Is there a way to trigger a webhook call at app launch?

[Derk-Jan_Woltje]

Is there a way to trigger a webhookcall when the app is launched by the user?

I want to use this webhook call to update the google drive sheet data, which depends on which user is using the app and needs to show the latest data.

[LeventK · Accepted solution]

Nope

[Derk-Jan_Woltje]

Pitty. Thank you for your swift response

[LeventK]

You’re welcome

[Bellave_Jayaram]

It may not be the best user experience but would it work if you had an app launcher (which has the webhook) that then launches the other app?

[LeventK]

@Bellave_Jayaram
In fact this is a brilliant idea Jay…Clicking on an app might record a NOW() value to the table via row selected action and that might trigger a webhook workflow rule set as UPDATES_ONLY for that table…That might work really

[Derk-Jan_Woltje]

@LeventK, could you elaborate a bit on this suggestion? I know how to setup a workflow rule with update event UPDATES_ONLY. But not sure what you mean by setting up a “row selected action” and recording a NOW() value: why would a NOW value be recorded? How is it recorded, as a new row in the table?

[LeventK]

@Derk-Jan_Woltjer
Provided you can explain what kinda webhook call you are intending to establish and what do you expect that webhook to accomplish, I can help better.

[Derk-Jan_Woltje]

@LeventK
I want to use appsheet for letting users access their gps tracking data (now stored in Google BQ). Each user can have multiple devices.
Users can define their own POI’s (Points of interest / geolocation). The backend computes the time spent at each POI.
Appsheet could nicely show markers on a map, show the report data and a chart. And user could manage their POI data via the app. (etc

A post request, containing the user email, at app launch would fix two things

1. user only gets to see it’s own data (devices)
2. last x days of tracking data is automatically loaded, instead of user having to manually update this via the app

Hope this helps!

[LeventK]

Derk-Jan_Woltjer:

A post request, containing the user email, at app launch would fix two things

1. user only gets to see it’s own data (devices)
2. last x days of tracking data is automatically loaded, instead of user having to manually update this via the app

Hope this helps!

Q1 - Why would you need a POST request for filtering per user data? Provided all the data is in the app, a security filter as per USEREMAIL() can do the job. Is your intention to trigger a webhook (possibly a Google Apps Script) to fetch data from Google BG and record to app’s back-end gSheet via AppSheet API?

Q2 - Same as Q1 applies to this as well.

Can you elaborate?

[Derk-Jan_Woltje]

Must admit that i was not aware of the security filter feature! It might solve the userfilter need, but not sure how that would automatically trigger the update of data in my gdrive sheet.

Indeed my intention is to trigger at app launch a google app script that updates the gdrive sheet with the latest tracking data from google bigquery, and only show the data relevant to that particular user.
Other benefit i see in filtering at an early stage (in the sql bigquery => gdrive sheet) is that is reduces the amount of data passed around. Imagine many geolocations x many devices.
If i can get the post request (post request to be able to receive the useremail) i’d can fully control the data filtering and updating in the backend, which is my preferred scenario.

[LeventK]

@Derk-Jan_Woltjer
The Security Filter is applied to the data on the AppSheet server which reduces the amount of data in the mobile device significantly no matter how big your back-end in gDrive could be. And provided you have a Users table inside the app which explicitly contains the useremail, then you can filter your table data as per your useremail and the job is done.

For the Google Apps Script, after you write your code (not aware if you have it or not), you can set a time trigger for that script which will run on a set time and fetch & update your back-end spreadsheet.

For sure the same thing can be done with user request using an action button i.e. Update My Records which can trigger your script via a webhook workflow, but then the user needs to sync the app to see the updated data in the app. Thus, updating the back-end data with regular triggering automatically (i.e. everday at midnight) and using Security Filters to filter away per user data seems more logical for your usecase.

help.appsheet.com

Security Filters: The Essentials

You can use Security Filters to control which records a user can see and update.

help.appsheet.com

Scaling Using Security Filters

Security filters can be used to limit the data fetched by AppSheet on a per-user basis.

help.appsheet.com

Limiting Users to Their Own Data

You can use Security Filters to control which records a user can see and update.

help.appsheet.com

Advanced Techniques: Horizontal Scaling

Effective scaling for apps with large datasets

help.appsheet.com

Approaches to Data Scalability

How to scale apps to go past spreadsheet row limits.

[Derk-Jan_Woltje]

@LeventK

Thank you! Working with a user table would fix the filtering of the data

Indeed i am using appscripts to update de gdrive sheet. However data is streaming in (in bigquery), so keep my data up to date in gdrive would require this script to run every x minute which does not seem like the right solution. A trigger from user side (app sheet app) should be much more effcient. But i suppose a Update My Records button, like you suggest, is a fine alternative. I’ve search for this sollution, but was unable to find it. I’ll open up a new topic, since this is a new question.