Help with Automation Save Location and Images displayed in the App

[ghost5]

Hi.

I have two issues which I believe have the same solution. 

I use Microsoft as my account authenticator and Google Drive to store sheets and all data/images.

My first issue is that when I use an automation to create a PDF I want this to be saved on Google Drive, rather than my OneDrive. 

My second issue is that I cannot put images on Google Drive and get them to show in an app, no matter what folder structure I try. I have read the documentation on here and in its simplest form, it should appear if I put the image in the same folder as my spreadsheet, but I am guessing that because my default store location is tied to my authenticator, this is looking at OneDrive. (I can take and store images on Google Drive with no issue).

So my question is, how can I change my default app location to Google Drive as everything I have read does not make sense to me?

It is currently shown as this:

Many thanks,

[WillowMobileSys]

The App Creator account will automatically use the login provider as the MAIN cloud storage.  So you can't use a Microsoft account to authenticate the App Creator login and then force the cloud storage to another vendor.

However, you CAN setup the App Creator account with a Google account that will then default to use Google cloud storage.  Then configure the app to use ANY authentication provider for the users.  I am actually not certain what would happen if you use a Google Account as the App Creator account and then configure that app to use only Microsoft as the authentication provider.  I think that works fine.

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@ghost5 wrote:

I cannot put images on Google Drive and get them to show in an app

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How are you putting images onto Google Drive?  Are you using the app to upload them?  Or are you adding them to Google Drive outside of the app?

How will you be using the images in the app?  Will each image be attached to a row?  Or do you plan to have a gallery of images?

[ghost5]

Thanks for the first information. I am not going to change my user account to my Google account due to headache that I'm sure it will cause, so I'll stop going down that route.

I am now wondering, and I will test this later today, if I can get the default path to change to our projects SharePoint folder, through my account, and have all PDFs to save in there. My goal is to be able to press a create PDF automation button and have everyone to be able to view it. I find OneDrive to be very slow at showing changes though which is why I wanted to look at Drive.

For the images I want to add them to Google Drive outside of the app and to show them in a row on a form. The final row will will have a IF function so depending on what the user selects it shows them a picture on how to measure a certain thing. But for doing it as one step at a time, I can't get a single image to appear.

I have previously, in other apps shown pictures that are hosted online.

I also have no issues in uploading photos through the app and storing them in Google drive in different locations folder locations depending on the project the user selects.

I've just had a thought that if I upload an image through the app, copy the image address out of sheets and put that back into appsheet as read only, that might work... I'll test this soon.

Thanks.

[ghost5]

To get images working in forms that are stored in Google Drive I have done the following:

Upload the image to wherever I want it.

Right click, share, make public, copy link

You get a link similar to the below

https://drive.google.com/file/d/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/view?usp=drive_link

Delete the first part of this address and the last part so you are left with

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Add to the beginning

https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=

Add to the end

&sz=s4000

So your link looks like this

https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&sz=s4000

Wrap this in quotes ""

And use this in the app as either as a show image type or normal column image or a virtual column image type.

Back to my original question, is there a way to store PDFs created in an Automation to Google Drive, rather than my default file save location?  I cannot access our teams SharePoint folder directly through the default store location. I want to be able to create PDFs through an Automation and let other people in the company view them. In the past I have created the automation that automatically emails the user the PDF but I would like to get away from this.

Thanks,

[WillowMobileSys]

I see.  This manual manipulation of image paths into URL's shouldn't be necessary.  Additionally,  AppSheet has been cracking down on using URL's for image access - at least from Google Drive.  I am not certain why except that maybe it creates a security hole.  Here is the link to the maintenance announcement:

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Announcements/Action-required-Drive-download-URLs-for-embedd...

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@ghost5 wrote:

Back to my original question, is there a way to store PDFs created in an Automation to Google Drive, rather than my default file save location?  I cannot access our teams SharePoint folder directly through the default store location.

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Is the app able to generate the PDF's and store them in the SharePoint folder?  If so, then you CAN create the ability to view the PDF's through the app.  To accomplish this you would need to create KNOWN file names and then insert these known files names, following default behavior, into a File type column.

For example, let's say the app uses a row to generate a Summary PDF file.  In the automation, the app could construct a custom filename as - [row id] & "_Summary_" & TODAY(). 

By DEFAULT, it would be saved into a folder named "Files" (you can insert a custom named folder in the automation step). 

Using this knowledge, you can then add a step to the automation, after the PDF generation, that writes the PDF path into the File type column as : "Files/" & [row id] & "_Summary_" & TODAY() & ".pdf"

Then, in the app, after generation, the File column will be populated with a path to the just generated PDF document and be able to launch this generated PDF file for viewing.

I hope this helps!!

[WillowMobileSys · Accepted solution]

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@ghost5 wrote:

I am not going to change my user account to my Google account due to headache that I'm sure it will cause, so I'll stop going down that route.

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Just in case, what you would do is create a NEW account using Google, then follow the steps to transfer ownership of an app from one account to another - it's not difficult and all paths/folder should migrate just fine.  For comparison, you could create a copy and then transfer that copy so you can see if Google provides better performance than OneDrive.

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@ghost5 wrote:

if I can get the default path to change to our projects SharePoint folder, through my account, and have all PDFs to save in there.

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Yes, this is possible.  I have worked with a client who had their app setup this way - though I do not know what steps they needed to perform to establish this setup.  I personally don't work with Microsoft products any more.  I do know the client had occasional issues using SharePoint.

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@ghost5 wrote:

For the images I want to add them to Google Drive outside of the app and to show them in a row on a form.

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This implies then you wish an Image column in the table.  Once you have Sharepoint/OneDrive access, simply allow AppSheet to perform its default image storage - i.e. don't do anything extra.  AppSheet will create a folder and place images for that column in that folder on the default cloud storage provider and record the proper location in the datasource sheet.  When the row is viewed or edited, AppSheet will know where to find the image from that same provider.

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@ghost5 wrote:

I also have no issues in uploading photos through the app and storing them in Google drive

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I'm curious how you made this work if you are using a Microsoft 360 login.  Theoretically, if you are able upload an image through the app then AppSheet should know how to retrieve it.  But depending on how you setup the Google Drive access in that app, it may be the app is using Google to store the image but later attempts to use Microsoft to retrieve the image.

I think sometimes new App Creators attempt to manually handle image access when they don't need to.  AppSheet has good default behavior.  At the very least, I would recommend to start with the default behavior until you understand how it works then modify it if you do need more sophisticated image management for some reason.

[ghost5]

Hi,

I am just replying to say thank you for your responses. It has been 6 months since I originally asked these questions but creating the apps for my company is just a side job of mine, so other tasks took priority. 

I am starting to look at this again in more detail as it is becoming more important.

Thanks

[ghost5]

Transfering the apps to a Google Account was the solution for this and once the owner and file storage location were the same everything became easier to manage.