Defeated by the Triangles

[sorin_mihai]

Hello,

As you can see below, I am invaded by attention triangle marks. I guess it’s a beginners thing as I see many questions on the topic and reading them all … I’m still blank. Didn’t find anything on youtube or Documentation … (a youtube with solving a bunch of these would be amazing since they are a common beginners lack of understanding).

Obviously, there is something fundamental I am not understanding here, in how References and de-references should be set up.

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I’ve got two kinds of them:

1. Images + Icons References:

I’ve got a Times Table and a Production Types Table.

In the Production Types Table, there is a column with Kinds of production types like Welding or Sanding and another column with Icons for each:

And in the Times Table there is a column Kinds of Production that references the Proudction Types Table, the point being that when you add Times to a task, you select what type of Production you made and when selecting, there is an Icon to make things more visual. But here I get grey triangles.

There are no Valid_If formulas … or any formulas involved here, that I could think might be relevant.

(and I don’t get it because I made the same thing for Users and their images selected for being Responsible for a Project and it works…)

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2. Autocomplete parts of a form

Also in the Times table, there is a Task column, Referencing the table Tasks, because I add Times of production to Tasks.

Tasks table has more columns but you can see here the key and the label:

And again the Times Table with the Task Reference:

There is one formula here, in a Actin taking me to Add new Times from a Task Deck View:

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So I read that the triangles represent broken references, as in the information that you are referencing does not exist … but this still doesn’t mean much to me yet.The word “key” confuses me in most explanations … I feel like I have solve these two and deeply understand how and then I’ll get it.

Can’t wait to get this ones right

Thank you,
Sorin

[Aleksi]

Hi @sorin_mihai This can happen quite easily if you for example change your table’s key column. Then it will lost the connection between two records. You can think it like this… you have a parent and child. Parent has a social security number (which is the same than key’s unique ID value). Now the child knows who is his parent. If you now change your table’s key column, the value in that column is different and the child doesn’t find it’s parent anymore.

[sorin_mihai]

But these triangles appear since the very first time I set up the column as Ref. It’s not like it used to work for a while and then I changed the key for some other reason and it stopped working. It’s like that since first I set the tables up …

But let’s say this is the case and the parent got a new security number. Can’t I teach the Child about it’s parents new security number and have a happy family again?

[Aleksi]

Yes you can open the child record and choose another parent. If you do that, you should not see this warning anymore. Or is it possible that you have a wrong Valid If formula?

[sorin_mihai]

oup … you might have hit the spot … I have no valid if formula in any of the cases. Does a reference generally go with a valid if formula?

[Aleksi]

Ref column doens’t need to have any Valid If formula but you can filter with the formula when you choose the key column for the SELECT expression.

[sorin_mihai · Accepted solution]

Alright, last night was a big breakthrough. I managed to create myself a couple more instances filled with triangles and then I finally figured it out. I’ll explain for whomever may have the same question.

So in my described cases, here what I was doing wrong:

1. The problem for the Icon Images had to do with the way I am writing the path to the image in the Spreadsheet Table. It must have a hidden part of the name or something, because I still don’t know how to write the direction to the image corectly myself in the spreadsheet (I did see tutorials and followed instructions but … somethings not right) …
   but there is an easy way out of this: I made a Form to edit the Types of Production Table, and in the edit on the mobile, I would choose to change the picture, navigate to it’s folder and upload it through the app. And so, the correct path to the image was writen in the Spreadsheet by Appsheet so that’s solved.

2. Here, to have the Autocomplete done, I used a LINKTOFORM() formula in the Action Button as it’s shown in the images above. The mistake was in that formula:

Wrong:
LINKTOFROM(“Times_Form”,“Task”,[Task])

Correct:
LINKTOFORM(“Times_Form”,“Task”,[Task - ID])

[Task] column stores the name of the Task, which is what I wanted to show so instinctively I dereferenced to the [Task] column. And it works but with possible problems which is why I guess you get a triangle and not a complete Error. (in the sense that in a name column, you could have two identical names and that’s a problem). So correctly, I had to dereference to the Key column (which in my case is [Task - Id], and since the [Task] column is the label of the Table, I still get the name of the [Task] displayed, and not the Unique Id stored by [Task - Id]. (hope this makes sense )

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[Aleksi]

Good work!