Multiple Users Using Form At the Same time

[AhmedNadimGG]

I have a form which allows me to scan in a Shelf, Barcode and add in quantity for a basic inventory count. The issue is i have multiple people using that form often at the same time and sometimes they get the error that the Row ID is taken when they go to submit the information. Is there a way to mitigate against this error so multiple users can fill in the form at one time without running into this error.

For reference my Key is the Row ID.

Thank you

[WillowMobileSys · Accepted solution]

---

@AhmedNadimGG wrote:

Is there a way to mitigate against this error

---

Yes,  in your use case, you definitely do not want to use the _RowNumber,

First, I recommend reading this article to get some insight on row keys: 

https://support.google.com/appsheet/answer/10106672?hl=en

In the end, I strongly suggest creating a dedicated column and assigning a randomly generated key - as described in the article.   This is also known as a "dataless" key.  If your app survives the prototyping phase and becomes a much bigger app, you WILL run into situation later where the data for the data-based keys needs to change.  It then becomes a hassle to identify ALL the places in the app that needs to have the key value changed.

Having a dataless key from the start is such an easy, mindless, thing to do and you will never EVER need to worry about row keys.  There is only a single caution - there is a known issue in using the UNIQUEID() function described in the article.   On infrequent occasions, the value generated by the function and then saved to the Google sheet will sometimes be automatically converted by the sheet into a exponential representation of a number.  The fix is easy -- format the columns to "general text" in every Google sheet used for AppSheet apps.

I hope this helps!!

[AhmedNadimGG]

@WillowMobileSys This has partially fixed it thank you! However I have some vlookup formulas running along the same row where when the form is saved, the barcode is looked up for it's product name. Every time i now save the form, it creates a key but in the creating of the key, my vlookup values in the same row go from

=IFNA(VLOOKUP(D5,Product_Details!A:F,4,0),"")

to

=IFNA(VLOOKUP(D5,Product_Details!C[-6]:C[-1],4,0),"DNE")


is there a way to avoid this? Thank you! 

[WillowMobileSys]

---

@AhmedNadimGG wrote:

s there a way to avoid this? Thank you! 

---

I would recommend moving the sheet formula into AppSheet.