Is AppSheet Listening? Users Say "NO" to Buggy Updates

[hien_nguyen]

The Dev team only reviewed and resolved 10 out of 1,830 ideas and requests from the community. A ratio that is too low for a new product leaves too much room for improvement.

Feeling unheard as an AppSheet user? You're not alone. Many users are expressing disappointment with recent updates, questioning their value and convenience. Instead of smooth improvements, we're seeing new and old bugs popping up, while long-requested features remain neglected. Where's the AppSheet team in all this? We deserve transparency and a roadmap for future updates that address our needs.

Let's have an honest conversation:

1. Which recent AppSheet updates have been most frustrating for you?
2. What features are you desperately waiting for that haven't materialized?
3. How has the recent increase in bugs impacted your workflow?
4. It's time for AppSheet to listen to its users. Share your thoughts and frustrations below, and let's make our voices heard!

Remember, constructive criticism is key to progress. Let's work together to make AppSheet a better platform for everyone.

[mattlops]

4 semanas sem eles nem se quer responderem 🤡

[Acuervofm]

Bumping this thread.

I was evaluating Appsheet to start investing time on it but after reading this thread it seems Google has made the decision for me.

So the question isn't when are new features coming in but when will it be killed by Google?

Can anyone from Google please share if this platform has a future and worth investing? Your silence will speak.

Thanks

[Rifad]

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@Acuervofm wrote:

Can anyone from Google please share if this platform has a future and worth investing? Your silence will speak.

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The sound of their silent actions is already loud and clear. In a big company with billions in revenue like Google, a small app like AppSheet doesn't stand a chance. It seems like they are purposely staying quiet and shutting down AppSheet. It's unfortunate but it's the reality.

[Rifad]

Dear AppSheet team,

We may not have invested millions or billions, but we have definitely put in tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars into development. When we reach out for replies and are met with silence, it not only disrespects us, but also our clients, customers, and anyone who wishes to use AppSheet and we recommend it to them.

[takuya_miyai]

@Rifad 

I regret that Google is taking a valuable engineer like you lightly.😥

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@Rifad wrote:

It seems like they are purposely staying quiet and shutting down AppSheet.

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However, I have a slightly different opinion on this point.

Perhaps the reason Google members are not appearing on this thread is not because they are ignoring inconvenient opinions.
I believe they just don't even see these important threads.

But the conclusion is the same.
Google is more concerned with appealing to management and shareholders than providing profits to app creators.

[infinitejess]

I've worked as an engineer on the AppSheet app team for four and a half years as of this week. I would like to share some personal unofficial observations:

1. There are lots of talented people working on AppSheet, and we are trying really hard not to break things. In 2019 if the site fell over we said "lol whoops," pushed out a revert, and were mostly fine. We couldn't deploy at a certain time of day because a single customer generated such an outsized load the servers couldn't handle it. For us to simply break the whole thing every other day is no longer acceptable, and that comes with some tradeoffs. The work that goes into servers and infrastructure is usually opaque to you, the user, until a big effort improves performance or makes the site more reliable.
2. In the startup days a single engineer could build out a feature with no oversight and respond to every community suggestion. The process now involves a lot more people and documentation, both because Google and because of the need for stability.
3. Bugs get through anyway because it is a complex platform. The usual process for my team to build something new is to make or repurpose a test app, work on the feature until it works, add some tests, and start rolling it out. Our customers use the platform in very creative ways, and sometimes this blows up our feature work unexpectedly. We can mitigate problems a lot faster than we used to in many cases, but the work is ongoing.
4. I can't talk about timelines, or what my colleagues are working on, or how we plan things and for which key customers. Very often I see feature requests that seem very reasonable, but for various reasons we can't work on them right now. When I see a request that hits the sweet spot of (relevant to my team, reasonable scope, important enough) I'll often copy it to the team channel. I have plenty of thoughts on what and how we prioritize, but I like my colleagues and my job so I must sit on them.
5. Engaging with the community is an optional part of my job as an individual contributor engineer. I am a very sensitive person and people here are pretty mad. I do not engage with people who are hostile to me personally, and I hesitate to stick my neck out when people are frustrated in general. I do want to fix bugs and deliver stuff people are asking for, and I sympathize with that frustration. My capacity as an individual is limited.
6. Everybody knows Google kills products. I don't have any reason to believe they're killing AppSheet at this time, which would be a tremendous disappointment to both me and my landlord. The business models for enterprise and consumer software are quite different.

This comment, again, represents my perspective as an individual and is not an official statement from the company.

[Denzil_Snyman]

@infinitejess Your response is well received and thank you for sharing. It's nice to have staff encourage us that the platform is not stalling but rather cautiously moving forward for stability...

Again I thank and applaude you for reaching out to us. 

[Markus_Malessa]

@infinitejess I appreciate your perspective and will say that all to often the things that go on behind the curtain, that make everything work in harmony, are unfortunately overlooked (not by everyone obviously).

I like pointing out that I did come from the Google App Maker (deprecated) platform, in which I did invest heavily from a time perspective. I always appreciate it when individuals from Google make an effort to actually talk people that are using a certain product, as Christian Schalk with Google did near the end of days of App Maker. I suspect that at the time Google was probably gauging if users of App Maker would be easily incorporated into Appsheet.

That said, I am still somewhat curious why a native looping action has not been incorporated, and at the same time I can't help myself but appreciate the simplicity that Google App Maker implemented in handling many-to-many relationships.

[takuya_miyai]

@infinitejess 
I appreciate your response. And as for your personal opinion, I understand everything.
However, it's an official Google action I want.

If this community is volunteer based, that's fine.

But as far as I know, Google often guides this community as one way to solve AppSheet problems.
If that is the case, I would like to see an official community manager in place.

Going back to the beginning of this thread, a situation where Feature Idea continues to be neglected should not be desirable for Google.

[Rifad]

@infinitejess Thank you for the thorough explanation. I want to clarify that while the feature request may be considered a secondary priority, it is still important. I am concerned about the lack of communication from the AppSheet team regarding various issues. The support team seems ineffective in resolving problems in a timely manner and often doesn't fully comprehend the issues at hand. This is not just a personal concern, but one shared by my clients who have invested heavily in developing with AppSheet based on the reputation of Google. We need answers. 

[Rifad]

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@infinitejess wrote:

I am a very sensitive person and people here are pretty mad.

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What's got everyone so mad? It seems like people only get upset when things aren’t running smoothly. I get where you're coming from - it can be frustrating. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to business and money is what makes the world go round. Whether it's between me and you, or between my clients and their customers, money is always at the center of it all.

[baba_sawane]

@infinitejess  wrote:

I can't talk about timelines, or what my colleagues are working on, or how we plan things and for which key customers. Very often I see feature requests that seem very reasonable, but for various reasons we can't work on them right now. When I see a request that hits the sweet spot of (relevant to my team, reasonable scope, important enough) I'll often copy it to the team channel. I have plenty of thoughts on what and how we prioritize, but I like my colleagues and my job so I must sit on them.

I think this is the main issue here, we don't know if the devs are listening to users. The only thing we can do is assume. "is appsheet getting killed ?" "is there a point in asking new features ?"

We will continue to do so until we know what exactly prevents the devs from adding a simple 'copy text' button... Not having answers or justification just leads to concerns about the platform. We have no idea how things are validated but we obviously need direct answer from the devs when a feature idea seem to interest some other app creators. We can provide use cases, examples, etc, but there's no one who is answering to us. This is not the role of the CM in my pov (even though he is already inactive). 

Thanks for answering this thread.

[Rifad]

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@baba_sawane wrote:

We can provide use cases, examples, etc, but there's no one who is answering to us. This is not the role of the CM in my pov (even though he is already inactive). 

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This is concerning, Frustrating, Totally unprofessional and Unacceptable.

[Humanoid]

Is this thread still open, are things still moving in any way?

[hien_nguyen]

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@infinitejess wrote:

This comment, again, represents my perspective as an individual and is not an official statement from the company.

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Please don't make excuses for the core issues of AppSheet that users have been reporting for years without resolution, or for the half-developed features that remain incomplete, forcing users to work with an imperfect platform, causing frustration. Moreover, the majority of user feedback on the forum is not positively received or addressed by the admin team.

For example, here are some recurring issues that AppSheet has yet to fix up to this point: The app editor sometimes fails to recognize changes made to the structure even when there is only one version and one person editing the app, without displaying any error messages.

Newly developed features often remain incomplete and forgotten, such as the new chart feature, which is very inconvenient because it does not allow viewing detailed data when clicking on the chart like the old chart style, or has an unoptimized interface that has been abandoned. Many small features that could enhance the user experience are ignored by AppSheet, despite numerous user suggestions, such as data types like Upper, Proper, and Password text.

The new Input function does not allow setting a default value, even though many users have provided feedback about this.