Triggering a Bot in App A after an action in App B (same DB for both apps)

[carlosbotero]

Hello everyone,

I have 2 separate apps that share the same DB. App A is a more complex "Management" app while the other App B is simpler and it is meant to be used by other users with an specific "Sales" role).

On the Management App (App A), I've created a Bot to trigger a Notification when an entity changes its status from "New" to "In Review".

From the Sales App (App B), users can create new entities and then "submit" them to review (which is an action that updates the status of that entity from "New" to "In Review").

But... when users on App B make such change, nothing happens... (Notifications are not triggered, I've seen also the "Monitor" on App A and doesn't seem to get triggered).

Is this a limitation in AppSheet? I Assumed that making the change from App B would work anyway since the condition in the Bot in App A is that a record gets updated (and in this case the record does get update by an action in App B).

[SkrOYC]

It's not possible to trigger anthing in a different app.
The only thing you could do is use the API to change something in the other app so that there is a trigger there for a bot to be fired

[carlosbotero]

Well, that sounds promising, but I don't really have experience with Appsheet API's

For instance, what I can imagine, is that from App A I could use the API of App B to update the status of the record, and have a bot in App B that will be triggered by that.

So my question now is... how can I trigger an Action in App B from the App A by using App B's API?

[SkrOYC · Accepted solution]

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@carlosbotero wrote:

So my question now is... how can I trigger an Action in App B from the App A by using App B's API?

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Well, the thing is that you cannot trigger a bot per se, but change data from outside. That event is what triggers the bot

The API is easier to use when it's between two AppSheet apps.
I suggest you to read the docs about the API to get the hand of it.

API integration points in AppSheet - AppSheet Help
Invoke the API - AppSheet Help

[carlosbotero]

Thank you @SkrOYC !

This was helpful. So, from that link I learned about using "Webhooks", and my ultimate solution was like this:

1) Set an Action in App A that will be used as the trigger

2) Set a bot in App A that is triggered by the action above in step 1

3) In App B, create another bot that uses "Webhooks" to trigger the action in step 1 in App A

Although, to be honest, it is quite strange that I must use "Bots" to trigger Webhooks... it would be great if we could trigger Webhooks directly from Actions instead.

[SkrOYC]

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@carlosbotero wrote:

it would be great if we could trigger Webhooks directly from Actions instead

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I know. AppSheet way relies on events that are either triggered by a schedule or by a data-change