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Bug? Slice Preview Data does not show data if table has a Security Filter

I have noticed for several years now that when tapping the Preview Data button on a Slice, sometimes there are no rows of a data shown when clearly there are rows displayed by an app view. To get around this, I will, if needed, temporarily add a view to see the rows. 

I never dug into this until now.

What I am realizing is that if a table has a Security Filter applied, slices on that filtered table will not show Preview Data.

Does anyone know why?  Is this a bug? 

Is it a functional limitation of the AppSheet platform?  I can't think of a reason why that would be.

It would be nice to rely on Preview Data and not have to introduce "test" views into the app.

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  • UX
11 REPLIES 11

I've always been able to preview data on a Slice, even when Security Filters are present.

Any idea what I could be doing wrong then?  Below is an example but seems to happen on any Slice where Security filter is present.  If I simply remove the Security Filter, I see the rows in Preview Data - all rows.  I haven't yet checked other apps for this specific issue.

Slice and View

Screenshot 2023-02-28 at 11.56.58 AM.png

Tapping Preview Data Button

Screenshot 2023-02-28 at 11.59.28 AM.png

Simply removing Security Filter, Save and again tap Preview Data

Screenshot 2023-02-28 at 12.06.40 PM.png

Is your second screenshot vertically scrollable? Sometimes when you have a lot of data in a column, like a [Related...] column, you have to scroll down really far before you see the first row.

No additional screen to view.  I am actually showing the bottom scroll bar in the image.

What's the Security Filter?

Below is the Security Filter.  CurrentUser is a slice.

Data-wise, everything seems fine.  The app is in production used by 60-80 users daily and running just fine.  It's just the Preview Data function that seems to have an issue.

AND(
    ISNOTBLANK(CurrentUser[Employee ID]),
    [Employee] = ANY(CurrentUser[Employee ID]),
    DATE([UTC Start Time]) > (EOWEEK(TODAY()) - 40)
)

EDITED:  I did remove the portions of the filter that reference the CurrentUser Slice so that rows were only filtered by the Date.   Preview Data then showed rows.  So the problem seems to stem from usage of Slices in the filter.

I have no clue 😞

I noticed when I test expressions. Sometimes automations test also. Then I thought it might be some issues in my side.

I am not sure if this is related - but I am still having the same issue - and (for me) it seems to be the following:

  • google sheet tab with >10000 rows
  • The rows I am interested in are above the 10000 row mark - but if I make a slice on these, it only looks at the first 10,000 rows in the preview data data and filters on my slice criteria - so nothing is returned.
  • If I make the slice to return values either side of that 10000 row mark, it displays the returned values - up to row 10,000. Nothing beyond even though they exist.
  • I have no security filter on (as I was doing the same filter as i am doing in the slice now) - when it was in place - I got NOTHING returned from the table itself when using the preview data option. 

Tricky when I am trying to troublesheet why some data isn't appearing in my actual app (though the records are appearing there even past the 10,000 row mark)

Personally - I would say that this is a bug that is still occurring. 


@Laurie_Nason wrote:

The rows I am interested in are above the 10000 row mark - but if I make a slice on these, it only looks at the first 10,000 rows in the preview data data and filters on my slice criteria - so nothing is returned.


Hmm, so it may be that the design of the "Preview Data" feature is to load only the first 10,000 rows (or whatever limit is selected) and then show only the results from that.  That may explain why I wasn't seeing rows as I was entering test rows that may have been above that limit.

Anyway, I get around this issue, when needed, by creating a temporary table view on  whatever Slice I am analyzing.

 

I can confirm that is indeed the design of how 'preview data' works. Alongside only showing a certain number of rows, it also limits the evaluation of expressions, including slice filters, to the same subset of rows. An easy test of this is to temporarily create a simple virtual column that uses COUNT() on a table of over 1k,5k,10k rows, and test the expression.

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