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Hi all,
We’re happy to announce that AppSheet-powered no-code chat apps are now available in preview for Workspace customers in AppSheet! We announced this feature at Google Cloud Next back in October and we’re excited to finally share it with you today.
You can access this feature right now if you are a Workspace customer in AppSheet, and you can provide any feedback in this thread. If needed, additional information can be found in our help center articles. We’re targeting a full launch for later this year.
What is a No-Code Chat app?
We’ve made it possible so that any AppSheet app can now be added to your organization’s Google Workspace Chat account as a “Chat app.” Creators can configure how these “Chat versions” of their apps should work, then easily publish them as Chat apps for use in their organization’s Workspace account. The best part? The entire process takes 5 minutes or less.
Technically speaking, this feature adds support for a “Chat” deployment of an AppSheet app (in addition to the existing Mobile and Desktop views), such that any app (including any existing apps you’ve built) can now be published to Chat.
Using Chat apps, your users can trigger automations using slash commands, respond to approval requests, submit data via forms, view detail or list (deck) data, or even get notified when something changes in a connected data source or on a schedule.
What can Chat apps do?
As part of this preview, App Creators can:
- Deploy a Chat app in AppSheet using the new Chat app builder
- Customize a Chat app to run automations that send data to a chat thread, Space, or direct message (like a notification that a new lead came into a Salesforce database)
- Use a slash command to send app views, custom messages, trigger email sends, kick off process flows, or practically anything else
- Build a Chat app from scratch, from a template, or from an existing app
- Share a Chat app with a limited group or their whole domain
- Publish a Chat app via simplified “automatic” or fully-configurable manual publishing wizard
- Integrate with AppSheet’s Apps Script connector to extend your Chat app with a range of internal and external services
As part of the preview, Google Chat users in your same organization can:
- Install an AppSheet Chat app in Google Chat
- Navigate through an AppSheet app via Chat
- Trigger automations like sending approvals to their manager, update project statuses, request inventory checks, or much more
- See table or row data directly from Chat, add or update content, search for and see data — all from Chat
- Get notified when something changes or on a particular schedule – for example, notifying a stakeholder when a P0 project’s status changes, or asking for + collecting your team’s weekly updates
How can I set up a Chat app?
While we’ve put together a detailed guide in the Help Center, here’s a quick overview:
Any AppSheet app can become a Chat app. Just head into the AppSheet editor and select “Chat apps (beta).”
From there, we’ll help you configure your app to run on Chat and get any actions set up. While your Chat app comes with a few features built-in, actions allow you to further customize a Chat app's functionality even more: think using slash commands to trigger a form, typing /newdeals to get a list of newly closed sales, or configuring your Chat app to send your coworker a reminder to update their project status.
To get your app from AppSheet to Chat, you’ll need to publish it to make it available to your coworkers. Before today, the only way to publish a Chat app was to follow a days-long process in Google Cloud Platform. As part of this Chat app launch, we’re introducing a simplified Chat app publication process. While it doesn’t get rid of ALL the steps (just yet!), what used to take days or weeks of setup can now be done in just a few minutes.
What’s next?
We’re excited to share this initial version of Chat apps with you, but we’re not done yet! The team is still hard at work building additional features and capabilities. Currently, only a subset of AppSheet functionality is available in chat. Over the next few weeks, you’ll see the Chat app builder and publishing flow get additional functionality like:
- A full one-click publishing flow (so users don’t need to do any configuration inside Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- Slash commands that accept parameters, so you can view or edit a specific row
- Support for additional data types (form fields, app views)
- Usability and performance improvements
- And more!
Known Issues
- Chat apps do not have full parity with AppSheet apps. You can find a full list of supported features here.
- Chat app creators must have permission to create and configure Google Cloud Platform projects. (Details and troubleshooting here)
- Forms don’t currently preserve values across a refresh if an error blocks submission. (Fix ETA: February 2023)
Because this feature is in preview, it should not be used for production use cases.
Ready to get started? Ensure you’re opted in to the Preview Program, then navigate to the Chat apps tab in the AppSheet Editor. If you’re not opted in to the Preview Program, you can do so here:
We’d love to hear if you have any specific use cases in mind for Chat apps. If you have any other feedback, please do share it in this thread as well!
Thank you,
Rachel (On behalf of the AppSheet Chat apps team)
This is awesome for me.
Since I have first read this great post https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Tips-Tricks/Integration-with-Google-Chat-How-Actually-it-was... , I've build many workflows and bots that posts on google chat groups (and it was a challenge each time,because I had no idea what a webhook is, or JSON, etc).
My colleagues and I were using Google Chat Groups (spaces) for all inside company communications (it's great,better than slack imo).
We talked about a thread , and when we had a conclusion , we created a task in the proper appsheet app. When that tasked evolved in steps ,and the responsibility changed , a notificiation was posted via a bot in the propper google chat space.
This is one example of use case so far for us
Other use cases were different kinds of notifications posted from appsheets bots to google chat groups/spaces , like Birthdays coming up in a department, new supplier bills uploaded notifications to accounting groups , cars papers expirations dates , low stock products, etc etc
With this new addition, the first new type of use case I see and will try is to create a task in our appsheet app straight from the google chat group.
Also, combined with the appsheet app scripts (after I get familiar with them) , I think I can create a google doc for a thread in chat , that will also be added to a row in an app (like for our bid app).
And I know more ideas will come from this awesome community.
This last few days were invested by me to move my existing apps from my personal gmail appsheet account to my g business appsheet account , waiting for this day to come so I can preview the chat feature (I hope I can transfer my community account to,but did not figure it out yet).
I am happy
As a first feedback, some dropdowns does not populate. The one in my case is based on a valid if select formula
SELECT(stadiitaskuri[pas], [_THISROW].[tip task] = [tip task])
Hi @Rachelgmoore,
Just to give it a little more insight: I've been following thoroughly the described steps here:
Quick start: Create your first Chat app with AppSheet - AppSheet Help
I was able to follow each step. However, despite my account being a paid one and on Google Workspace, I'm facing this:
I didn't read any limitation about the app being deployed. Is it an error, or is it normal?
Thanks for considering !
EDIT: once deployed, that works fine. But...I build my apps mainly on prototype stage 🙂
@zito wrote:
I think part of the challenge is that the users we are hearing from are a much broader set of users than the users who post here in the community. We hear from customers directly, from feedback provided in-product, from surveys we run, even from the sales organization. All of these constituencies get a voice, and we have to trade off among all of these different groups, with different goals and incentives. I would say a lot of the people here are power users who want deeper, richer functionality, similar to what you describe. What we hear from customers directly
I'm uncertain about the accuracy of this. While my experience with users may not be as extensive as that of a larger organization like google, in my four years of working in this field, I've noticed a distinct lack of features from 'BUSINESS' and 'INTERNAL TOOLS' use cases.
- However, it's important to consider the everyday use case, which seems to be the opposite of the current implementation of the chat app. Ideally, it would be more practical to have the chat-app integrated within AppSheet, rather than embedding AppSheet within a chat-app. Like this:
- Additionally, the recent release of AppSheet smart chips for Google Docs, as announced by the Google Cloud Community, might be more beneficial if it were integrated in the opposite direction. This integration could allow users to mention or view documents directly within AppSheet, rather than through Google Docs. Like this:
- Another feature that is never used is incorporating a timeline feature within the AppSheet app itself, rather than just in the AppSheet database.
It's not entirely clear to me why AppSheet opts for approaches that seem to contradict the direct needs of users.
In Chat integration, could you consider improving the UX on Google Chat in general?
I understand that some ViewTypes are not yet available, but even for those already supported, there are some points that are difficult for the average GWS user to operate.
For example, I intuitively felt the following two things.
* The dialog of information display is small.
* Even if the image display setting of Detail View is set to Fit, it is displayed wide and visibility is poor.
There are others, should I mention them in this thread if I notice them?
In addition, I have long wanted a site to manage different Known issues as the UI of this community is inappropriate for conversations about feedback on new AppSheet features and responses to them.
@Roderick @devingu
