April 4, 2023

[lizlynch]

Deployment Time: 2:04PM PST

Features & enhancements

Item

Description

Feature

New governance features When configuring a policy, you can now: Enforce a policy at all times by setting Stage to Enforce always Note: Enforce always is now the default policy stage for all policies except the following: Apps must have documentation, Restrict who can deploy apps, and Block External Apps Review policy compliance to view compliant and non-compliant app versions (latest and stable) and confirm the results are expected This fix will be rolled out gradually. It's currently deployed to 10% of team users.

Bug fixes

Item	Description
Bug	Fix issue where SVGs were being converted into base64 PNGs. This would manifest as blurry SVGs and or performance issues in rendering SVGs.
Bug	For Desktop UI (preview), the search value will get cleared when a LINKTOVIEW() action navigates to a view with a different underlying table.

Rollout changes

None

Preview announcements

Preview feature releases enable you to try out new app features that are not yet fully supported. See Product launch stages.

• No new preview features were released today.

What's currently available in Preview?

The following tables summarize the preview features that are currently available.

Item	Description
Feature	AppSheet databases (Preview) The new AppSheet database feature is now in preview release. An AppSheet database is a first-party, native data source for organizing and managing data powering AppSheet apps. An AppSheet database provides an easy and efficient way to build data models for any AppSheet app without needing to use an external data source solution such as cloud-based spreadsheets or databases. For more information, see: Community announcement AppSheet databases
Enhancement	Navigation improvements in AppSheet app editor (Preview) The app editor includes navigation improvements, currently in preview, to facilitate the configuration of specific features. For example, the new Settings section in the left navigation gathers together all app-wide settings and makes it more intuitive for all app creators to find these types of settings. For more information, see: Community announcement Summary of navigation improvements in the app editor (Preview).
Enhancement	Additional usability improvements in AppSheet app editor (Preview) The app editor includes navigation and app setting improvements, currently in preview, to facilitate the configuration of specific features. The navigation improvements now include a secondary navigation panel that lets you quickly scan all of your components. In addition, there are more direct links in your View component to the table, column, or action that you want to check or edit. Finally, error and warning messages are more prominently displayed in the app. For more information, see: Further usability improvements: Simplifying the navigation in the editor Summary of improvements in the app editor (preview).
Feature	AppSheet apps for desktop users (Preview) The new desktop design, currently in preview, is optimized for desktop browsers, presenting a more complete view of information with a consistent organization and structure. The new desktop design lets users navigate their apps more easily and access information in context, and provides an efficient way to edit existing records without losing context. The legacy desktop design, enabled by default, provides an experience similar to the mobile and tablet device. For more information, see: Community article Optimize the user experience using the new desktop design (Preview)

The following features require opt-in to the AppSheet preview program. The AppSheet Preview program lets app creators try out new app features that are not yet fully supported.

Item	Description
Feature	Table view Table View now supports freezing the first column while scrolling horizontally. For details, see Freezing the first Column of a Table View - in Preview Program.
Feature	Chart Editor App Creators can now make use of our new chart editor and the new and improved charts it can create. Learn more.
Feature	Detail views Rich text formatting is now available in Detail views. For details, see this announcement in the community.

[Koichi_Tsuji]

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@lizlynch wrote:

Enforce a policy at all times by setting Stage to Enforce always
Note: Enforce always is now the default policy stage for all policies except the following: Apps must have documentation, Restrict who can deploy apps, and Block External Apps

---

@lizlynch 

Do me a favor? Can you clarify what "always" does mean in this context?  "Enforce always" does mean the policy is applied and invoked even we do not save the changes on editor?

@takuya_miyai 

[shawncrabtree]

Hi @Koichi_Tsuji,

The term "always" here means app runtime: when an app is being used or taking an action (i.e. automation). The idea here is that pre-existing apps can be shut down immediately by these policies, instead of waiting for someone to try to edit the app.

The policies do not apply when you're actively making changes to an app in the editor. But when you save the app, we will check the policy and show the appropriate error or warning in the editor. Then, if the saved app violates a policy, it will not run.

[SkrOYC]

---

@lizlynch wrote:

Fix issue where SVGs were being converted into base64 PNGs. This would manifest as blurry SVGs and or performance issues in rendering SVGs.

---

@Rifad 

[Aurelien]

@shawncrabtree 

Would it be possible to create a "auto-apply" feature option on policy?

I get this option enabled randomly on my custom policies, and the support answered me that there is no control over it.

[shawncrabtree]

Hi @Aurelien 

This is a good callout and something that we have little documentation for. Some policies will be auto-applied when you save an app in the editor. This is dependent on the policy condition. If the policy condition is "simple" it can be auto-applied.

This auto-applying of policies only takes place when you load the editor, or save an app in the editor. So if you were to create an "enforce always" policy which can be auto-applied, it will still shut down the apps in violation of the policy, but loading an app in the editor should auto-apply the policy and restore the app to a working state. 

What policies can be auto-applied?

Policies where the condition is of the form [Field] = 'Constant Value' can be auto-applied. Also if many of these statements are combined together in an AND function, they can all be auto-applied.

For example, the "Require sign-in policy" has the condition

[AuthRequired] = true

This will be automatically applied to an app by setting the AuthRequired value (which represents the "Require user signin?" field in the editor) to true.

Similarly, the "Enforce FedRAMP compliance" policy has the condition

AND(
   [EnableFirebase]=false,
   [EnableMapsAndGeocoding]=false,
   [ScanningServiceName]="System Default: Google MLKit"
)

This will be auto-applied by setting all of EnableFirebase (Allow Firebase) to true, EnableMapsAndGeocoding (Allow maps and geocoding) to true, and ScanningServiceName (Barcode/QRcode scanning service) to System Default.

[Rifad]

Thanks for mentioning @SkrOYC .

@Jonathon managed to help me and fix issue by removing unwanted filters and cleaning up the SVG code. We thought it was because of those filters but after seeing this post actually there was issue with AppSheet itself. 

[Aurelien]

Hi @shawncrabtree 

Thank you for bringing further information about Auto-Apply working.

When I compare with my current settings, I think there are options where it should be applied.

For example, I have this:

Here are the details:

For the first one:

For the second one:

As you can see on the second one, it seems to match your criteria:

---

@shawncrabtree wrote:

Policies where the condition is of the form [Field] = 'Constant Value' can be auto-applied. Also if many of these statements are combined together in an AND function, they can all be auto-applied.

---

But despite this, it does not "auto-apply".

Would you have any idea?

[shawncrabtree]

Hi @Aurelien 

That policy does not auto-apply because we currently require the assignment operator and the constant value. So 

[EncryptLocalData] = true

will auto-apply, but 

[EncryptLocalData]

by itself will not currently auto-apply. 

This does seem like something we could improve. If a boolean property is included by itself then we could always auto-apply the value to true.

[Aurelien]

Ok, thank you @shawncrabtree for the clarification.

I think it should be improved indeed, because this is the way the boolean operators are managed in AppSheet Apps calculation and it could be relevant to keep it consistent.

More simply, an option "auto-apply > Yes/No" could as well be nice 🙂

Cheers!

[dbaum]

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@shawncrabtree wrote:

something that we have little documentation for

---

FYI, @lizlynch 

[lizlynch]

Thank you @dbaum ! I'm was just talking to Shawn about updating the docs! 🙂

[lizlynch]

A new section has been added to the documentation: When are policies auto applied?