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One of our favorite things to do is shine the spotlight on some of our most active Community members. One such member is @Marc_Dillon!
Read on to learn more about Marc, including why he contributes to the Community, how he first started using AppSheet, and several pieces of valuable advice for app creators.
Have additional questions for Marc? or want to share your appreciation? Add a comment on this post!
1. Where do you reside in the world?
Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.
2. What is your job and how does it tie into AppSheet?
I work freelance, building AppSheet apps for various clients. I offer other services, but AppSheet is by far the main one.
3. What is your experience with the Community?
I started using the community in late 2018, back when it was on Google Plus and I first started learning AppSheet.
When I first started posting my own newb questions, I received consistent and timely replies, which was great and quite different from a lot of tech help forums.
But I also noticed that there were a lot of posts, and only a few regular people answering them. As I learned more about the platform, I realized that I was able to answer many of these posts, so I started giving back.
4. What do you get out of the Community? What compels you to contribute?
There are many reasons:
- Posting on the community is actually how I received my very first client. They saw my helpful posts and messaged me directly, offering me a small bit of work. I actually ended up doing quite a bit for this client over the years.
- Being active on the community helps me stay up to date with all of AppSheet's news and developments.
- Answering other users' questions is a great way to see the platform from different perspectives. I get to see what kind of functionality everyone else is building. It gives me exposure on some of AppSheet's features that I wouldn't otherwise have thought to use. I also get a glimpse into the thought process of other people and the usual pitfalls in their understanding of the system. All of this contributes to my ability to offer a better skillset to my clients.
- Being one of the top contributors is also a great selling point for potential new clients.
- It's just part of my daily routine at this point: sit down at the computer, open AppSheet community on my side monitor, see new posts to be answered, and I feel the need to answer them. I'm not sure if that's good or bad (for me) at this point, haha!
5. How does the Community help you on a day-to-day basis?
As mentioned above, being active on the community allows me to stay up to date with AppSheet news and developments. It also helps me stay on the forefront of new, innovative functionality solutions to build into apps. Like INPUT(). That's a game changer for sure.
6. What advice do you have for new Community members?
Typical things:
- Read the help docs
- Search the forums
- One sentence is not enough when you're asking a question
- And most importantly, ADD SCREENSHOTS!!
7. How did you start using AppSheet and what did you use it for?
I was working at a small craft brewery that was rapidly growing. A coworker mentioned the AppSheet platform as a possibility to replace our overflowing quantity of spreadsheets. I said "I can do that."
8. Can you share your favorite thing you've created with AppSheet?
That's a tough call. At one point, I built a very low-level "programming language" within an AppSheet app. Basically just a way for the app user to create their own custom formulas, with support for basic math functions (even trig functions with the help of lookup tables). It was a lot of records, and a lot of looping functionality (and serial, NOT parallel).
Unfortunately we never really finished it, largely due to the pandemic. It was pretty cool, but for anyone reading this, I don't recommend trying this, hahaha.
9. What advice, or tips and tricks do you have for app creators using AppSheet?
- Read the help docs. Multiple times. There's a lot of "hidden" information in them. Even when you think you know what you're doing.
- Build and use your own testing app. I use mine ALL THE TIME.
- When you have an error, and can't figure it out, break it down into smaller pieces. Make temporary virtual columns with smaller portions of your expressions to double-check the results.
- You can re-test your template outputs from Bot Tasks without having to re-save the editor. Every time you hit the "test" button, it recalculates the results from the most recent version of the template. Maybe there was a change with this at some point, but for some reason it took me forever to figure this out.
10. What's a fun fact about you?
I dropped out of college, after being a straight A high-school student, to live in my car and/or tent and go rock climbing. No regrets. Always make sure to follow your heart.
