How to Set Up Initial View Flow in AppSheet?

[Gustavo_Eduardo]

Hello friends,

I was trying to give my applications a more professional touch and was thinking about the "About Us" welcome screen.

It turns out that starting with this screen is a good idea since it serves as a nice "transition" between the content of our applications and the user's arrival. Perhaps someone might not agree with my perspective (which is completely valid), but essentially, if I configure it to start with "About Us," the truth is that it doesn’t always start with this screen. Instead, once the session is initiated, it goes straight into the app’s main flow.

I’d like this screen to be unavoidable, followed by a view I’ve configured called "Inicio" (start), which serves as the login page. Only after the session is validated would it proceed to another screen (also transitional).

I’ve considered creating an "Onboarding" type view because I aesthetically like it the most for these cases. However, it includes a "Done" button that allows navigation from the onboarding view to the main views of the app.

The issue is that I can't achieve the desired behavior because onboarding views seem to lack the possibility of using a linktoview().

1. The starting view should be About Us.
2. The next view should be Inicio.
3. The following view should be a transitional onboarding type.
4. The next view should be the main panel.

Does anyone have any ideas about this?

[Steve · Accepted solution]

There is no way to force the display of any particular view when the app is opened except the very first time the app is opened after install. That one exception is what the Starting view setting is for.

[Steve · Accepted solution]

There is no way to force the display of any particular view when the app is opened except the very first time the app is opened after install. That one exception is what the Starting view setting is for.

[Gustavo_Eduardo]

Thanks steve! I will see other ways

[MultiTech · Accepted solution]

Whenever i need to do something like this, I'll typically use a combination of Onboarding views + special views for the initial flow.

The trick with the onboarding view to get around the lack of an action event (which is a much needed thing), is to make use of it's "Finish View" setting.

For instance, the following is a flow that I've implemented for an app:

1. The user opens the app, which initializes the Current_User slice
2. The app sees there's no record in the slice, and begins the "onboarding" process:
   1. It hides all the main functioning views
   2. It shows the "Getting Started" stuff (which includes an onboarding view, and a "New User" view)
3. The onboarding view takes them through a few slides, providing some information like (hey you need to make a user record, then from there we need an Organization record, blah blah)
4. From there, using the onboarding finish view setting, they're taken to that "New User" view
   
   1. When they fill out their user record, this populates the Current_User slice (which causes the user onboarding views hide, and the organization onboarding stuff now shows)
   2. When they save the form - they're taken the the organization onboarding view
      
      
5. This org onboarding view walks them through why we need this, blah blah blah
6. They're then taken to the org form, from the onboarding finish view setting
7. When they save this form, everything is ready to go and normal function resumes.

The onboarding views allow you to specify a view they should go to when ending... so I've made special forms to continue the flow, which have their own form-save events (isolated from any of the other forms for that same table) that make this force flow smooth.  The forms then continue the flow to the next stage, and one could continue this if one wanted for additional layers until everything is established and ready to go.

Hope it helps!

[Gustavo_Eduardo]

Of course, my friend. Thank you for such great tips. I’d say it would be useful if you could create a post in Tips and Tricks whenever you have time.

Thank you so much for your contribution!