration through the app API’:
Finally a little plug. If you are interested in AppSheet and would like to find out about training and support services get in touch. At CTS, where I work, we’ve a growing reputation in both products built using AppSheet as well as helping you get the most from the platform in your organisation.
Make your team acknowledged when there is a new eventEven though a data scientist can do coding, it doesn’t mean that we have to code all the time. In some use case, I found out that no-code development tools benefits us as it reduces time to develop applications for collecting data or small systems for uncomplex internal uses. I have developed several AppSheet applications which help us automate works, make tasks paperless and trackable by records.
We’ve featured a couple of examples of integrating with Slack using Apps Script. Here’s a variation using AppSheet to do some of the heavy lifting with the data automation. To push data to Slack the solution uses AppSheet’s Apps Script integration. I’ve not tested but I’m sure you could skip the Apps Script integration and use AppSheets webhooks feature.
We are excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of our native data store: AppSheet database. Our goal is to blend the simplicity of a table-driven data editing interface with the performance and scale of a relational database for non-technical users.
During testing, AppSheet database was faster than Sheets for processing adds, updates, and deletes of larger tables. In other words, the performance benefits of AppSheet databases are more apparent for a table with 50,000 rows compared to a table with 1,000 rows. AppSheet databases also have better support for concurrent edits.
It’s also worth noting that quick sync is enabled by default for all apps backed by AppSheet databases, even for security filters, so data updates automatically for app users.
Google AppSheet Databases went into public preview in October 2022, the announcement and context being covered in the Pulse post ‘Introducing AppSheet databases: Build data driven apps for Google Workspace‘. The recommendation while AppSheet databases were in preview was not to use them for production as there may have been breaking changes, which limited how much testing I could do, but I still found the occasional prototype project to give them a try. As noted in the general availability announcement the performance is more noticeable on databases with more rows. Where I saw big gains were around ‘quick sync’, particularly when making changes using the AppSheet API.
Something to keep in mind before lifting/shifting your existing Google Sheet based AppSheet apps are the usage limits. For example, Google Workspace customers eligible for the AppSheet Core licence at no additional cost are limited to 2,500 rows per database and 10 databases. The 2,500 rows is also the total amount across all tables in a database, for example, you will hit your quota if 1 database has 5 tables with 500 rows. Moving up to AppSheet Enterprise Standard increases the limit to 200,000 rows with a current maximum of 50,000 rows per table. In the later case Google have said this is a current technical limit and they are looking at increasing this soon. For AppSheet Core users it doesn’t sound like Google will be increasing the quotas anytime soon so it is worth making sure your data source and/or licence aligns with your anticipated data needs. There is an active discussion about usage limits in the source post.
I keep forgetting what I have in the freezer. At first I used Google Sheets to keep track of it, but I wanted something that was easy to consult and update on my smartphone. So I turned to AppSheet! Here’s a tutorial to follow to make a similar tracking solution.
This post on the Google Developers blog covers the basic steps for creating an AppSheet app using AppSheet Databases, which are currently in public preview. I’ve recently also been having a play with AppSheet Databases, and I’ve been impressed with the improved performance whilst also keeping them simple to use. I’ve encountered a some issues when setting up columns as references so not ready for prime time yet. Projects like the one mentioned in this post are a great way to ‘kick the tyres’ and experience yourself.
