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When we launched Automation in mid-2021, you gave us feedback that the reusability of events, processes, and tasks could be useful – but that it was confusing to implement. While some found it useful to be able to create a single automation component and use it across multiple bots or processes, making even small changes to one of these “globally” used components could have large, unintended consequences across every location it was used. You also told us that while the new system allowed for more complex flows, it actually made simple ones more challenging to build than with old-style workflows (i.e. those circa 2021 and before).
We heard you, and have been working on a variety of changes to improve the usability of AppSheet Automation for all users: from those who want to build a single-step trigger-and-response all the way through to folks who want multi-faceted business process automation and beyond.
Today, we’re rolling out the first of those changes aimed at simplifying the automation-building experience: Unlinked automation components. This change impacts how events, processes, and tasks work moving forward.
Unlinked automation components introduce a new concept: locally-scoped components. Locally-scoped events, processes, and tasks are components that exist as a unique step in the scope of a single bot*. Previously, all automation components were reusable (“global”). As of today, we’re calling these reusable tasks, processes, and events “linked automation components". Moving forward, app creators can decide whether an automation component is linked or unlinked (global or local).
Whereas previously, all automation components (events, tasks, processes) were reusable (global) components centrally available in the relevant tabs, now, only components with linking turned ON will be reusable across multiple automation components:
An event with linking turned on:
If you’re a current AppSheet automation user, you’ll recognize the behavior of components when linking is turned ON was previously the default behavior for all automations. However, with this release, we’ve effectively changed the default: now, the default state for all newly-created automation components within a bot will be “unlinked:”
An event with linking turned off (the default state when a new task, event, or process is created within a bot):
This means that the bot, process, event, or task created as “unlinked” (i.e. with linking turned OFF) will only be usable once, rather than across multiple automation components.
If you would like to reuse a component across multiple automation components (or if you’d like automations to behave the way they used to, before unlinked automations were available), simply flip the toggle switch to “ON.” From there, you’ll see that component appear in the list of suggestions when adding a new step and be able to use it across multiple automations.
Important note for current Automation users : All components created before Unlinked Automations were available will continue to behave as they did before (i.e., act as “Linked” automations). They will now appear as “linked,” and you can click on the link icon to view all bots* where the component is used:
The goal for this change is to offer app creators flexibility in how to reuse the components they build as part of their automations. For commonly used components, marking them reusable will make it easy to share functionality and drive consistency across bots. When a component is only relevant to a particular scenario, the new behavior will allow creators to keep the component alongside its context, without cluttering up or creating confusion for the shared components.
For users who need (or have been missing) a less atomic model of automation creation, Unliked Automation components are for you.
For users who appreciate the ability to create and reuse modular (global) automation components – never fear! You can simply toggle “ON” linking for any component you’d like. You can even retroactively turn OFF linking for a linked component, or, conversely, turn it ON for something you would like to reuse after all.
We hope this feature makes it simpler to use AppSheet automation for discrete, locally-scoped, “if this, then that”-type workflows and improves the safety of the system to prevent users from accidentally editing, deleting, or otherwise altering unknowingly-reused components.
Want to learn more about how to use unlinked automation components? Check out the help documentation here.
Phew! This is a big change to the way AppSheet Automations work. We’ve got more in the works, but we want to hear from you: does the ability to create unlinked (e.g. “local”) automations make your life easier or harder? How does this change your workflow? What would you like to see added, changed, or removed? Please let us know in the comments.
Sincerely,
Rachel on behalf of the AppSheet Team
*While most users will work with unlinked (local) components in the context of building a single bot, technically, they can also exist within individual tasks or processes, as well.
Reply to my previous own post.
I found a way to do this.
Was difficult to find a way out.
Step, event (2 x main component for Bot) can be controlled from individual component, inside the single bot. However, we dont have control over for proess from single BOT. To be consistent, better to have :
type of control inside each BOT.
I think the description of this change / new-feature is massively confusing, and seemingly pointless. But I think the new process for creating a brand new self-contained bot has definitely been improved. To clarify, that's bad feedback on the presentation of this change in this post, but good feedback on the actual change.
This post focuses a lot on this linked/unlinked aspect, but I think essentially this is now an advanced feature/setting that should be mostly tucked/hidden away, sort of like the "trigger other bots" options, and only used by advanced users when needed. I think this post would do well to highlight more about how the new process for creating a bot is more streamlined. Allow me to try to do that myself.
- Create a new bot, same as before.
- Inside the new bot, create a new event, same as before on the surface, but now comes with the default "unlinked" setting, which effectively just hides this self-contained event from being used by other bots, or even seen in the "Events" page by default. That's just ok.
- Now you have 1 of 2 options.
- The most obvious is the big blue button to add a new step. Same as before. But then automatically starts as a auto-created "custom task" that shows up in the right panel. Both the task and the process do not require their own names. In fact I'd guess most new users wouldn't even notice the "PROCESS" section, which now doesn't really matter. This is great, and a lot more streamlined. 👍
- For those in the know (or maybe very curious new users), you can click the little down arrow next to "PROCESS" to re-use an existing process. Or there's the option to create a new self-contained one, I don't get the point of this option though? This seems pretty good, tucking the more advanced option away.
Here are a couple small issues that I found:
- Clicking on the blue "Go to: Process" link, on an unlinked process, takes you to the "Processes" page, but unless you already had the "show all" selected on that page, it doesn't actually take you into the process, so that is super confusing.
- On a linked component, you get this nice list of all of the related components that use it, and they are navigation links directly to those other components, which is great. But once you unlink a component, you no longer have that handy link. I would still very much want that quick link, like from a process/event to the bot itself. 2 screenshots below to clarify.
Overall, good job, I think this change will alleviate some confusion, and just simply make bot-building more convenient and faster. But I think you could have done a lot better job presenting this change than what is in this post.
In addition to what have been said before, here is a very minor suggestion: when a component is "not linked", it remains available with the button "Show all", which is great. And when clicked, we see the button "Hide not linked".
Could that be interesting to use the same words "Show not linked", for consistency ?
(As it is for "show system actions", "hide system actions")
Please add the "Go to task" link back in to unlinked tasks. It's such a huge pain to edit large text blocks, in email bodies or webhook payloads, within the tiny side panel.
