Re: Automation Web

Sarah_Keown · 06-09-2021 04:20 AM

Hi all, I’m still in the process of getting familar with appsheet automation processes but I have been having difficulty getting one of them to work. It’s a webhook workflow that we have been developing for some time. We originally created this in test apps as a workflow, but was still in development when the automation function was deployed.

It seems as though each time I create and test the process it works perfectly, but I have tried deploying it 3 times now and it keeps breaking or just partially functions?

I don’t feel confident enough in the process to deploy it again. For example, I tried to complete the process this morning and received an error in the monitor app - pictured below.

And then tried again a few minutes later and the BOT worked as expected. See below two operations today.

I don’t want to deploy this BOT in live projects because it hasn’t proven to be stable?
Most of the time when it doesn’t work I don’t get any error feedback in the monitor app.
How can it go from working to broken on a day to day basis like this?

I will attach screenshots of the automation below if there is anything I’m doing incorrectly. I have had communication with support heavily during the creation process.

BOT:

Material Added:

BODY:
{
“Action”: “Add”,
“Properties”: {
“Locale”: “en-GB”,
“Location”: “48.220599, 16.239976”,
“Timezone”: “GMT Standard Time”
},
“Rows”: [
<<START: SELECT([Related Material Take Offs][Line Reference],IN([Line Reference],[Request Material]))>>
{
“Order No”:“0”,
“Line Reference”:"<<[Line Reference]>>",
“Mech/Elec”:"<<[Mech/Elec]>>",
“Requested Date”:"<<TODAY()>>",
“Location Area”:"<<[Block]>>",
“Request Type”:“Draw Off”,
“Sub-Area”:"<<[Level]>>",
“Take Off Group”:"<<[Take Off Group]>>",
“Product Group”:"<<[Product Group]>>",
“Product Sub-Group”:"<<[Product Sub-Group]>>",
“Product”:"<<[Product]>>",
“Product Code”:"<<[Product Code]>>",
“Qty Requested”:"<<IF(ISNOTBLANK([Required Qty]), [Required Qty], [Take Off Qty])>>",
“Qty Ordered”:"<<IF(ISNOTBLANK([Required Qty]), [Required Qty], [Take Off Qty])>>",
“Unit”:"<<[Unit]>>",
“Requested By”:"<<[Requested By]>>",
“Date Required”:"<<[Take Off Group].[Date Required]>>",
“Requested Delivery Time”:"<<[Take Off Group].[Required Start Time]>>"
}
<>
]
}
Update Status:

BODY:
{
“Action”: “Edit”,
“Properties”: {
“Locale”: “en-GB”,
“Timezone”: “GMT Standard Time”
},
“Rows”: [
<<START: SELECT([Related Material Take Offs][Line Reference], IN([Line Reference],[_THISROW].[Request Material]))>>
{
“Line Reference”: “<<[Line Reference]>>”,
“Request Status”: “Requested”

}
<>
]
}

Reset Material List:

Austin

Because the error message says that it is a time out issue, the “problem” is likely that your process can vary from short enough to taking too long. If you look at like sync times, they can vary even on the same device with no changes by, in my case, like 30%+.

Can I ask why you use a webhook to do the datachange? Is this table not in the base app?

Sarah_Keown

Yes it is, should I use the Reset on edit options within the column itself instead of the webhook?

Koichi_Tsuji

In my humble opinion, new BOT is not stable enough to move to Production, bunch of stuffs should be addressed and improved before that.
I hope Appsheet/Google team will reconsider their schedule to transform workflow onto Automation rather than starting it now.
After Google aquition, we are not sure if users voice is reaching to them, so I become speachless …

If the transformation from workflow to Automation happens now, I bet the bunch of issues would arise and we , all app creators would be in troubles for sure.

Koichi_Tsuji

This is another example.

How does my exisiting workflow will be transformed while the new bot configulation does not have target table seeting for scheduled event?

If it is transformed, i m pretty much sure the new bot (App) will be broken.

Martina_Hawkins

Totally agree. We as users were very happy with the Workflow process. It was simple to implement, did what we needed and was reliable. Additional functionality is great but only if it has been thoroughly tested before implementation. I really don’t understand the rush to implement these buggy Bots. Put in Beta and let us as users test it.

Sarah_Keown

These are the execution times reported in the monitor yesterday from the two different tests.

Koichi_Tsuji

Your JSON body expression for select coupled with nested IN () expression. This is one of the most “heaviest” expresion among other in Appsheet. If your table is large enough, it takes sometime, wihch may result in timeout error.

This is what I noticed.

Steve

Attn @prithpal @Dan_Bahir @praveen

APiCC_Conor

This may be unrelated but since you’re getting a “took too long to process” error you might be impacted by the same issue we’re having. TL;DR recent drop in performance is causing some of our processes to fail.

If it worked previously but only started having issues in the past several days, it could be related.

Dan_Bahir

Did you get a change to look at the performance analyzer to understand which parts of your execution take the most time ? If there are expressions that take long to compute they might exceed the timeout under some system conditions.
If you can use a data-action instead of a webhook that is preferred.

Martina_Hawkins

What is defined as too long? How much time do we have? What is timeout set to?

Martina_Hawkins

The reason we changed to a webhook was because action was taking too long. Was taking half an hour to add 50 rows to a table. The webhook takes about a minute when it actually works.