Best approach for supporting user parameters in (Workflow) Reports?

[matty2112]

Stumped and looking for a best practice recommendation. I have a Reports table with some basic information like Report Name, Report Description, Sort Order, and a Last Triggered Date. This feeds nicely into a Deck view to list the reports with name / description, hooked to a custom Action that sets the value of the corresponding report’s Last Triggered Date to trigger a Workflow with a “Do This” that sends a report.

For one of the reports, my client would like to specify a Start Date so that instead of the report containing all records it only contains records since that date. I’m struggling with what would be the best way, or even a good way, to support this:

• Add a new Start Date column to the Reports table? I’d conditionally hide it on the other reports?
• Add a new table to contain unique fields (Start Date) for this report, referencing back to the report in question? I wouldn’t know how to tie that new table’s field as an editable field in the view of the main report record.
• Change structure so that each report is its own table? I think I’d lose the Deck view capability?

And actually, as I think about this more, right now users only need to access the Details view to fire the Action to generate the report. Since a Details view can’t have an editable field, I might be even more fundamentally lost than I realized for how to set up something like this. It wouldn’t seem right to make a user navigate into an Edit form just to adjust a report parameter. (Especially if I’m setting up permissions to prohibit some users from editing the other report fields, but those users would need to run reports with parameters they can adjust.)

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Hi @matty2112,

You may wish to consider following options

matty2112:

Since a Details view can’t have an editable field,

Have you taken a look at “Quick Edits”. Of course “Quick Edits” may be typically used for a couple of fields and not suitable for filling up entire form of many fields.

help.appsheet.com

Quick Edit

How to use Quick Edit so that you can edit columns directly from the Detail view.

Have you also taken a look at the following sample app? In this app the user input is in detail view , using the “quick edit” feature. Ths app is useful for one user’s inputs at a time. The appconcept may be extended for multiple users , by incorporating a user’s table that has one row for each user’s setting.

https://www.appsheet.com/samples/Allow-the-user-to-filter-a-view-based-on-a-form?appGuidString=91266...

Another option for user specific settings, typically used for infrequently changing values is user settings. usersettings need a full sync of the app for the new setting to take effect.

help.appsheet.com

User Settings: The Essentials

Give users more control to customize app behavior.

[matty2112]

Thank you for the suggestions. I will look into Quick Edit as a means to address what I wrote in my final paragraph about editable fields in Detail view.

Any insight about the best approach to take regarding structure as I laid out in those theoretical examples in my bullet list? Is that where you were going with the user settings comments?

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Hi @matty2112,

Based on the information you have given, I would have probably gone for quick edits in detail view option as you seem to have only start date as a variable for the report records filtering. Quick edits also appear transparent to user as the sync takes place in the background.

However, I would definitely mention that you will be the best placed to select the most appropriate approach knowing your users’ requirements and other app structure.

I would urge you to browse the article and sample app shared in detail so you get a better awareness of how quick edits and associated filtering logic works.