Recently I have started including a very helpful little thing inside my apps and thought I would share with you all.
- In-App Automation Processing Notifications
The idea is as follows:
- Create a virtual column that’s watching the [Automation_Trigger] column
- I named this column
"Notice"
- I named this column
- Using an
IFS()function, create specialized alerts for each of the triggers you use.
IFS(
[Automation_Trigger] = "Send_order",
"Sending the order now...",
[Automation_Trigger] = "Issue_refund",
"Issuing a refund now....
- Making refund record
- Updating order
- Sending out noticed to everyone",
[Automation_Trigger] = "Move_file",
Concatenate("Moving file (", [filename], ") to folder '", [Target_Folder], "'.")
)
- This means that now, when an automation is running, there will be a visual indication of this on the record in question - letting the user know exactly what’s happening.
As soon as the automation finishes and returns its data to the app, the trigger will now be cleared and the notice will go away - creating a nice little notice system for your users when an automation is processing.
Column Settings
| Setting | Details |
|---|---|
| Name | Notice |
| Show If | Context("ViewType") <> "Form" |
How & Why It Works
If you utilize the manual automation trigger system, where you use a column in your table dedicated to triggering automation (typically through dropping a trigger word inside the column, which an automation is looking for, that then clears the trigger and continues with it’s processing), you can piggy-back off the fact that there is a trigger value still present until the automation finishes.
This means that, while the sync is happening and the automation is processing, inside your AppSheet app on the device that initiated the trigger - technically the record still has the trigger word inside the trigger column until the automation comes back.
-
This is because the data you see inside the app is like a snapshot of the database, it’s not real-time.
- This lag is what we’re leveraging to make this system work.
-
If you look at the database, in the back end, you’ll see that the trigger word actually HAS been cleared out - even while the automation is still processing.
- This is because automation edits happen in real-time in the backend
- Your app is a snapshot of the data, it doesn’t get the update until the final sync
