Can I Create an action that sets the value of...

Can I Create an action that sets the value of several columns ?

Iโ€™m currently working on an project plan tracking App, and about a week ago I started testing itโ€™s protoype with a few of my foremen.

The app has plenty tasks, most of them repeat (for example, In the Tasks table I have 12 rows, each represent the same task, letโ€™s say โ€œPaintingโ€ in each of the 12 apartments in the building). the main interaction of each foreman within the app is reporting (by changing the status) of each taskโ€™s status at the end of the day.

The main complaint from my users concerns is the need to change each task status individually, although a considerable part of tasks can be done within a day or two.

all of the those tasks baring the same name, can I create an action that will change all of the columns with the same task name (letโ€™s say โ€œPaintingโ€) to the same status ?

0 10 1,349
10 REPLIES 10

tony1
New Member

@Doron_Assis You can use a grouped action to combine multiple actions into one. That will allow you to change multiple columns with a single action.

Does it mean Iโ€™ll have to create an action for each task ? I have more then 20,000 tasksโ€ฆ

tony1
New Member

@Doron_Assis No, youโ€™d create an action for each column that you need changed. Then create a single โ€œmacroโ€ action that calls all the sub actions.

If you need to apply an action to multiple rows, then you can either use bulk actions or reference actions.

appsheet.com - Bulk actions - One way to apply an action to multiple rows

https://www.appsheet.com/samples/This-app-shows-how-to-use-reference-actions?appGuidString=e76d2e73-... Bulk actions - One way to apply an action to multiple rows appsheet.com

Thatโ€™s where it becomes a bit tricky in my App. Each task in the App has 4 status possibilities. Once a user change a taskโ€™s status, Iโ€™d like for an action to pop up, and allow him to set the same status change to all the tasks baring the same name within the table.

(note thereโ€™s no list nor parent table for the tasks, itโ€™s just one table with all the tasks inside it.)

Iโ€™m adding an image to demonstrate my will:

tony1
New Member

@Doron_Assis Sounds like you should use a reference action. Ignoring for now the part about conditionally popping upโ€ฆ

Part of a reference action is the rows to apply it to. Youโ€™ll need to write an expression that selects all rows that have the same name:

SELECT(YourTable[KeyColumn], [Name] = [_THISROW].[Name])

Unfortunately, youโ€™ll need to make a separate action for each possible value of your enum, since thereโ€™s no way to pass an argument to an action.

So if your enum has options {A,B,C} youโ€™d need to make these actions:

  • Set status to A on a single row - Set status to B on a single row - Set status to C on a single row - Reference action: set status to A on all similar rows - Reference action: set status to B on all similar rows - Reference action: set status to C on all similar rows

Is there any chance of making this action-change column value to trigger an enum list- a feature in Appsheet? It would be a REALLY helpful thing to implement.

I donโ€™t understand what youโ€™re proposing. Can you elaborate? Perhaps give an example?

Thanks Steve. I just made a feature request about it linking to this old thread. Would you be able to look there for more information perhaps?

Heres the link - Action-> set the value of a column to open up an enum list

Tried it and it worked, Thanks !

So you need a button to click then a list will pop up and they select from the list then it changes a column in all similar task?

Top Labels in this Space