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Hello AppSheet Community,
One of the team’s goals is to make it easier for all app creators to build applications by bringing focus to the core concepts and tasks and by providing information and “shortcuts” in the relevant context.
We’re excited to announce new usability improvements to the App Editor with two changes rolling out starting today.
First, we’re changing the navigation menu and introducing a new “Settings'' section. The narrow menu rearranges the order of the options. The new “Settings” section gathers together all app-wide settings and makes it more intuitive for all app creators to find these types of settings. Other areas of the Editor will now also look simpler and will let app creators focus on the key and most frequent tasks they need to do to build their apps.
New left navigation menu with the “Settings” menu option selected
Second, AppSheet now lets you build Slices in the context of a View. Previously, if you were in a View and wanted to filter your data, you needed to navigate away from the “UX” section and go to “Data > Slices”. We’re now giving app creators a shortcut to build that Slice. New app creators will be able to discover this functionality more easily while app creators who already know AppSheet well will be able to create and edit Slices a little bit faster.
We’re making these changes because our user research showed that some of the navigation menu options were not intuitive, e.g. “UX”, “Behavior”, that it wasn’t clear which AppSheet concepts users should be focusing on to start building an app, e.g. “Actions” vs “Offline Sync”, and that it was difficult to connect these concepts together.
Now, these two changes are part of a larger redesign of the App Editor. They are the first in a series that will be deployed over the coming months. Combined together, we’re hoping these changes will help new app creators discover how to leverage key AppSheet concepts and that they will save existing app creators time. We’ll announce future changes as we roll them out.
The new navigation menu with the “Settings” option will be available to everyone in the coming days. You can revert to the legacy navigation menu if you’re facing an issue. Details are in the FAQ section below.
The new path to create Slices will be rolled out to everyone in the coming days. You can still build Slices the way you used to if that’s what you prefer.
Try these changes out and let us know if you have any feedback.
Thank you
The AppSheet team
FAQs
How do I opt in and out of the navigational changes?
App creators can currently opt-in and out of the navigation changes at will. The changes apply to the App Editor experience, independent of the app you are editing. You can opt in and out by clicking on this icon in the top navigation bar (highlighted in the green box below).
Can I opt out of the feature that lets me create and edit Slices in the context of a View?
No. You don’t have to use it. You can always create a Slice from the navigation menu (in Data > Slices).
Is there some documentation?
Yes, we’re updating the relevant pages in our documentation. We’re also introducing a new page that summarizes the changes across the Editor. See Summary of navigation improvements in the app editor (preview).
Where do I report issues and provide feedback?
Contact Support or directly in this thread
Are you planning on maintaining the two navigation models?
Long term, no, we’re moving towards the new navigational model. For the next few months, we will support both navigation models as we make additional changes to how people navigate through the Editor. We want to work out the kinks before it becomes the only one.
When will the legacy navigational model be unavailable?
We don’t have a hard set date on this. That will depend on how fast we can work out the kinks in the new editor experience, but we’re hoping to complete the transition towards the end of the year.
What is a Slice?
A Slice lets you filter records and columns in a View. See our doc page for more info.
Why don’t I see anything yet?
We’re rolling out these changes progressively and it might take a full week before you can see them in your own account.
Usability changes? Yes, please!
Combing all settings together? Absolutely a great choice. It takes literal months or even years to memorize exactly which setting is in which menu. I see that they are still all located in the same menu-views as before, but just that all setting type views are under the same "folder" now. It's a great start, but I hope to see even more improvement there.
Changing the left-hand nav menu to just icons, instead of with text too? I'm not so sure about this one. It may just take some getting used to for an experienced user like myself, mainly to memorize which icon is which. The extra space is certainly welcome. But I'm also worried that this may make it even more confusing to new users?
Creating a slice from within a view's config? Yah, this is handy, not really a game-changer though. I'd be worried about this functionality making it easier to build too many slices, which could slow down an app if they're built with expensive expressions.
What really takes the cake here for me though, is this:
Hierarchical organization of each slice under its respective base table? Hell. Yes. This is huge! I want to see more simple changes like this that make basic editor navigation much less of a hassle.
Thanks!
Hi fellas,
Testing the new UI editor.
I noticed in integrations citing Data Studio, wich was rebranded as Looker Studio recently. I don't know if that's relevant here in this topic, but...
