AppSheet Roadmap Sneak Peek - Q1

zito · 03-19-2025 10:12 AM

Hi folks,

One of the pieces of feedback we heard from the community was a wish for more transparency around roadmap and plans. While we can’t share everything we are working on, we wanted to share what we could, and answer questions as best we can. If the community finds this useful, we can plan to do it on a regular basis.

Before we get into it, a disclaimer:

The purpose of this post is to provide better visibility into our current product plans and timelines, and it contains forward-looking statements. While we always strive to meet the timelines shared here, this is not an official commitment. Rather, it is our current best estimate and therefore subject to change. Products on our roadmap and any products in an early release or testing stage are not guaranteed to become generally available, may be significantly modified from their current form, or may be launched as part of a different subscription from what is currently indicated.

To summarize, this is what we believe is going to happen. But, plans change, projects get delayed, and we would hope that you take this post in the spirit in which it is intended - we want to share what we’re working on and our current plans. These are not promises.

With that said, we’re excited to share what we’ve been working on. At a high level, a focus for us is AI-infused applications, along with improving connectivity and automation. We will be bringing some of the features we announced last year to General Availability (GA), and there are a number of new features that are in some stage of planning or development.

Gemini in AppSheet: AI Tasks - One of the trends we have seen over the past few years is that a number of customers are using Apps Script or webhooks to connect to AI for a variety of use cases. However, the barrier to entry for those capabilities is relatively high, making it impractical for smaller teams and applications. Last year, we announced the private preview of Gemini in AppSheet - AI tasks to handle a variety of common scenarios out of the box. During the preview, we’ve been testing our integration with Gemini with a number of customers and partners, gathering their feedback, improving quality, and assessing which use cases work better (or worse).

To start, only app data change and AppSheet database change events can use AI Tasks, with plans to add support for the other events over time. Similarly, we will add additional AI capabilities post-GA to support extracting line items from invoices, summarizing a list of records (e.g. customer interactions) and others. AI Tasks will only be available for AppSheet Enterprise and will be included in those plans.

We plan to make this feature broadly available in the first half of 2025, initially with 3 pre-built AI capabilities:

“Extract field from image” - To help you analyze the content of an image
“Extract field from PDF” - To automatically retrieve information from a PDF file
“Categorize” - To help categorize your records and speed up their processing

Integration Connectors in AppSheet - Connectivity to on-premise databases and SaaS services with AppSheet traditionally required customers to open up ports in their firewall to allow AppSheet to connect directly to their systems. With Integration Connectors, systems hosted in Google Cloud can connect privately to AppSheet, without allowing inbound access from AppSheet. In addition, Integration Connectors support a variety of additional systems and SaaS services, including ServiceNow, Jira, Salesforce, Cloud SQL, and others. We plan to make Integration Connectors generally available in the 1H of 2025, and will add additional connectors throughout the year. Integration Connectors will require AppSheet Enterprise and will also require an Application Integration plan (for now).
Inline testing for automation - A common complaint about building bots is that testing automations require you to fully build out the automation, rather than testing each step individually. Inline testing allows you to choose a row of data and test the automation as you are building it - all directly from the sidebar. We believe this will streamline development for both new and power users as they build their automations. We are currently in private preview, and plan to make this feature generally available for AI tasks in the first half of 2025.
Governance for non-Google Groups - AppSheet has had the ability to apply governance policies to Google Groups for several years. With this feature, we will extend this capability to Microsoft groups, available in the second half of 2025.
Controls for Pooled Licenses - Customers that pool their AppSheet Enterprise Plus licenses will be able to control the size of that pool based on Google or Microsoft groups as well, available in the first half of 2025.
Localized AppSheet - While we have long allowed creators to put non-english text in their applications, the AppSheet builder UI has only been available in English. We will be offering AppSheet in multiple languages later this year - in the second quarter, we will have more detailed timelines and the languages to be supported.
Gantt chart view - We’re currently designing and planning a new view in AppSheet applications - a Gantt chart. We know many users already use AppSheet as a project management tool, and we believe that by adding Gantt charts, we’ll be providing more flexibility and a familiar interface for tracking project status. We will have more details on timing and capabilities later in the half.
Template Assistant - We’re rolling out a new experience for editing template text for emails, Doc creation, SMS, Webhooks and more. This will greatly simplify the templating editing experience by offering dropdown support in the editor as well as template enhanced Data Explorer and Examples tabs.
Expression Folding - Easily show and hide portions of long expression content, starting with function bodies, making it easier to focus on specific expression logic. This is available now (actually announced today!).
Attachments support for Gmail Event Trigger - We're excited to announce upcoming attachment support for the Gmail Event Trigger, building on the public preview. This enhancement will allow you to automatically process attachments like PDFs and images using our AI Tasks, enabling features such as invoice data extraction.

We have put together a form where you can express interest in participating in user research and private previews as we continue to develop these features. You can access the form here.

Happy to answer any questions, to the best of our ability.

Thanks,

Matt & the AppSheet Team

Guillermo

Huge thank you for this.

I think most of the developers needed this and please don't hesitate to do it on a regular basis.

That information is gold for us

Ctrlspc

Agreed, it is helpful to see where you are heading with AppSheet.

Karimmc2

Amazing, thanks for sharing. This helps tons.

scott192

Can't believe I missed this 🤣

Thank you @zito for getting this out to us! Absolutely this needs to be a regular thing. I cannot imagine people NOT wanting to know what you are working on. Some of those things sound like they'd take more than 6 months to develop as well.

Your dev team is kind of missing out on all the feature requests for the basics though...could you develop a gemini coding bot that can develop appsheet feature requests? 😋

Seriously though, this is definitely a good step and I have filled the form to test a lot of those things...I had actually added a Gmail event into a test app earlier that wrote the incoming email to a row in another table...I even created an empty column for Attachments!

Looking forward to the AI Tasks appearing soon 😊

aneeshatgoogle

@scott192 AI task is available now as public preview for you to try.

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Announcements/Gemini-in-AppSheet-now-in-Public-Preview-for-E...

WillowMobileSys

Thank you!! Having this high level overview of what is expected to come is extremely desired and helpful.

Please don't lose sight of the issues with legacy implementations. There are still things, even existing since before Google's acquisition of AppSheet, that App Creators either avoid or create work arounds. I just want to make sure its known that there are things we don't want forgotten and would like to see finished/resolved.

Having said that, I do wish for you to pass on my gratitude and appreciation to all of the developers. As a lifelong developer in large corporations, I do understand the challenges they face. I have the up-most respect and admiration for their accomplishments. I look forward to the great features they will be creating!!!

Bolognesi_group

thanks for sharing the high-level development overview. I hope it becomes a recurring appointment, it is essential for every developer to have a shared vision of the platform. This will help us in our daily design choices.

I would like to thank the entire team for every improvement you make. Even the things that may seem smaller and more obvious can make a difference.

If I may, it would also be important to:
1. have a recurring overview also on the many requests in the "Feature ideas" section (at least an update on the many "open" or "under review" requests)

2. If possible, do something to make the graphics more customizable, many apps all seem the same or very similar. Even trivial things like background colors, line highlighting, ability to customize buttons and icons.

I hope someone on the team can take this into consideration and update us. Many requests are widely shared and important to us, to the point that, if not listened to, they can make us opt for using a different system.

Thanks and good work

omatheuslops

Please make Sneak Peak a regular occurrence! It's great to know what you're bringing, and it gives us the opportunity to study the topics in advance!
Thank you 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷

baba_sawane2

This is good!

Only sad thing is that there are a lot of request for small features that would definetely be more beneficial to most users than the announced features.

Jonathan1

Thanks for sharing!

Gantt chart will be a good one!!!

Gustavo_Eduardo

Thank you so much for the progress we've been seeing lately!!!

Kirk_Masden

Great news for folks in Japan! 日本の皆さんは大変喜ぶと思います。I hope Japanese is one of the languages that is being considered.

Localized AppSheet - While we have long allowed creators to put non-english text in their applications, the AppSheet builder UI has only been available in English. We will be offering AppSheet in multiple languages later this year - in the second quarter, we will have more detailed timelines and the languages to be supported.

Juhran

When creating an action, a view, a format rule, a slice or a bot, it always shows first suggestions ...
You should not show suggestions, you must create and then offer suggestions if necessary.

Kirk_Masden

I've felt uncomfortable with this too. I've learned to ignore it but in large apps it takes a very long time for the app to come up with suggestions and I haven't found them to be useful so far. I'm not sure how to fix this but I agree that it's problematic.

Peterson_Igrama

Here are some of the features that I'd like to see on Appsheet:

Kanban View
Record audios
Record or upload a video
Multiselect files and images
Better file name management (keep the file name) and use the file ID on Gdrive to distiguish them if the name is the same...
More support for HTML on long text columns
Formatting options on long text.
More UI options to customize the app
Grouped views on the side bar menu

takuya_miyai

Thank you @zito

Even if the release is not finalized, I am very happy and think it is important that Google members disclose how they intend to develop AppSheet.

My impression from the list is that there are many features that management and GWS administrators will be happy to see.
That in itself is not wrong and is important for AppSheet to be widely used in each company.

On the other hand, I also felt that it would be nice if more attention could be paid to features that would please individual citizen developers.
Certainly Gantt Chart View, for example, fits that bill, but I would like to see a little more.
How about, for example, the Clipboard Copy function, which has attracted many supporters.

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/Copy-to-Clipboard-Action/idi-p/240942

I am sure that Creators who are trying to utilize AppSheet in the field would appreciate it!

Rifad

@takuya_miyai wrote:

How about, for example, the Clipboard Copy function, which has attracted many supporters.

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/Copy-to-Clipboard-Action/idi-p/240942

@takuya_miyai https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Tips-Tricks/Copy-to-clipboard-workaround/m-p/839542#M10264 Here’s a workaround for anyone wanting a copy-to-clipboard action. I couldn't wait for AppSheet to release this feature, and it works well in Chrome.

I use in my apps like this to share records. Lintorow, linktofilteredview etc..

イルカのえっちゃん

In AI Tasks, is the file and prompt information uploaded used for Gemini training?

I have looked this up using the NotebookLM search function, etc., but have not been able to find any official documentation that clearly states this.
Perhaps I am missing something in my research, but I would appreciate it if you could clarify this matter.

zito

File and prompt information is not used for gemini training:

"When you use Paid Services, including, for example, the paid quota of the Gemini API, Google doesn't use your prompts (including associated system instructions, cached content, and files such as images, videos, or documents) or responses to improve our products, and will process your prompts and responses in accordance with the Data Processing Addendum for Products Where Google is a Data Processor. For Paid Services, Google logs prompts and responses for a limited period of time, solely for the purpose of detecting violations of the Prohibited Use Policy and any required legal or regulatory disclosures. This data may be stored transiently or cached in any country in which Google or its agents maintain facilities."

That's from the Gemini API terms of service, but there's essentially the same language in the AppSheet version of same, I just didn't have it handy.

イルカのえっちゃん

Understood.
Thank you very much for your detailed answer!

Koichi_Tsuji

@zito

@イルカのえっちゃん

Sorry for intervention. For me, the proper conversation is not established here. The simple question is asked, but no clear answer is given for such a simple question.

My understanding is +-

Question is : "Extract Table" task was released during the private preview, but it was dropped for public preview. The question is "Is there any plan to add Extract Table functionality to the AI Task?"

@zito not answering this simple question where the community members are of interest.

zito

@Koichi_Tsuji I try not to respond if I am not 100% confident in the answer. For the question about training on customer data, that was easy for me to quickly answer in between reviewing requirements documents, looking over an analyst report, a customer meeting, and a few other things I have going on this morning.

In the case of extract table, I wasn't sure I had the latest information, as I was out of the office last week, and I don't like to provide wrong information to the community. I have a meeting later today with the people leading the AI tasks project and I was going to ask them about this question, and then either ask them to reply or reply myself.

I understand it looks like a simple question, but I'd ask a little bit of patience - I enjoy communicating here, and I am more than willing to hear frustrations and take well-deserved grief when we make mistakes or AppSheet has problems. I do the best I can, but this is not my full-time job, and I can't be here all the time.

If I remember correctly, we received feedback during the private preview that there were some changes customers consistently wanted to extract table, and we needed to figure out how to accommodate that feedback. In order to bring the core extract functionality to public preview, we decided to hold back the extract table capability. I know we plan to address it and add it to the public preview, but I don't know the exact timeframe.

Koichi_Tsuji

@zito

Thanks for your response.

During the private preview period of time, I provided your team with bunch of feadback for new AI tasks, Inc. Extract Table functinalities, although I never ever get any feedback after providing my valuable feedback. For sure, Extract Table function is going to bring the benefit to us, and give us new idea for newer use cases to employ appsheet to our day-to-day workflow, but there are bunch of points to be reviewed to be released as GA-ed services.

I m always welcome to give the feedback through the private or personnel preview period of the time to make the AppSheet more powerful and bring to the next stage. However, after we provide the feedback, no response back from your team.... It is okay, as I m just outsider. But if you were me, how do you feel?

Extract Table (what we experienced during private preview) was awesome, but need to be updated to fit with the real world use cases. My hope is our feedback during the private preview is positively reviewed at this time and newer version (with far more powerful feature) would be added at the time when this is added as GA features. Thanks Zito.

イルカのえっちゃん

@Koichi_Tsuji
Thank you for your advice!
As I was composing my reply, I read this conversation, so my two questions below have been resolved for the moment.

・Data training for AI Tasks
・About Extract Table

@zito
I am looking forward to seeing the “Extract Table” feature, and I hope you will do your best to add it!

イルカのえっちゃん

The following URL seems to have a type of AI Task called “Extract table”, but it seems that only “Extract” and “Categorize” can be selected in the actual AI task.
https://support.google.com/appsheet/answer/15509980

Is “Extract table” going to be added to the selection list in the future?

aneeshatgoogle

Apologies for the incorrect link. Extract table is currently available only in private preview.

We have received feedback during the private preview for Extract Table that we are using to shape the task. In the spirit of incremental updates, we have rolled out some of the AI tasks to broader customers as public preview which you see in the dropdown.

To answer your question, yes extract table or some form of it will be added in future, however I am not in a position to commit to its timeline as of yet.

イルカのえっちゃん

Understood.
Thank you very much for your kind response!