Bot is not Sending an email when the excel sheet has a new row

[jodrileo25]

Hi Appsheet Team,

Good Day !

I created a bot that listen to an excel file if there is a new row added on the event trigger. Excelsheet is on office 365 drive. However it is not sending an email to me whenever a new row was added on the sheet.

When I review the log history of it, it is showing success message however It is still not sending an email.

when I test it and execute the process it seems that it is working fine and I am receiving an email.

Do I need to set up anything on the drive ??

thanks 

[Joseph_Seddik]

AppSheet does not have bots that can listen to spreadsheets. An AppSheet bot can be triggered by the addition of a new row to an AppSheet table, and this table can have its backend in a spreadsheet or a database or a form, etc.

In other words, when you add a row to table through your app, a properly configured bot should trigger. But if you are adding rows directly to your Excel sheet outside AppSheet, then the bot will not trigger. 

[jodrileo25]

Hi Joseph

Thank you for your inputs. Can I use google sheet instead... I will try to have an appsheet app that is inserting new row to a google sheet and another app that will listen to it and trigger an event. Is this possible ? 

Best Regards

[Joseph_Seddik · Accepted solution]

I'm afraid, as far as I know, this is still not possible. All data-change triggers have to be performed by the same app that would be launching the bot. 

You might want to have a bot run on a schedule to compare old and new values of record count for example, or to have this check run following any user action, even click on a table row, or through an action button. 

Google Sheets is officially recommended over Excel to improve sync times. 

[RoryF]

Well.. that has taken the wind out of my sails.. 🙄

I have an Appsheet App that CONSUMES data from Google Sheets (but the App does not write to this sheet).  I was hoping to have a Bot that would send a notification when a new record was added (by a 3rd party form) to the Google Sheet.. BUT.. it appears that this is not possible.  

What a letdown... I would have thought that it was looking at the data source but it appears that the Bot is concentrating on the Appsheet events and not the underlying data source.  To be honest I never saw this coming...

So I have to ask - what is the point of adding Appsheet Events Extension to the Google Sheet?  Anyone offer a workaround to this?

A very disappointed user..

RoryF ☹️

[Joseph_Seddik]

As far as I know, you might want to try and verify yourself, the Appsheets Events Extensions (described here) would work only in the case of direct changes by a user who opens the sheet and makes changes manually into it. 

If the changes are introduced by an automated process, then this extension wouldn't work, and in this case you'll have to use something like an API. 

But check also the recent announcement form AppSheet. It is now possible to launch Google Apps Script directly from your App. Perhaps that would help.  

[RoryF]

Thanks for the reply Joseph.  I will have to have a rethink about how I am going to go about this.  At least I can stop banging my head against the wall now..

RoryF

[Joseph_Seddik]

One might-be-easy way would be to merge your two AppSheet apps into one, giving your users distinct views and functionalities, based on their email, role, etc.

[jodrileo25]

Hi RoryF,

In my case, I did some workaround of using an initial google sheet that holds the new record that should be added to the old set of records then I created a daily scheduled bot to process all of those new records and transfer it to the main datasets (main google sheet) then delete it in the initial sheet using the bot process to prepare the initial sheet for the new record for the coming days ... this might work if you are not required to process new data on the spot (once it is inserted). Hope this might help.. you cheers!

[RoryF]

Thanks for the replies guys..

To answer Joseph - the app that writes to the Google Sheet is NOT an Appsheet app (it's a standard Form filling app that writes to the Google Sheet - is the right tool for that task).  So that's not an option but thanks for the thought..

To answer Jodrileo25 - the notification is actually time critical.  I could try to botch it using Appsheet (setup a scheduled job to run every 5 minutes and then compare records from the Google sheet to see if there is a need for the notification. But on a "no code" platform that is a bit of a workaround).

I will have to explore some way to send notifications outside of Appsheet using another 3rd party App.  The only reason I thought Appsheet would do it was that is has the automated Bot.  However it doesn't quite do what it says on the tin..

Thanks for your time..

RoryF

[TaliaBiase]

Hi Rory!

I have encountered the same exact issue. I use a third-party form to write on a google sheet and then use app sheet to merge with additional info and send an automated "approval" notification. 

Did you manage to work around this issue? Did you set up schedule notifications? 

I would appreciate your thoughts! 

Many thanks!

[RoryF]

No.. I didn't pursue it any further after the answer above from Joseph.  I moved that particular operation out of Appsheet and into Zapier/Twilio.. 

[TaliaBiase]

Thank you for your response!