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Hello AppSheet Community,
One of the team’s goals is to make it easier for all app creators to build applications by bringing focus to the core concepts and tasks and by providing information and “shortcuts” in the relevant context. We rolled out some of these changes in October and shared this initial announcement.
We’re now excited to announce 2 new updates are starting to roll out today. They are follow-ups to the October changes.
First, we’re introducing a secondary navigation that lets you see at a quick glance all your components - whether we’re talking about is your data, your views, format rules, actions and automation components. This should also let you access any individual component more quickly.
As part of this change, suggestions will be available for all components and will be more targeted based on the context you are in (e.g. which Table you are creating a Format Rule for). You’ll also notice that error and warning messages are now shown via a status icon that is always visible in the header.
Secondary navigation menu (left) and Error & Warning status in header bar (top right)
Second, in the same spirit as earlier changes and to be able to make a specific edit to your app without jumping into a different context, there are more direct links in your View component to the table, column or action that you want to check or edit. For example, when you are working on a Deck View, you should not need to click 3, 4 or even 5 times just to check the settings of a column or of an action. This should make more obvious what is possible, especially for users who are new to AppSheet, and make navigation throughout your app components faster.
GIF showing accessing relevant components quickly and editing them on the fly
The secondary navigation menu and its associated changes will be available to everyone. Similarly to the primary navigation menu rolled out in October, you can revert to the legacy navigation patterns if you’re facing an issue. Details are in the FAQ section below.
Let us know if you have any feedback.
Thank you
The AppSheet Team
FAQ
How do I opt in and out of the navigational changes?
App creators can currently opt-in and out of the navigation changes at will. The changes apply to the App Editor experience, independent of the app you are editing. You can opt in and out by clicking on this icon in the top navigation bar.
Is there some documentation?
Yes, we’re updating the relevant pages in our documentation. We’re also introducing a new page that summarizes the changes across the Editor. See Summary of improvements in the app editor (preview).
Where do I report issues and provide feedback?
Contact Support or directly in this thread.
Are you planning on maintaining the two navigation models?
Long term, no, we’re moving towards the new navigational model. For the next few months, we will support both navigation models as we make additional changes to how people navigate through the Editor. We want to work out the kinks before it becomes the only one.
When will the legacy navigational model be unavailable?
We don’t have a hard set date on this. That will depend on how fast we can work out the kinks in the new navigation.
Why don’t I see anything yet?
We’re rolling out these changes progressively and it might take a few days to a few weeks before you can see them in your own account.
I provided some feedback on the previous changes (from October). Are you taking it into account?
We did read the feedback provided by our community. We may not have addressed it yet - whether it’s making an update or it’s deciding not to make any changes.
Mostly, I really like these new updates. Actually, the more I look at it, I really, really, like them.
But here is one major downfall to me. I never like doing any work in the right side panel. I always open up my Tasks in the main center panel when I'm setting them up. I just can't focus on the "task" at hand in such a small view-pane, or something like that. But you have seemingly disabled this option completely, for any unlinked tasks.
Even by creating 2 tasks, one linkable, one unlinked, I was hoping to expose the option to see the unlinked one in full view, but nope.
The option to view unlinked tasks seems to be completely missing from here now. 😞
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One other separate item. Can you please give the option to disable the suggestion pop-ups everytime you click to add an element (slice,view,action,bot,etc...). I just want it to add a new blank item and not be bothered by this pop-up.
I'm most thrilled about this:
I'm always building complex groups of actions, but it's a huge pain to switch between them when you need to check a detail of another action, then come right back to the other one. This new left side panel with the actions listed per table, in collapsible sections... man that's going to improve my app editing efficiency by so much!
Same for the new table/columns view. Brilliant!
And separating system-generated views from manually-created reference views? Noice.
What kind of timeline are you envisioning for this to be rolled out to paid and/or Enterprise accounts?
The useful feature to add table through "hint" is now missing on new editable layout... Any plan to revive it?
Or is there somewhere, I just missing something?
Hi @Arthur_Rallu
For screen sizes larger than FHD, a large white space is created between the main area and the emulator.
In addition, the column setting displays a horizontal scroll bar, and that white space is also not being utilized.
It looks to me like the search feature in Data has been significantly degraded. I used to be able to search for columns. Now I only seem to be able to search for names of tables. Obviously, since the tables are relatively few in number, the ability to search for a table is less important than the ability to search for a specific column name (some apps may have over 1000 columns!!). Am I missing something?
Hi @Arthur_Rallu @benhare @marizmelo
Here an additional behavior, sorry for reporting it that late:
As you see, when editing a column name and clicking out of the field, the creator gets back to the first table pane.
This is quick feedback out of my feelings.
Various exsiting "function" to set our apps up through the editor, the new layout / style is placing bunch of action icons.
For example, the table settings looks like this.
My concerns are the icon is not perfectly appealing to the app creator, expecially starter and intermediate ones. Presenting the available options and action by means of shaped action with texts, it will be more appealing and more intuitive from my point of view.
Also, three dots action icon is wrapping other available options items, but my thought was it could be difficult for beginners and intermediate app crators to found out what sort of options could be available for them, as they are "deeply nested" behind those three dot icons.
As I shared with the screenshot above, there are ample space available for the header where those action icons are placed, so better to show more actions as much as possble rather than nesting them behind such three dots icons.
@Koichi_Tsuji is the new editor even possible to navigate and work properly especially with larger apps ? I find it very difficult to navigate between multiple actions. At times I expand atleast 5-6 action at once and work on all that together. Like this Easier, Faster, Better..
I am soo confused seeing my actions like this. Especially when I start editing these actions Each time I need to click on it and randomly click on wrong actions 75% of the time.
Look How neat and easier to work on existing Interface.
Expanded view- Easily able to check everything more like a dashboard and Its soo much faster
I am not sure who is behind all this Ideas that put editors into difficulties. I think the developers should develop larger app with 100s of action and understand how difficult new UI is. I hope they dont force new UI to all Users. We welcome changes that are useful but this looks very difficult for me to manage all my app (in case they force us to use new Editor)
Something like this that allow multiple ACTIONS/TABLE in expanded view to edit. Very very difficult to switch between them each time especially you can see with many actions it becomes tedious.
Old UI All actions expanded at one place. Checking all one by one. 5 actions all expanded. Soo Easy.
NEW UI Not even able to check existing actions properly. Clicking each one and forgetting which action I should check back. @benhare you gave us additional task for us to remember names and search for it if its another table. The unlimited extra CLICKS.
Any extra benefits of new side panel ? Yes it gives a neat look but working on it is cucumber-some because one expanded view at a time. Not helping ! 👎🏼
@WillowMobileSys wrote:
1) Borrowing from @Rifad 's idea (or maybe this is what he intended), allow us to have open at the same time several actions from anywhere. Then we can easily scroll back and forth between the set of actions currently being worked on. Needless to say we would need a "close all" button.
You are right. The new editor benefits just editing one or two action/tables. then perfect ! Just look at the amount of tables with similar names and can Imagine the amount of actions this will have. Switching between each tables is impossible.
I am spending most of the time in new UI just to expand and SEARCH just like @benhare told. I never used search bar before while making changes to all these tables. It stays expanded and Boom ! Just an extra headache to search all the time.
Something like this @WillowMobileSys . So multiple tables are expanded and worked on it together. Close once done. There is absolutely zero scenario we work on one single table at a time. It is always MULTIPLE tables/actions at a time. Please understand new UI side panel single expanded view is DOWNGRADE. @benhare
@WillowMobileSys wrote:
switch back and forth for updates
Once expanded didn’t have this Find, Scroll, Click then going back to next action expanded was not existing in old UI. What benefits does this UI have ? Yes, Its grouped vertically looks nice. The moment you start using its very difficult to handle.
@WillowMobileSys wrote:
Rifad 's comments switched from actions to tables.
Most of the times in table I keep related tables expanded and related actions expanded until its saved. Now all I do is search for tables/actions 😞
@Rifad wrote:
Something like this will make it way more better than now to keep related actions/tables expanded.
For me personally there is zero use case just to edit only SINGLE Action/Table at once. Its always 99% of the time working on MULTIPLE tables/actions expanded.
A related issue is the Editor Setting to expand all views. I always keep that enabled, and it's a great efficiency in the legacy UI. I find that in the new UI it doesn't apply in several places. For example, when I open an action or a table's settings, all but its first section remain collapsed and I have to manually expand the other sections.
