LinkedIn
Twitter
Earlier this month, the Community came together for the first AppSheet Office Hours of 2022. We heard from Praveen Seshadri, AppSheet Founder and Distinguished Software Engineer at Google Cloud, Matthew Zito, AppSheet Product Lead, and Peter Dykstra, Product Manager, who shared recent updates to the AppSheet platform and whatโs on the roadmap for the remainder of the year.
We also heard from Andrew Biernat, Lead of the Google Cloud Community, who provided an overview of the new AppSheet Community and acknowledged its top contributors.
On seeing the slide of top contributors, Praveen said, โItโs like seeing names of family.โ Itโs evident that the AppSheet Community is โuncommon and special,โ with members consistently going above and beyond to answer questions, share advice, and help others achieve their goals with AppSheet.
Thank you to all the AppSheet Community members who make it a helpful, valuable, and rewarding place to be!
If you didnโt have a chance to join Office Hours live, no worries. In this post, we share the session recording, written questions and answers, as well as supporting documentation and resources, so you can refer back to them at any time.
There were many questions that we didnโt have time to get to on the call, but we did our best to add those to this post as well. If you have any further questions or if you donโt see yours below, please add a comment to this post and someone from the AppSheet team or the Community will be happy to help.
Session recording
Questions and answers
1. How will AppSheet be integrated into the Google Workspace brand in the future?
There are a few parts of this question to address. Part one is the feature portion (what other Google products will we see AppSheet with) and part two is a question around branding.
For part one, many of you know weโve long been tied to Google Workspace products like Sheets, as well as other non-Google data sources. This will not change - we will continue to grow and expand within the Google ecosystem of products. If you remember in October, we released the AppSheet in Gmail capability, but earlier in the year we released a BigQuery Connector. In short, weโre not limited to a certain category - we will expand in the areas that make the most sense for both the product and for the customer experience.
For part two, itโs a bit more complicated. From a brand architecture perspective, Google Workspace is part of Google Cloud, as is AppSheet. Yes, we are deepening our integrations with Google Workspace products from a technical perspective, but again, that is true of other product areas as well. We donโt yet know exactly what the future holds in terms of where we land from a branding and integration perspective, but we will be sure to share more information once it is available.
2. Which platform changes were pushed to follow Google Policies? Can you provide an explanation on how these changes help improve the experience for app creators and end users?
AppSheet joined Google just over two years ago, and in that time weโve been able to do a lot. Our team has grown significantly and I think last year alone we released over 800 feature updates, something that wouldnโt have been possible if we were still a startup. When it comes to Google policy, much of the policy is actually for user benefit. Think about items like design, security, data protection, SLAs - these are all taken very seriously here and they require time and a vast amount of resources, especially when we need to keep up with the growing number of app creators in a competitive market.
Sometimes there is a gap between a feature request, and a product need. We spend a lot of time reading your comments and having conversations with you all to try and suss out what is at the root of the requests made by this community against the need to continue our journey innovating. Our goal with everything that we build is to improve the overall experience. While we may not be able to make everyone happy with each release, we try, and we sincerely mean that.
3. How can we know the current status of features on the roadmap? Iโm particularly interested in Apps Script Outbound channel, iFrame UX, and the new chart editor.
For community-originating features, the team will be updating the status of each request, to give some indication of how itโs being considered or worked on.
For many other features, the team will be posting opportunities to access beta features in the Preview Program, where updates are shared and feedback will be gathered. Sometimes this will be in the community posts, sometimes with more direct conversations with user groups. I would follow updates in the Announcements section and Release Notes in general - and you can use labels to follow updates from more specific parts of the platform.
For those unfamiliar with preview features - you can gain access to beta features like new charts, new view filtering by going into UX > Options and enabling โpreview new features.โ
Apps Script is on the roadmap this year, and is being worked on, and the new chart editor is still in โpreviewโ state. New iframe and app embedding options are currently being explored.
4. When I build an app, it contains the client's data. If Iโm using Google Sheets as my data source, and the client wants to know how secure the data is, who do I refer them to? How can I know if Iโm compliant with privacy laws and regulations?
The following two trust centers can help address this need. Here is the AppSheet Trust Center and for Google Workspace products such as Sheets, this help article can provide additional information.
Itโs also important for you, as the app creator, to understand the privacy laws and regulations of the environment in which youโre working and your app users are working.
5. What is the difference in features and license types between an AppSheet Enterprise Plus License and a Workspace Enterprise Plus License?
AppSheet can be purchased as either a standalone product or with Google Workspace. If youโd like to go the Workspace route, you have two options. The current Google Workspace Enterprise Plus includes a certain level of AppSheet (AppSheet Core). If you require additional AppSheet enterprise-level capabilities, such as advanced automation or governance, you may want to consider upgrading the AppSheet portion of your licenses to an AppSheet Enterprise license.
Feature comparison based on plan type can be found here. Please contact your sales rep for additional questions.
6. Will pushing an AppSheet app to another Google user expose the app backend/structure on that account (if they sign up for AppSheet as well)? Some concerns are if someone makes unintended backend changes or if someone redistributes a rebranded copy of the app without consent.
When you invite users to use your application, they will not necessarily have access to the backend data. In the security controls of your app, you can control if/how users can access the backend data, either by filtering which records are shown or by adjusting user permissions.
Regarding redistributed copies of your app, everyone as an app creator has the ability to create app templates (sample apps). When you share an app template, that does give other users the ability to copy the app definition and the connected data schema/content of that app. So be careful about what you include in your app templates, so that youโre using mock data for example, rather than proprietary or confidential data.
7. Can you explain how to import data from documents on Google Drive?
When youโre creating an application, you can connect to data sources, such as a Google Sheet, Excel document, SQL database, etc., which is represented as a table in your app definition. You can also connect to a Google Drive folder, where files from that folder are exposed in your app in a structured format.
Using Googleโs Document AI solution, AppSheet automation will extract files from the Google Drive folder based on document type, including invoices, receipts, W-9 forms, etc. To learn more, see the support article on extracting content from documents in a folder
8. Are there plans for increasing AppSheet platform performance?
AppSheet has a dedicated team of engineers working primarily on improving app sync performance. We expect to see overall improvements here in the first half of 2022.
9. Will there be a connection between AppSheet and Google Calendar?
A connection between AppSheet and Google Calendar exists today, and deeper integrations are being explored. You can learn more about how this works in the support article here.
10. What is AppSheetโs overall plan to improve existing features and how is AppSheet currently identifying these problem areas?
Most of the AppSheet teamโs current efforts are focused on foundational capabilities, including stability, deploying to multiple regions, performance and security improvements, etc. You can subscribe to updates on existing feature improvements and new functionality in the Release Notes.
11. I noticed when playing around with bots, it sometimes generates tasks that just stick around, even if the bot is deleted afterwards. Is that something on the AppSheet teamโs radar?
The team is aware of this and a solution is actively being worked on to make the bot deletion process easier.
12. Iโm excited to hear about the Apps Script Integration. But doesnโt that move from โno codeโ to โmuch more than no code?โ
Apps Script is already used by millions of users to automate repetitive tasks, build custom solutions, and extend Google Workspace solutions. Apps Script Integration with AppSheet enables you to expand beyond the capabilities of the platform today to address more unique and sophisticated use cases. AppSheet also helps provide a framework for better management and governance of your scripts.
Check out this blog, which will help you assess how to best leverage AppSheet and Apps Script, including several example use cases and scenarios.
13. What about the use of an external API? In my case, I want to use a government API to decode VIN numbers and fill specific fields in the AppSheet form before I submit them.
AppSheet automation includes webhooks, which is a way to call out to external APIs, but there is not currently a way to capture API responses as data with webhooks. The team is aware of this limitation and weโre actively exploring a solution.
14. How do we now access the knowledge-base articles that AppSheet has spent the past many years creating?
Help.appsheet.com is and will continue to be the central repository for knowledge-base articles and help resources published by the AppSheet team.
15. Iโm working on a text detection app. Iโd like to know in terms of pricing, which plan will be best for me? There are dynamic users every month.
There are a few different methods for automatically detecting text from images in AppSheet apps, with different plan requirements. The OCRTEXT and EXTRACT expressions are available at all plan levels and are a great starting point for extracting and structuring text from images uploaded in an app.
16. When can there be an easier way to organize Menu Views into Sub-Menus?
Demand for more app menu customizations is helpful feedback for the team, and will be considered for future app UI updates. If you have specific requests, the team is listening closely to the Feature Ideas in the community, and would appreciate all ideas (especially the specific ones!)
Today, many users customize the way their app users navigate within an app by creating a dedicated menu view - this may allow for greater customization, and the ability to create sub-menus. An example of this can be seen in the CRM template app.
17. Any updates on the progress of reusable components and items?
The concept of reusable app components is still being actively explored.
