Given the lack of bot modularity and flexibility, are scripts the more logical way to go?

[matthewmoran]

This may be part rant, part question:

The painful truth is that for complex, multi-step, processes, bots are horrific!

The inability to move steps into a different order (this is insane) or re-use steps that do the same thing as a step in another automation, is wild.

Lately, I've taken to simply calling scripts, where I can re-use code and create for more modular solutions. Unless the automation is super basic, multi-step automations with varied conditions, are too painful to work with.

Anyone else finding this to be true? Any obvious drawbacks to this method? 

I don't consider going outside of Appsheet as a drawback due to the glaring inadequacies that are currently built-in to the system.

[Steve · Accepted solution]

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The painful truth is that for complex, multi-step, processes, bots are horrific!

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Yes.

[matthewmoran]

Coming from you, I consider that the de facto answer and solid confirmation. 😀

This issue can be put to rest!

[scott192]

When they overhauled the bot engine to make processes and tasks reusable, they did say that more features would come to automation in the future.  I believe looping/iterating with records was mentioned as well as better conditional branching...SWITCH() branches for instance.  It's been a while now though and these things get pushed to the back of the queue.

[matthewmoran]

As is it is basically unusable for anything complex. 

Perhaps that's because my background is software development but I want reusable functions and modularity.

[scott192]

Processes are pretty good though right?  I quite often start by writing a process rather than a bot with an event and a process.  These are very reusable.